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 child-rearing
patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and
science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from 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.
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My review
Tue, 1 Jan 2019 | Review
by: Tanya K.
In this book, Steve Stewart-Williams gives us a story of the human animal by taking a look at the human species from a new perspective: through the eyes of a hypothetical, hyperintelligent alien.
" If an alien did drop in on us, how would it view our species?"
This is a fun way of discussing human behaviour and culture, without devolving into baby talk.
The author draws ideas from evolutionary theory to shed light on the human mind and behaviour (i.e. evolutionary psychology); and evolutionary principles to shed light on human culture (i.e. cultural evolutionary theory). Stewart-Williams discusses a variety of multidimensional aspects to provide a deeper understanding of the evolutionary and cultural (memes!) foundation for human behaviour.
The guiding assumption is that:
"humans are animals, and like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capactiy for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, traveling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we are but a tiny, fleeting fragment."
This book is well written and the author makes his arguments in a lucid manner without fluffy, irrelevant, biographical side trips. A worthy successor to Desmond Morris' "The Naked Ape" and "The Human Zoo", as well as Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene".
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