Awesome book – this was everything I wanted Sapiens to be
(and even ended better than Homo Deus). Similar breath-taking scope from the
early evolution of man to modern culture and beyond. This time approached from
the angle of cognitive history (that was a new phrase to me too!) Basically it
means looking at how we make sense of the world. Now I’ve long been fascinated
about what makes human so different from other animals – and yes there’s the
whole prefrontal cortex expansion covered here. But then he spends much time
analysis language and from here onwards I found the book truly fascinating.
Not only is the topic of religion covered extensively but also
how different cultures had different ways of making sense of the world. Whereas
‘Sapiens’ mainly lumped the whole of humankind together this book teased out
how different ideas and world views competed. It made a plausible and
convincing narrative as to how we got to the scientific and industrial
revolutions. Interestingly it also demonstrated how important Christianity was
for the scientific revolution! These developments have enabled the expansion of
the ‘western’ worldview which we erroneously believe is better or right because
of it’s dominance; but is it necessarily the right path?
The last few chapters of the book then charts recent events
like climate change / rising population / resource depletion etc. to suggest
otherwise. The main thrust is that it is time to move beyond the reductionist
view of problem solving (still useful in many situations) and embrace the new
systems view which appreciates the interconnection of life. (Relatively new but
still with little uptake in the scientific community it would seem). The system
view has lots in common with older / ‘eastern’ world views. I was somewhat
disappointed there wasn’t an analysis of whether these other world views would
come back into predominance or it their cultures had already been too
westernised by globalisation (the latter I fear).
I half expected the end to get very hippy but it wasn’t over
the top in that aspect. However it was a somewhat bleak read when he aptly explains
how locked in we are to the current cycle of growing GDP and consumerism which
seems to have taken over the whole world. Again, similar to ‘sapiens’ but with
better analysis, it was explained how multinational companies now have most of the
worlds power. I found the future technology mooted pretty far-fetched (and I
like to keep up with New Scientist - it sure is going to be an interesting few
decades to see which come to fruition). In the end the overall analysis of the
situation was optimistic despite the precarious situation we find ourselves in.
