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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
1977 - As much as I miss the genius that was Carl Sagan, I am not above a little good natured razzing of the era in which this book was written.
“There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with a movable “racket.” Points are scored if the motion of the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting.” (pg 214)
Those of you old enough to remember Pong should take a few moments to reminisce about the technology of 1977 before moving along to the science of 1977.
“A great deal of what we consider important about the last few tens of millions of years of Earth’s history seems to hinge on the extinction of the dinosaurs. There are literally dozens of scientific hypotheses that attempt to explain this event, which appears to have been remarkably rapid and thorough for both land and water forms. All the explanations proposed seem to be only partly satisfactory. They range from massive climatic change to mammalian predation to the extinction of a plant with apparent laxative properties, in which case the dinosaurs died of constipation.” (pg 136)
It wasn’t until round about 1980 that the Alvarez hypothesis (an asteroid collision killed the dinosaurs) was proposed. To be fair, I’m certain that Sagan’s comments on constipation extinction were anecdotal and tongue-in-cheek.
“The most recent dinosaur fossil is dated at about sixty million years ago. The family of man (but not the genus Homo) is some tens of millions of years old. Could there have been man-like creatures who actually encountered Tyrannosaurus rex?” (pg 142)
The answer to that question, based on the preponderance of the evidence, is a big, huge, fucking NO. What Sagan is doing here, and I am admittedly quoting him somewhat out of context, is pondering the possible origins of the cross cultural archetype of the dragon. To break this down, the oldest known Australopiths (man-like but not the genus Homo) date to roughly 3.85 million years ago. The credible evidence for dinosaurs peters out at about 65 million years ago. That’s a gap of approximately 61 million years. That’s 61 followed by six zeros. The only evidence of a primate-like mammal that MIGHT have been contemporaneous with T-Rex is “Teilhardina,” and it was much more mouse-like than man-like.
Like all great thinkers, Sagan’s science and philosophy evolved over time and, in spite of the evidence I’ve presented here, there is more right with The Dragons of Eden than there is wrong. Time may have diminished its fire, but it hasn’t extinguished its spirit.
“Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts - a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the “humanities.” Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a “humanity” as poetry.” (pg 77)
“There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with a movable “racket.” Points are scored if the motion of the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting.” (pg 214)
Those of you old enough to remember Pong should take a few moments to reminisce about the technology of 1977 before moving along to the science of 1977.
“A great deal of what we consider important about the last few tens of millions of years of Earth’s history seems to hinge on the extinction of the dinosaurs. There are literally dozens of scientific hypotheses that attempt to explain this event, which appears to have been remarkably rapid and thorough for both land and water forms. All the explanations proposed seem to be only partly satisfactory. They range from massive climatic change to mammalian predation to the extinction of a plant with apparent laxative properties, in which case the dinosaurs died of constipation.” (pg 136)
It wasn’t until round about 1980 that the Alvarez hypothesis (an asteroid collision killed the dinosaurs) was proposed. To be fair, I’m certain that Sagan’s comments on constipation extinction were anecdotal and tongue-in-cheek.
“The most recent dinosaur fossil is dated at about sixty million years ago. The family of man (but not the genus Homo) is some tens of millions of years old. Could there have been man-like creatures who actually encountered Tyrannosaurus rex?” (pg 142)
The answer to that question, based on the preponderance of the evidence, is a big, huge, fucking NO. What Sagan is doing here, and I am admittedly quoting him somewhat out of context, is pondering the possible origins of the cross cultural archetype of the dragon. To break this down, the oldest known Australopiths (man-like but not the genus Homo) date to roughly 3.85 million years ago. The credible evidence for dinosaurs peters out at about 65 million years ago. That’s a gap of approximately 61 million years. That’s 61 followed by six zeros. The only evidence of a primate-like mammal that MIGHT have been contemporaneous with T-Rex is “Teilhardina,” and it was much more mouse-like than man-like.
Like all great thinkers, Sagan’s science and philosophy evolved over time and, in spite of the evidence I’ve presented here, there is more right with The Dragons of Eden than there is wrong. Time may have diminished its fire, but it hasn’t extinguished its spirit.
“Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts - a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the “humanities.” Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a “humanity” as poetry.” (pg 77)
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
Evolutionary biology/psychology has been a hot topic at weird times in history, but if you don't feel like consuming anything by Sam Harris or Jordan Peterson, this is probably the most mild mannered and responsible introduction to the subject. I would recommend this over Maps of Meaning or most other evbio/psych sources out there.
Quirky but outdated enough that I doubt anyone will learn anything genuinely new. It's of some interest in that the publication year (1977) was a very interesting inflection point in pop science: you had the Viking landers on Mars and the Pioneer probes in space; the revolution in dinosaur knowledge was hitting its stride, but theories of their extinction were still unfocused; and computers were just beginning to be mainstreamed. The latter gives Sagan over to much (now hackneyed) metaphorical language about brains-as-computers, as well as some charming discussion about the whiz-bang innovations of PONG and SPACE WAR :)
That said, 44 years on, I don't know how accurate much of this science is, so I think its value as a pop science book is not very high. There are better and more up-to-date treatments.
2.5 stars rounded down.
That said, 44 years on, I don't know how accurate much of this science is, so I think its value as a pop science book is not very high. There are better and more up-to-date treatments.
2.5 stars rounded down.
informative
medium-paced
The year is 1977 and Carl Sagan seriously suggests we may be able to cross breed with other Primates. He also suggests that Primates can be led to verbal intelligence.
The year is 202X and Carl Sagan is upheld as a man of Scientific rigor, and is constantly quoted for his rationalistic views. Brian Williams quotes him in his final broadcast.
In all seriousness this was interesting, if slightly less Scientifically sound than even the oddest books I come across.
The year is 202X and Carl Sagan is upheld as a man of Scientific rigor, and is constantly quoted for his rationalistic views. Brian Williams quotes him in his final broadcast.
In all seriousness this was interesting, if slightly less Scientifically sound than even the oddest books I come across.
Outdated, but fascinating both for what Sagan got right and what he got wrong. Its stunning to see how much advancement has been made in every aspect of science in such a short time. Not recommended for its content, but enjoyable for the nostalgia.
Interesting book. I would highly recommend to to anyone really. It may touch on ideas that you have not thought about. It is also an older book, so some things are a bit outdated. But it is still interesting to get the perspective of the time. Read it. You wont regret it.
Sagan acknowledges at the end that "To write a book on subject so far from one's primary training is at best incautious." and it's true that a book subtitled "Speculations on the Future of Human Intelligence" might be unexpected coming from an astronomer. But Sagan was knowledgeable about science in general, which made him more qualified than most to engage in this discussion of how the mind has developed and how it works.
These speculations were written in '77, so there's certainly been further work on many of the areas mentioned. Some ideas, such as "This surely means there is a part of the brain which remembers sounds and images, but not thoughts." (p. 80) seem likely to be true in some sense, and others, such as "We may be able to engineer genes before we are able to engineer brains." (p. 213) have proven to be absolutely correct.
Sagan gets surprisingly (to me at least) philosophical for someone with a reputation as a hard scientist. After telling the story of rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard's inspiration for developing space vehicles, he asks "Can it be an accident that this vision of voyages to the planets ... was glimpsed in the limbs of a tree?" (p. 81) Well, yes, actually!
There are some other points where his insights go a bit far - for example, the speculations on the origin of the correspondence between left/right and bad/good I think make some unwarranted leaps of etymology.
But overall this is an informative and entertaining book by a master of scientific thinking and communication. Well worth picking up, even almost 40 years after it was written.
These speculations were written in '77, so there's certainly been further work on many of the areas mentioned. Some ideas, such as "This surely means there is a part of the brain which remembers sounds and images, but not thoughts." (p. 80) seem likely to be true in some sense, and others, such as "We may be able to engineer genes before we are able to engineer brains." (p. 213) have proven to be absolutely correct.
Sagan gets surprisingly (to me at least) philosophical for someone with a reputation as a hard scientist. After telling the story of rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard's inspiration for developing space vehicles, he asks "Can it be an accident that this vision of voyages to the planets ... was glimpsed in the limbs of a tree?" (p. 81) Well, yes, actually!
There are some other points where his insights go a bit far - for example, the speculations on the origin of the correspondence between left/right and bad/good I think make some unwarranted leaps of etymology.
But overall this is an informative and entertaining book by a master of scientific thinking and communication. Well worth picking up, even almost 40 years after it was written.