Financial Times
reviews four books on the topic:
The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution, by Henry Gee, University of Chicago, RRP£18/$26, 224 pages
Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed, by Marc Bekoff, New World Library, RRP£13.99/$15.95, 320 pages
The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals, by Thomas Suddendorf, Basic Books, RRP£19.99/$29.99, 352 pages
A Natural History of Human Thinking, by Michael Tomasello, Harvard, RRP£25.95/$35, 192 pages
After dismissing Man's being made in God's image "because of evolution," and disliking the Gee, Bekoff and Suddendorf for philosophical reasons, the reviewer, Stephan Cave, concludes:
Tomasello’s account of how co-operation drove the development of our
distinctive intellect is controversial – Bekoff too would point to the
growing body of evidence on how other species co-operate. It is also
highly speculative: a trait such as co-operation leaves few traces in
the fossil record. But it is speculation by a thinker at the top of his
field, based on the latest research, and as such is likely to be the
definitive statement of human uniqueness for some time to come.
Wow. There you have it. Not just "a" but "the." Here I thought the
Wonder Pets had that cooperation thing wired too though.
Consider this (which I heard recently): If human beings really descended (evolved) from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
ReplyDeleteYea R.T. that is an interesting point and not just with regard to people but to any functional "primitive" organism. Why do ferns exist since they are the oldest plant from still extent -- why generally do older species exist? Shouldn't they have been overtaken by the newer forms? Bll Bryson has a great review of how many holes there are in the fossil record and how much extrapolation is done in reconstruction of natural history in his A Short History of Nearly Everything. And that is the scientifically proven stuff -- i.e., a fossil exists, can be studied, etc. All the other stuff is non testable -- kind of like a scientific model. Which, jumping ahead, is why evolutionary psychology is so difficult -- it's speculation, not evidence based in any science (and, parenthetically, it's no longer thought I believe that Man descended from the apes, rather that there was a common ancestor of man and apes; two branches from a common root.)
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