The Human Instinct Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus The Human Instinct

Zusammenfassung von The Human Instinct

Name: The Human Instinct
Rating: 4 (224 reviews)
Author: Kenneth R. Miller

Kenneth R. Miller

How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will

Kernaussage 1 anhören

Kernaussage 1 von 8

00:00

4 (224 Bewertungen)

27 Min.

8 Kernaussagen

Zum Lesen & Anhören

Worum geht es in The Human Instinct?

The Human Instinct (2018) is a celebration of humanity’s development of reason, consciousness, and free will through the process of evolution. It shows that our remarkable capacities are all the more unique for having arising from natural origins.

Über den Autor

Kenneth R. Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University and the acclaimed author of Only a Theory and Finding Darwin's God. Miller testified as an expert witness in support of evolution in Kitzmiller v. Dover in 2005, a modern-day Scopes Monkey Trial.

Kernaussage 1 von 8

Natural selection explains a lot, but not all, of our evolution.

Charles Darwin gets top billing as the founding father of the theory of evolution by natural selection, but another British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, actually beat him to it.

Wallace and Darwin were colleagues, penpals, and a source of support to one another. In fact, a letter from Wallace prompted Darwin to publish his groundbreaking work, On the Origin of Species in 1859.

But, as time passed, Wallace began to have doubts. The theory wasn’t enough.

How could it be, he wondered, that a mind adapted for mere survival could paint a portrait, construct a cathedral, or compose a symphony? How could such a mind uncover the scientific truths of the universe?

The answer may lie in a truth that both Darwin and Wallace understood: not all evolution is directly attributable to natural selection. In other words, evolution leaves room for accidental and fortuitous outcomes.

The strange abilities of the human brain may result from one such happy accident.

About three million years ago the human brain began to grow, and within what amounts to a geological instant, it tripled in size.

We’re still exploring why this happened, but we know this much: our new, big brains not only helped us walk, talk, forage, and hunt, they also gave us abilities that had no immediate bearing on survival. That’s the “accidental and fortuitous” part.

For example, our big brains made it possible for us to contemplate ourselves, the earth, and the stars. They made it possible to find answers by creating myths, religion, art, literature, math, and science. They made it possible for us to understand evolution itself.

In 1979, the evolutionary biologists Steven Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin coined a term for the happy accidents of evolution: spandrels.

They borrowed the term from architecture, and it describes the triangular forms that allow an arch to support a dome in, for example, a cathedral. In their essay “The Spandrels of San Marco” Gould and Lewontin use the architectural features as a metaphor for the occasionally beautiful and often powerful byproducts of evolution.

As we move through the next few blinks, keep spandrels in the back of your mind. We’ll learn more about how spandrels of the brain made us what we are. But first, we have to come to terms with some of the potentially dispiriting implications of our natural origins.

Learning that we’re mere products of evolution may be dispiriting, but we can’t ignore the evidence.

So, we’ve established that we’re part of evolution, just like any other organism. For many, this truth hurts. It’s a demotion from the ordained place we held in our myths. Back in Darwin’s days, and for a good while after that, those who opposed evolution didn’t have to dig very deep to find evidence that seemed to contradict the new theory. The fossil record connecting us to ancient apes was riddled with gaps and misinterpretations.

Naturalists sought the “missing link,” a species to serve as a halfway mark between us and our ape ancestors, but they hadn’t had much luck. The so-called “Java Man,” uncovered in the forests of Indonesia, was little more than a piece of skull. “Piltdown Man” from the dirt of southern England turned out to be a hoax. All in all, humanity’s evolutionary fossil record wasn’t much to go on.

We’re not the pinnacle of evolution.

In the early 1700s, a Swedish man called Carolus Linnaeus gave himself a big job. He set about drafting the first thoroughly systematic classification of every organism on Earth. In 1735, he brought forth his work as a book titled Systema Naturae.

Linnaeus’s work had a huge impact on zoology, and it influenced the taxonomy of animals for centuries. For example, it was Linnaeus who introduced the binomial classification system which uses two names for every organism, one for the genus, and one for the species. It’s thanks to him that we’re known as Homo sapiens, which, by the way, means “the thinking human.”

Looking to evolution as an explanation for everything can lead to some very bad ideas.

In February 1978, the biologist E. O. Wilson stepped up to the podium at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science. Wilson had a new field of inquiry to propose: Sociobiology.

Wilson had risen to prominence by brilliantly decoding societies of fire ants. Sociobiology, Wilson hoped, would apply a similar analysis to all of Earth’s creatures: from microorganisms to prairie dogs and, most importantly, human beings. The new science aimed to reveal the biological roots of all forms of human organization.

The human brain, for all its flaws and exceptional power, is a product of evolution.

Before moving on, let’s review a bit of what we’ve covered so far. First, humans are a part of – not apart from – evolution. No other origin story has empirical evidence that can hold a candle to the explanatory power of evolution through natural selection.

But this truth came with a cost. We’ve lost the confidence once given by our creation myths. To compensate, we may be tempted to rearrange evolution to put ourselves at the top, but the science doesn’t allow it. On the other hand, looking to evolution to explain everything about humanity has its own pitfalls.

Evolution doesn’t explain away the individual experience of life.

Consciousness. It’s a problem.

When, for example, does it begin?

The brain is a product of evolution, and the possibility of free will comes built-in.

Like Thomas Nagel, the seminal French philosopher René Descartes pondered the gap between mind and matter.

For Descartes, the body was a “machine made of earth,” a mechanism operating under the cause-and-effect laws of physical science. In contrast, he firmly believed that he went about his life acting and making choices more or less according to his own discretion.

An understanding of evolution can imbue our life with meaning.

If you were a Londoner in 1803 with an interest in anatomy, you might have chanced upon a strange demonstration led by an Italian physician named Giovanni Aldini.

Aldini was a practitioner of galvanism, the study of biological electricity. That day he’d gotten his hands on the cadaver of an executed criminal, and in front of an audience, Aldini touched the dead man’s face with conducting rods, sending electricity into the body.

Du möchtest die gesamte Zusammenfassung von The Human Instinct sehen?

Kernaussagen in The Human Instinct

Mehr Wissen in weniger Zeit

Sachbücher auf den Punkt gebracht

Kernaussagen aus Sachbüchern in ca. 15 Minuten pro Titel lesen & anhören mit den „Blinks”

Zeitsparende Empfehlungen

Titel, die dein Leben bereichern, passend zu deinen Interessen und Zielen

Podcasts in Kurzform ^Neu

Kernaussagen wichtiger Podcasts im Kurzformat mit den neuen „Shortcasts”

Wer The Human Instinct lesen sollte

Theologians, philosophers, scientists, and anyone else interested in the condition of our peculiar species
Anyone curious about evolution and what it means for humanity
Humans who enjoy contemplating our place in creation

Kategorien mit The Human Instinct

Wissenschaft Philosophie

Ähnlich wie The Human Instinct

The Dharma in DNA

Dee Denver

Insights at the Intersection of Biology and Buddhism

18 min

4.2

If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal

Justin Gregg

What Animal Intelligence Reveals about Human Stupidity

A New Science of Consciousness

25 min

4.2

A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein

Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe

A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us

21 min

4.2

Some Assembly Required

Neil Shubin

Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA

16 min

4.1

Survival of the Friendliest

Brian Hare and Vanessa Wood

Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity

The Science of Seeing Differently

26 min

4.4

Das sagen unsere Nutzer

Ines S.

Ich bin begeistert. Ich liebe Bücher aber durch zwei kleine Kinder komme ich einfach nicht zum Lesen. Und ja, viele Bücher haben viel bla bla und die Quintessenz ist eigentlich ein Bruchteil.[break]Genau dafür ist Blinkist total genial! Es wird auf das Wesentliche reduziert, die Blinks sind gut verständlich, gut zusammengefasst und auch hörbar! Das ist super. 80 Euro für ein ganzes Jahr klingt viel, aber dafür unbegrenzt Zugriff auf 3000 Bücher. Und dieses Wissen und die Zeitersparnis ist unbezahlbar.

Ekaterina S.

Extrem empfehlenswert. Statt sinnlos im Facebook zu scrollen höre ich jetzt täglich zwischen 3-4 "Bücher". Bei manchen wird schnelle klar, dass der Kauf unnötig ist, da schon das wichtigste[break]zusammen gefasst wurde..bei anderen macht es Lust doch das Buch selbständig zu lesen. Wirklich toll

Nils S.

Einer der besten, bequemsten und sinnvollsten Apps die auf ein Handy gehören. Jeden morgen 15-20 Minuten für die eigene Weiterbildung/Entwicklung oder Wissen.

Julia P.

Viele tolle Bücher, auf deren Kernaussagen reduziert- präzise und ansprechend zusammengefasst. Endlich habe ich das Gefühl, Zeit für Bücher zu finden, für die ich sonst keine Zeit habe.

Booste dein Wachstum mit Blinkist
Die hier gezeigten Bewertungen stammen aus dem Appstore von Apple oder dem Playstore von Google. Blinkist hat keine Möglichkeit, deren Echtheit selbst zu überprüfen. Beide Anbieter (Apple und Google) stellen jedoch nach eigenen Angaben sicher, dass nur Nutzer eine Bewertung abgeben können, die die App tatsächlich heruntergeladen haben. Wir verweisen insofern auf die jeweiligen Richtlinien der beiden Anbieter.

25 Millionen

Downloads auf allen Plattformen

4,7 Sterne

Durchschnittliche Bewertung im App Store und Play Store

91%

aller Blinkist Nutzer lesen dank Blinkist mehr*

*Quelle: Umfrage unter Blinkist Nutzern

Die besten Ideen aus den Top-Sachbüchern

Hol dir mit Blinkist die besten Erkenntnisse aus mehr als 5.500 Sachbüchern und Podcasts. In 15 Minuten lesen oder anhören!

Jetzt kostenlos testen

Blink 3 von 12 - Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit

von Yuval Noah Harari

Zusammenfassung von The Human Instinct

Kernaussage 1 anhören

Worum geht es in The Human Instinct?

Über den Autor

Natural selection explains a lot, but not all, of our evolution.

Learning that we’re mere products of evolution may be dispiriting, but we can’t ignore the evidence.

We’re not the pinnacle of evolution.

Looking to evolution as an explanation for everything can lead to some very bad ideas.

The human brain, for all its flaws and exceptional power, is a product of evolution.

Evolution doesn’t explain away the individual experience of life.

The brain is a product of evolution, and the possibility of free will comes built-in.

An understanding of evolution can imbue our life with meaning.

Kernaussagen in The Human Instinct

Natural selection explains a lot, but not all, of our evolution.

Learning that we’re mere products of evolution may be dispiriting, but we can’t ignore the evidence.

We’re not the pinnacle of evolution.

Looking to evolution as an explanation for everything can lead to some very bad ideas.

The human brain, for all its flaws and exceptional power, is a product of evolution.

Evolution doesn’t explain away the individual experience of life.

The brain is a product of evolution, and the possibility of free will comes built-in.

An understanding of evolution can imbue our life with meaning.

Wer The Human Instinct lesen sollte

Kategorien mit The Human Instinct

Ähnlich wie The Human Instinct

Das sagen unsere Nutzer

Entdecke den Blinkist Katalog

Beliebte Titel

Meistgeklickte Kategorien

Angesagte kuratierte Listen