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38 reviews for:
Focul, limbajul, frumusețea, timpul: cum au depășit oamenii legile firești ale evoluției
Gaia Vince
3.81 AVERAGE
38 reviews for:
Focul, limbajul, frumusețea, timpul: cum au depășit oamenii legile firești ale evoluției
Gaia Vince
3.81 AVERAGE
First, the good things. There's a lot in this book. Gaia Vince covers a huge amount of ground, taken from a wide range of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, psychology and history. There are numerous striking snippets of information to engage the reader.
But as a whole, it just doesn't add up to anything. Not only does it not build to any comprehensible overall thesis, it really has no structure at all. Vince moves from one topic to another often by what seems to be a process of word association. It's a bit like listening to someone ramble about their pet theories. Nominally, it is structured into four big themes (fire, language, beauty and time) but most of the content has only a vague connection with these. Just one example: the last theme explored under "beauty" is living in cities. There really is no thread to connect these.
There are numerous errors of fact and, worse, errors of reason. Again, one example: Vince uses a flawed statistical argument to suggest that we all share a fairly recent common ancestor. She then goes on, shortly afterwards, to show exactly why this is not true by discussing isolated populations such as the Pacific Islands. In many places, speculation is presented as fact - no "might have been" or "it is possible that".
But maybe the most problematic aspect of the book is its enthusiastice, "gosh how wonderful" tone which predominates with occasional exceptions. Combined with the tendency to over-explain simple and well-known ideas, this can at times make it feel like a children's book. (Yes, I did feel patronised.)
But as a whole, it just doesn't add up to anything. Not only does it not build to any comprehensible overall thesis, it really has no structure at all. Vince moves from one topic to another often by what seems to be a process of word association. It's a bit like listening to someone ramble about their pet theories. Nominally, it is structured into four big themes (fire, language, beauty and time) but most of the content has only a vague connection with these. Just one example: the last theme explored under "beauty" is living in cities. There really is no thread to connect these.
There are numerous errors of fact and, worse, errors of reason. Again, one example: Vince uses a flawed statistical argument to suggest that we all share a fairly recent common ancestor. She then goes on, shortly afterwards, to show exactly why this is not true by discussing isolated populations such as the Pacific Islands. In many places, speculation is presented as fact - no "might have been" or "it is possible that".
But maybe the most problematic aspect of the book is its enthusiastice, "gosh how wonderful" tone which predominates with occasional exceptions. Combined with the tendency to over-explain simple and well-known ideas, this can at times make it feel like a children's book. (Yes, I did feel patronised.)
The content of this book is incredible, and I wanted to give it 5 stars, but the writing style is really lacking something. There is too much emphasis on information, much of which isn't relevant, and means that the best ideas of the book don't have time to breathe. I've found other nonfiction to be much easier to read. That said, this is still work a go if you can stand the writing style.
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I have a very bad habit of pausing in non-fiction books like these to look up the interesting 'fun facts' that the author includes to support the whole thesis of the book, only to spend roughly 30+ minutes educating myself on them because I find them so fascinating. Vince folds in the information she's collated for her book into the main text seamlessly, inviting me to want to know more about each of them. It took me a bit of time to finish reading just from my own little researching on the side, but I still found myself coming back to the book to learn more.
Encapsulated in the pages of this book, the very unique human experiences that jumpstarted the levels of our species' evolution - both subtly and not so subtly - are laid out in a way that I never would have thought to think of. Many aspects like language, our usage of fire, how we perceive things in our environment have never been things I've stopped to ponder as to how they shaped us into who we are, but this book gave that insight in ways that were easy to consume and fascinated me. I especially loved learning about language, and how our environment can impact how different languages sound or are passed down through the generations.
Even if non-fiction isn't your bag, if you've ever been curious about how humans managed to get to this point in our evolution this book is well worth the read!
Encapsulated in the pages of this book, the very unique human experiences that jumpstarted the levels of our species' evolution - both subtly and not so subtly - are laid out in a way that I never would have thought to think of. Many aspects like language, our usage of fire, how we perceive things in our environment have never been things I've stopped to ponder as to how they shaped us into who we are, but this book gave that insight in ways that were easy to consume and fascinated me. I especially loved learning about language, and how our environment can impact how different languages sound or are passed down through the generations.
Even if non-fiction isn't your bag, if you've ever been curious about how humans managed to get to this point in our evolution this book is well worth the read!
Some very interesting information which is unfortunately embedded in a tiresome writing style. This book reads a bit like a disorganized buffet of paragraphs. There are good ones, bad ones, and others have some decent morsels of info in them. But keeping track of what underlying arguments or points each section is trying to make is exhausting. You're served a haphazard menu of factoids instead of full course meal. This was disappointing especially since this book being "readable" was a big selling point.
Further editing was needed to connect similar discussion points together, such as physically placing paragraphs after one another. Alternatively, having opening and closing paragraphs discussing the arguments made would have been helpful. Even the advertised organization about discussing evolution via "Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time" did not feel cleanly executed.
The easiest comparison I can make for this book is to Sapiens. That book benefits from taking a mostly chronological order, and from making clear the lenses being used to examine information (e.g., viewing culture via myths). But by the end of Transcendence, I can only recall a couple of concepts that were consistently evidenced (e.g., Human development is linked to how we copy things).
You can still get some value from this book, just as you can get a good meal from a buffet. But if I were to read it again, I'd be much more selective about what I put on my plate and what I leave for others.
Further editing was needed to connect similar discussion points together, such as physically placing paragraphs after one another. Alternatively, having opening and closing paragraphs discussing the arguments made would have been helpful. Even the advertised organization about discussing evolution via "Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time" did not feel cleanly executed.
The easiest comparison I can make for this book is to Sapiens. That book benefits from taking a mostly chronological order, and from making clear the lenses being used to examine information (e.g., viewing culture via myths). But by the end of Transcendence, I can only recall a couple of concepts that were consistently evidenced (e.g., Human development is linked to how we copy things).
You can still get some value from this book, just as you can get a good meal from a buffet. But if I were to read it again, I'd be much more selective about what I put on my plate and what I leave for others.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
There is a clear line in Gaia Vince's argument: mainly through the ingenious use of culture, humans have succeeded in transcending their genetic basis and physical environment and thus becoming the motor of change themselves. “It all rests on a special relationship between the evolution of our genes, environment and culture, which I call our human evolutionary triad. This mutually reinforcing triad creates the extraordinary nature of us, a species with the ability to be not simply the objects of a transformative cosmos, but agents of our own transformation. We have diverged from the evolutionary path taken by all other animals, and, right now, we are on the cusp of becoming something grander and more marvellous. As the environment that created us is transformed by us we are beginning our greatest transcendence”. These are big words, and Vince is convinced that humans are about to transform themselves through their own technological ingenuity into what you could call another species. And according to her, it should even be able to cope with the harmful side effects of the human grip on nature (to name but one: global warming).
To my taste, that all smells a bit too much like human adulation and technological overestimation. But what annoyed me most about this book is the sloppiness with which Vince has built her argument. This already starts with her first chapter in which she describes the formation of our universe, and she does so in a hell of a pace, for instance by presenting the Big Bang theory as an established fact. Other aspects of the evolution of the earth and mankind are also presented as facts, without the slightest mention of the scientific discussion about them. She cites the classic version of the transition to bipedalism in which walking upright is attributed to the transition to life in the savannah, a thesis that since long as been more nuanced. My alarm bells definitely went off when she writes that after 300,000 BP, 12 races developed due to the desiccation of the Sahara, and when she calls the Denisova a separate human race. Consequently, I looked at her source references, and these leave quite a bit to be desired, with sometimes very limited studies, or no references at all. It seems to me that Vince made an attempt to write an interesting book, but based on a very shaky foundation.
To my taste, that all smells a bit too much like human adulation and technological overestimation. But what annoyed me most about this book is the sloppiness with which Vince has built her argument. This already starts with her first chapter in which she describes the formation of our universe, and she does so in a hell of a pace, for instance by presenting the Big Bang theory as an established fact. Other aspects of the evolution of the earth and mankind are also presented as facts, without the slightest mention of the scientific discussion about them. She cites the classic version of the transition to bipedalism in which walking upright is attributed to the transition to life in the savannah, a thesis that since long as been more nuanced. My alarm bells definitely went off when she writes that after 300,000 BP, 12 races developed due to the desiccation of the Sahara, and when she calls the Denisova a separate human race. Consequently, I looked at her source references, and these leave quite a bit to be desired, with sometimes very limited studies, or no references at all. It seems to me that Vince made an attempt to write an interesting book, but based on a very shaky foundation.
This book is receiving both very positive as well as very negative comments and ratings. Although I tend towards the latter, I still have a lot of appreciation for the enormous amount of knowledge that Gaia Vince has incorporated into this, and for the way in which she has tried to organize it into a workable whole. In recent decades, more people have ventured into an attempt to present a coherent, historically based vision of humanity. Just think of Yuval Harari, David Christian, Stephen Pinker and so on. It takes special courage to do “the big take”.
Celebrated British science journalist Gaia Vince focuses on 4 themes, which she believes explain why humans, ‘homo sapiens’, have managed to gain a unique grasp of nature and themselves: fire, language, beauty and time. Her vision is certainly relevant, but also a bit predictable and obvious. What bothers me most, however, is that she makes an unlikely mix of facts and figures, often without proper source references. And in some cases her premises just are speculation, based on no or flimsy archaeological evidence. On that basis, I'm afraid I can't recommend reading this book, however interesting. It certainly not is on par with Harari, Christian, Pinker and others. More about that in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3701641431
Celebrated British science journalist Gaia Vince focuses on 4 themes, which she believes explain why humans, ‘homo sapiens’, have managed to gain a unique grasp of nature and themselves: fire, language, beauty and time. Her vision is certainly relevant, but also a bit predictable and obvious. What bothers me most, however, is that she makes an unlikely mix of facts and figures, often without proper source references. And in some cases her premises just are speculation, based on no or flimsy archaeological evidence. On that basis, I'm afraid I can't recommend reading this book, however interesting. It certainly not is on par with Harari, Christian, Pinker and others. More about that in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3701641431
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced