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Distinctly Human
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Book Synopsis In the Light of Evolution by : National Academy of Sciences
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
Book Synopsis Becoming Human by : Michael Tomasello
Download or read book Becoming Human written by Michael Tomasello and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the William James Book Award Winner of the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award “A landmark in our understanding of human development.” —Paul Harris, author of Trusting What You’re Told “Magisterial...Makes an impressive argument that most distinctly human traits are established early in childhood and that the general chronology in which these traits appear can...be identified.” —Wall Street Journal Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Becoming Human looks instead to development and reveals how those things that make us unique are constructed during the first seven years of a child’s life. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tomasello draws from three decades of experimental research with chimpanzees, bonobos, and children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that differentiate humans from their primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities, but the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities into uniquely human cognition and sociality. “How does human psychological growth run in the first seven years, in particular how does it instill ‘culture’ in us? ...Most of all, how does the capacity for shared intentionality and self-regulation evolve in people? This is a very thoughtful and also important book.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “Theoretically daring and experimentally ingenious, Becoming Human squarely tackles the abiding question of what makes us human.” —Susan Gelman “Destined to become a classic. Anyone who is interested in cognitive science, child development, human evolution, or comparative psychology should read this book.” —Andrew Meltzoff
Download or read book Distinctly Human written by Bruce Alpine and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How Forests Think written by Eduardo Kohn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-08-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be humanÑand thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of EcuadorÕs Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the worldÕs most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting directionÐone that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.
Book Synopsis The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex by : Charles Darwin
Download or read book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex written by Charles Darwin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 964 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.
Download or read book Human Dynamics written by Sandra Seagal and published by . This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What We Keep written by Bill Shapiro and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from Cheryl Strayed, Mark Cuban, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Melinda Gates, Joss Whedon, James Patterson, and many more -- this fascinating collection gives us a peek into 150 personal treasures and the secret histories behind them. All of us have that one object that holds deep meaning--something that speaks to our past, that carries a remarkable story. Bestselling author Bill Shapiro collected this sweeping range of stories--he talked to everyone from renowned writers to Shark Tank hosts, from blackjack dealers to teachers, truckers, and nuns, even a reformed counterfeiter--to reveal the often hidden, always surprising lives of objects.
Book Synopsis Mindshaping by : Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki
Download or read book Mindshaping written by Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal that human social cognition would not have evolved without mechanisms and practices that shape minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. In this novel account of distinctively human social cognition, Tadeusz Zawidzki argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse, and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. Zawidzki proposes that such "mindshaping"—which takes the form of capacities and practices such as sophisticated imitation, pedagogy, conformity to norms, and narrative self-constitution—is the most important component of human social cognition. Without it, he argues, none of the other components of what he terms the "human sociocognitive syndrome," including sophisticated language, cooperation, and sophisticated "mindreading," would be possible. Challenging the dominant view that sophisticated mindreading—especially propositional attitude attribution—is the key evolutionary innovation behind distinctively human social cognition, Zawidzki contends that the capacity to attribute such mental states depends on the evolution of mindshaping practices. Propositional attitude attribution, he argues, is likely to be unreliable unless most of us are shaped to have similar kinds of propositional attitudes in similar circumstances. Motivations to mindshape, selected to make sophisticated cooperation possible, combine with low-level mindreading abilities that we share with nonhuman species to make it easier for humans to interpret and anticipate each other's behavior. Eventually, this led, in human prehistory, to the capacity to attribute full-blown propositional attitudes accurately—a capacity that is parasitic, in phylogeny and today, on prior capacities to shape minds. Bringing together findings from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy of psychology, Zawidzki offers a strikingly original framework for understanding human social cognition.
Book Synopsis Where Are We Heading? by : Ian Hodder
Download or read book Where Are We Heading? written by Ian Hodder and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theory of human evolution and history based on ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on “entanglement,” the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Not only do humans become dependent on things, Hodder asserts, but things become dependent on humans, requiring an endless succession of new innovations. It is this mutual dependency that creates the dominant trend in both cultural and genetic evolution. He selects a small number of cases, ranging in significance from the invention of the wheel down to Christmas tree lights, to show how entanglement has created webs of human-thing dependency that encircle the world and limit our responses to global crises.
Book Synopsis Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward by : Jay A. Gottfried
Download or read book Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward written by Jay A. Gottfried and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthesizing coverage of sensation and reward into a comprehensive systems overview, Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward presents a cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach to the interplay of sensory and reward processing in the brain. While over the past 70 years these areas have drifted apart, this book makes a case for reuniting sensation a
Book Synopsis The Line through the Heart by : J. Budziszewski
Download or read book The Line through the Heart written by J. Budziszewski and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The suicidal proclivity of our time, writes the acclaimed philosopher J. Budziszewski, is to deny the obvious. Our hearts are riddled with desires that oppose their deepest longings, because we demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible. Why? And what can we do about it? Budziszewski addresses these vital questions in his brilliantly persuasive new book, The Line Through the Heart. The answers can be discovered in an exploration of natural law—a venture that, with Budziszewski as our expert guide, takes us through politics, religion, ethics, law, philosophy, and more. Natural law, the author states plainly but provocatively, is a fact about human beings; as surely as we have hands and feet, we have the foundational principles of good and evil woven into the fabric of our minds. From this elemental fact emerges a natural law theory that unfolds as part of a careful study of the human person. Thus, Budziszewski shows, natural law forms a common ground for humanity. But this common ground is slippery. While natural law is truly an observable part of human nature, human beings are hell-bent—quite literally—on ignoring it. The mere mention of the obligations imposed on man by his nature will send him into a rage. In this sense, The Line Through the Heart explores natural law as not simply a fact and a theory but also a sign of contradiction. While investigating the natural law and its implications, Budziszewski boldly confronts—and offers a newly integrated view of—a wide range of contemporary issues, including abortion, evolution, euthanasia, capital punishment, the courts, and the ersatz state religion being built in the name of religious toleration. Written in Budziszewski’s usual crystalline style, The Line Through the Heart makes clear that natural law is a matter of concern not merely to scholars; it touches how each of us lives, and how all of us live together. His profoundly important examination of this subject helps us make sense of why habits that run against our nature have become second nature, and why our world seems to be going mad.
Book Synopsis Human Communication by : Albert Silverstein
Download or read book Human Communication written by Albert Silverstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1974. This is an introductory text on the basic processes in communication with each chapter written by an eminent theorist in one of the main disciplines dealing with communication. It both surveys the range of issues and presents the individual author’s personal theoretical approach in each case. Though introductory, the chapters here, while attempting to be representative and to avoid unnecessary jargon, are careful to not oversimplify. Each author presents an original thesis providing a first-hand glimpse of scholarly work in the discipline showing the great diversity among the approaches and levels of analysis used in the study of communication. Of great usefulness to students of psychology, language, linguistics, media and social history.
Book Synopsis Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind by : Antoine-Nicholas Condorcet
Download or read book Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind written by Antoine-Nicholas Condorcet and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the last great work of the Enlightenment, this landmark in intellectual history is the Marquis de Condorcet's homage to the human future emancipated from its chains and led by the progress of reason and the establishment of liberty. Writing in 1794, while in hiding, under sentence of death from the Jacobins in revolutionary France, Condorcet surveys human history and speculates upon its future. With William Godwin, he is the chief foil of Malthus's Essay on Population. Portrayed by Malthus as an elate and giddy optimist, Condorcet foresees a future of indefinite progress. Freed from ignorance and superstition, he argues that the human race stands on the threshold of epochal progress and limitless improvement. Condorcet defies modernist stereotypes of the right and the left. He is at once precursor of the free market and social democracy. This new edition of the original 1795 English translation, is the only English translation of a work of Condorcet currently in print.
Download or read book Superintelligence written by Nick Bostrom and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain.
Book Synopsis Alone in the World? by : Van Huyssteen
Download or read book Alone in the World? written by Van Huyssteen and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2006-04-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Alone in the World? -- first given as the 2004 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh -- J. Wentzel van Huyssteen develops the interdisciplinary dialogue that he set out in The Shaping of Rationality (1999), applying this methodology to the uncharted waters between theological anthropology and paleoanthropology. Among other things, van Huyssteen argues that scientific notions of human uniqueness help us to ground theological notions of human distinctiveness in flesh-and-blood, embodied experiences and protect us from overly complex theological abstractions regarding the "image of God." Focusing on the interdisciplinary problem of human origins and distinctiveness, van Huyssteen accesses the origins of the embodied human mind through the spectacular prehistoric cave paintings of western Europe, fifteen of which are reproduced in color in this volume. Boldly connecting the widely separated fields of Christian theology and paleoanthropology through careful interdisciplinary reflection, Alone in the World? will encourage sustained investigation into the question of human uniqueness.
Book Synopsis Becoming Human by : Michael Tomasello
Download or read book Becoming Human written by Michael Tomasello and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-07 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the William James Book Award Winner of the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award “A landmark in our understanding of human development.” —Paul Harris, author of Trusting What You’re Told “Magisterial...Makes an impressive argument that most distinctly human traits are established early in childhood and that the general chronology in which these traits appear can...be identified.” —Wall Street Journal Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Becoming Human looks instead to development and reveals how those things that make us unique are constructed during the first seven years of a child’s life. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tomasello draws from three decades of experimental research with chimpanzees, bonobos, and children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that differentiate humans from their primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities, but the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities into uniquely human cognition and sociality. “How does human psychological growth run in the first seven years, in particular how does it instill ‘culture’ in us? ...Most of all, how does the capacity for shared intentionality and self-regulation evolve in people? This is a very thoughtful and also important book.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “Theoretically daring and experimentally ingenious, Becoming Human squarely tackles the abiding question of what makes us human.” —Susan Gelman “Destined to become a classic. Anyone who is interested in cognitive science, child development, human evolution, or comparative psychology should read this book.” —Andrew Meltzoff
Book Synopsis Who We Are and How We Got Here by : David Reich
Download or read book Who We Are and How We Got Here written by David Reich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past few years have seen a revolution in our ability to map whole genome DNA from ancient humans. With the ancient DNA revolution, combined with rapid genome mapping of present human populations, has come remarkable insights into our past. This important new data has clarified and added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up some remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations existing today are mixes of ancient ones, as well as in many cases carrying a genetic component from Neanderthals, and, in some populations, Denisovans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what the genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial 'purity', or even deep and ancient divides between peoples. Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should celebrate our rich diversity, and recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?
