The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Carl Sagan was an amazing man and I still grieve his early death. I remember watching 'Cosmos' as a child and I have a copy of both the DVD and the book to this day. He gave inspiration to those who followed after him and stood in turn on the shoulders of this amazing intellectual giant. He gave us so much.

I lost it

I came into this book as a huge fan of Carl Sagan. I had read several of his other books and been extremely impressed, especially Cosmos and The Demon Haunted World. There have been few writers who could communicate both the wonders and importance of science so eloquently. Sagan always gets lots of props for inspiring wonder in his readers (and rightfully so!) but his books are about a lot more than just pie-in-the-sky awe; there's lots of philosophy and argumentation in his works. He believes in science as the gateway to truth, and shuns all superstitious, non-evidence backed thinking. As someone who wants to truly learn and understand rather than accept flimsy half-explanations, I love his work. The Dragons of Eden is no different; he comes out from the start and lets you know that he will only take seriously claims backed up by evidence, so any dualistic view of the mind with no backing from empirical data and experimentation is rightfully off the table for serious discussion. This doesn't mean he is ignorant of or closed to the insights that can come from myth, religion, and human traditions; the book is littered with references to them (I actually learned a lot of about several religious traditions). But when looking for truth and reality, these myths have to bring real evidence or cease to be relevant.What I do love about this book is the importance of the subject. There is nothing that should be more crucial in science that the study of the human brain. It is what makes humans so unique. Without it and its special properties, the conduct of science itself would be impossible. Sagan makes his appreciation for and the importance of the subject clear throughout the book. It is likely why he chose to write about something outside his realm of expertise. It is also something exceedingly complicated, and as a result even today, 36 years after this book's publication, prominent brain scientists often describe the study of the human brain as in its infancy.With this in mind I am skeptical of some of the brain science presented in this book. I do not pretend to be any kind of expert myself, but some of the scientific models presented here may have been at the forefront of neuroscience in 1977, but today have become outdated or even disproven. Sagan spends much time explaining Paul MacLean's "triune brain" hypothesis, where the brain has three largely distinctly functioning areas (the neocortex, limbic system, and R-complex), and also stresses differences in function of the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Those sections still make for fascinating reading as Sagan makes tremendous explanations and draws profound social and historical insights from these models. Just don't think you're getting perfectly up-to-date scientific data. Sagan also spends much of the end of the book speculating on the future of computers and human-made machines, an area that obviously has seen tremendous advances since 1977. He could not have imagined that someone like me would sit at a laptop computer and type away about his book 36 years later. But despite being hugely outdated, I found this section to be extremely enjoyable and interesting because Sagan was predicting a future that now has already happened. Most of his predictions were pretty accurate.While parts are outdated, other parts make for fascinating scientific information that is still just as relevant today as it was in 1977. This book introduces the "Cosmic Calendar", where the entire history of the Universe since the Big Bang is set to scale as if it occurred in one year. The earth did not form until September and all of "recorded" history occurred in the last hour before midnight-exactly the kind of humbling truth that Sagan delivered so well. The parts on primate and early human evolution are fascinating and I imagine would be even more eye-opening to someone who had not been formally educated on those subjects. I love it when Sagan extends the scientific data to social and political issues, and there is plenty of that here, though perhaps less than in some of his other books.Overall, despite some reservations, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in science and willing to leave any superstitious preconceptions at the cover (just like all Sagan's books!) Just realize some of the science is outdated. If you're just getting into Carl Sagan, I wouldn't start here, but there certainly is no going wrong with any of his books.

The one barrier to this being a five star book is perhaps, by Sagan's own admission, his lack of expertise in this field, which always makes a reader more skeptical, even if he has done the reading, provided an extensive bibliography and is obviously passionate and articulate on the subject at hand.Some of the information may be a little dated, and in retrospect, while he claimed Bronowski a little anthropocentric in his disregard for the significance of chimp signing, sometimes he comes across as all too enthusiastic and seems a little anecdotal in his case for chimp linguistics, although there is no doubt that Washoe did sign in the Gardners' program, which he covers in some detail.Of particular interest to me was the discussion of human brain evolution from Australopithecus Africanus onwards, and how each species' brain was an improvement on the old, to the detriment of our cousins within the genus.The many evolutionary steps necessary to become better hunters and tool-makers are described succintly and with a clear idea of how each adaptation builds up a picture of modern humans; the way primates are scared of snakes from birth (the oft mentioned dragons), the function of dreaming in primates and higher mammals and the relationship of wide hips to big brains in humans; a woman with wider hips can give birth to babies with larger brains, so all size zero women are asking for stupid babies, which is quite apt. I have read that there was no actual 'informant' involved with his writings on marijuana, and that research was first hand. Some of the material on the triune brain is covered in an episode of Cosmos, and I'm sure this book fed into the research for the series. Sagan seemed as interested in the phenomenon of intelligence as he was planetary science, and later science education and critical thinking along with his wife, Ann Druyan.I think the last chapter is perhaps the most interesting, as it deals with the future of our species and possibilities for Extraterrestrial intelligence, the latter of which I might have wanted more of.He hits upon something I had noticed quite independently; the tendency for Britain to produce a larger number of polymaths than other countries, and cited some of my other intellectual heroes; Bertrand Russell, A.N. Whitehead, J.B.S. Haldane and Jacob Bronowski (I would've added Peter Medawar as well). He wrote that it was important for society to allow for such broad and powerful thinkers - multi-disciplinarians, but that the evidence shows a steep 'decline' towards specialisation. I can see this borne out across various media - there is scant evidence of polymaths living in the UK today.I would recommend this book for anybody interested in gaining a thinking layman's idea of neurophysiology and the evolution of the brain, and how human and animal intelligence relate to each other. Anybody looking for more authoritative and specialist works on neurobiology and evolutionary psychology might not find this as helpful, as it is speculative, although you can't deny Sagan is gifted, perhaps as much as any scientist-author, in crafting such illuminating and lucid prose.Definitely worth reading, even if you're also looking for something along the lines of Oliver Sacks and Steven Pinker who have backgrounds in the fields discussed.

Se ti piace la scrittura di Carl Sagan e/o in generale la scienza, questo libro non può mancare nella tua libreria. Consigliato