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This book shows how painting since the mid?1800s has reflected
Western society's mixed feelings about the transformations in our
world produced by science and technology. Neither a chronicle of
the development of modern art nor a history of the modern era, it
instead discusses how artists have represented feelings and ideas
about the technological changes of modern times. Some artists
approach this task with an outward focus, representing the world
they perceive. Others focus inward, choosing to represent their
personal reactions to that world. The author examines both
approaches to show how major art movements of the last two
centuries are related to the largest-ever changes in human
knowledge. An analysis of 28 works reveals perceptions of
technological change as both blessing and curse. The result of this
analysis is a fresh view of the major artworks of the past century
and a half, along with intriguing insights into our own attitudes
towards our world.
This book is about what science frequently dodges or even denies:
subjective life as experienced by animals as well as humans. Mixing
what is known from science with some novel ideas, science writer
William Libaw provides a provocative and stimulating thesis on the
origins and evolution of consciousness.
Among the intriguing ideas presented are the following: For the
earliest animals that had it, subjective experience itself had
Darwinian adaptiveness in a rapidly changing environment; the use
of gestures and deception among apes and some birds suggests
conscious concepts in their mental activity; complete spoken
language came first from the mouths of a group of children who
inherited the previously unused genetic language capability; and
human males have retained the animal rutting instinct and amplified
it with conceptual prurience, which leads them to eroticize
females, and sometimes pressure them to have sex.
As the subjective world of any other creature cannot be observed
directly by any of us, this book plays detective to deduce from
gestures, deceptive behavior, and language some of the concepts
that play a key role in ape and human minds.How We Got to Be Human
is an interesting and original synthesis of a great deal of
evidence and ideas about the origins and nature of our subjective
minds.
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Paperback
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R398
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Discovery Miles 3 300
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