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The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve
Steve Stewart-Williams · 2018 · 378 pages
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.
recommended by 3 people
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Chris Williamson
“I talk about EvPsych all the time. As far as I’m concerned it’s the closest you’re ever going to get at peering under the hood of your own behaviour and discovering why you do the things you do. SSW writes one of the easiest to read books in this entire list but delivers hammer blows of insight on every page. Why are we attracted to what we like? Why is jealousy a thing? Are we monogamous creatures? Why do we help our family more than we help others? It’s an endless barrage of jaw dropping discoveries and incredibly accessible. You’ll be highlighting every other paragraph.”↗
Diana Fleischman
“If you’re interested to know more about evolutionary psychology, I can recommend David Buss “Evolutionary Psychology, the New Science of the Mind” and Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe.”↗
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