Dragons of Eden
Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
Ratings32
Average rating4
“A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday . . . It's a delight.”—The New York Times Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends—and their amazing links to recent discoveries. “How can I persuade every intelligent person to read this important and elegant book? . . . He talks about all kinds of things: the why of the pain of human childbirth . . . the reason for sleeping and dreaming . . . chimpanzees taught to communicate in deaf and dumb language . . . the definition of death . . . cloning . . . computers . . . intelligent life on other planets. . . . Fascinating . . . delightful.”—The Boston Globe “In some lost Eden where dragons ruled, the foundations of our intelligence were laid. . . . Carl Sagan takes us on a guided tour of that lost land. . . . Fascinating . . . entertaining . . . masterful.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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I try not to have personal heroes, but there are no two ways about it, Carl Sagan is one of mine for a number of reasons. And among his many great books, documentaries and speeches, I hold this book in particular in very high regard.
As it is often the case, I came by this one entirely by accident (crashing at a friend's place and quite literally just finding it underneath his bed). I picked it up and could not put it down, becoming probably one of my top 5 all time favourites.
One particular excerpt, where he compares the consciousness of dogs to the way we think and act in dreams, never fails to come back to my mind every time I interact with a dog for more than 5 minutes.
- It feels like non-fiction got a lot better since then at exploiting the curiosity gaps.
- We learned a lot about neuroscience since 1977, but still moved in the same direction, so the book is still correct about many things at large, although details are often important.
- Contrary to Geoffrey Miller, who tells that evolutionary psychology was extremely controversial at the moment (just two years after the Sociobiology release—which, by the way, is not mentioned at all), here's a Pulitzer winner that has a lot about how the human mind was defined by its evolution (although, admittedly, without many crucial details).
- A good book to learn something about the history of the area. If you want to learn about evolutionary psychology itself, you'd be better off starting elsewhere.
Scientifically surpassed in the 43 years since its publication, nonetheless enjoyable for its last two chapters in which Dr. Sagan takes a look into the future of our brains and terrestrial and extraterrestrial intelligence.
