The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent.

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.