The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve
Nov 2019 · Cambridge University Press
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Ebook
671
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About this ebook
The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our altruistic tendencies, and our culture? The book tackles these issues by drawing on two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment. Featuring a new foreword by Michael Shermer.
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5.0
2 reviews
Sonny Wiessing
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March 19, 2022
To be honest it's kind of changed my outlook on life it provides such interesting scientific and philosophical questions and poses a lot of interesting theories.
About the author
Steve Stewart-Williams is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus. His research and writing revolve around the idea that theories from evolutionary biology can shed light on the human mind and behavior, focusing especially on sex differences and altruism. He also has a long-standing interest in the philosophical implications of evolutionary theory. His first book, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life (Cambridge), was published in 2010.
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