Human beings evolved in a tribal environment. Over the millennia,
our brains have become adept at fostering social networks that are
the basis of group cohesion, from the primary family unit to the
extended associations of clans, villages, cities, and nations. This
essential social component of our behavior gave the human species
distinct survival advantages in coping with the challenges of an
often-hostile environment.
This book examines the many ways in which our tribally oriented
brains perceive and sometimes distort reality. The author describes
how our social nature led to the development of cognitive tricks
that have served us so well as a social species. Some examples are
our habit of imposing patterns on random phenomena, of weaving
entertaining narratives to explain the mysteries of the universe,
and of favoring the biases of group think. Luckily, we also
stumbled upon science, which McRae views as a fortuitous accident.
With this new technique, humans had discovered a method of
objectively evaluating the accuracy of our traditional tribal
notions. Even more important, the scientific method proved to be
self-correcting, allowing us to weed out the bad ideas from those
that really work.
McRae argues that science is our most successful social enterprise
to date. Through the sharing of scientific ideas, our species has
expanded the reach of the tribal community to a global scale. Our
problems may be bigger than ever, but science gives us a sure basis
in reality and the best method of facing the daunting challenges of
the future.
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