Dragons Of Eden: Speculations On The Evolution Of Human Intelligence (1986) - Plot & Excerpts
Carl Sagan's on a tear again. He can't stop himself, and you can't help cheering as you watch him go! He's a one man demonstration of evolution as a model for scientific method: cook up a whole lot of crazy mutant ideas and set them all free, unleash them on the World, and see which ones survive. ***Right now, he's working on the Mesozoic, and I'm along for the ride: we've got moronic dinos hunting mammals, which probably sleep all day as a defense mechanism ('cause they're too stupid to be quiet whilst being hunted) and cause "the demise of the dinosaurs...by nocturnal predation on reptilian eggs. Two chicken eggs for breakfast may be all that is left... of this ancient mammalian cuisine." This is classic Sagan, with some tenuous but imaginative hypothesis stretched to it's logical conclusion, and an insightful connection to bring it all home at the end. ***A stretched premise is one hallmark of science fiction writing, and I think Sagan's book fits the bill. He is Larry Niven and your favorite high school biology teacher rolled into one. But at the end what we get from Carl is a lot of fun stories and little more. Most are in the common cultural background (too many episodes of "Cosmos" perhaps?), but everyone is sure to come across a few delightful new anecdotes they hadn't previously heard: monkeys learning sign language, the endearing stupidities of midget brains,a naked Dr Louis Leaky outrunning his antelope, cannibal insectuous sex, Freud's work as a metaphor for our triply evolved and layered brain, (the reptilian hind brain naturally associated with the corporate board room: I liked that one!), the dad, divorced for cause of insomnia who retains custody of his genetically similar daughter, list goes on. This is all really good stuff and fast fun reading. ***But for all his fecundity, Sagan is not careful about the details of the ideas he sprays over the pages. His evolutionary reasoning is uncareful. Factors of 10 and 100 slip easily in and out in his calculation of brain power, the ratio of brain to body mass vs pure brain volume is a two edged sword he cuts in either direction as it suits him in different chapters, and so forth. He'll pause for air and disavow everything with a hand waving caution, "just a hypothesis, now," but then he's off again. Waiter, I'll have whatever he's smoking. ***I once was teased with a variation on "boundless youthful enthusiasm" that transposed to: "boundful useless enthusiasm" and it comes, unbidden, to mind now. As an example of excitement overcoming rationality, the idea that an 8 Tonne T-rex, couldn't rouse itself from its numb stupor to prevent feral warm blooded whatevers from eating it's eggs is just an impossible stretch. (And, we can't help imagining the clever whatevers are our very own ancestors. Yeah! Go mammals!) OTOH, just considering the size and surface area, it is hard to imagine such big animals were not kept warm merely through metabolic inefficiency. THEY would have been the nocturnes, while we would have curled into furry balls at night, scampering between moribund overheating dinos during the hot lazy afternoons. Also, fur absorbs UV light, protecting our genetic blueprints from the supernova disaster that eradicated our scaly skinned competitors. ***Ok, ok, that's not in the book, I made it all up, but HE does it too! Yes, I know, HE'S Carl Sagan, and I'm not. ***We miss you Carl, - R.I.P. ***--------------Matt responded: I am curious to know what you think of some of the "stretched premises" towards the end. They attempt to apply his 'theories' on intelligence towards attitudes on social issues (computer intelligence, abortion, education, dream theory) and it all culminates in a direct insult of "right-brain" ideas diverging us from a utopia-by-intelligence. (Where intelligence is left-brain dominant).-------Ok done now, and my reply (to Matt) is that the book seemed to go out with a whimper, and I was neither opposed to nor enervated by, any of the last of it. I wanted cyborgs and computer super-minds, silicon immortality, x-ray vision and telepathy. Instead we got a pitch to fund wired classrooms and SETI. Ok already! ...I was hoping for more.I was not opposed because I agree with his thesis. Sagan is the consummate vampire slayer; he repudiates mystics of all sorts. Remember Sagan was (we must use the past tense not because he's dead but because, already, he represents a bygone era) still fighting Galileo's fight, one we only THINK is over because we live here: the battle of science against irrationality. REmember, Sagan thinks our right brain is responsible for brilliant flashes of insight, and art. I don't think he means the insult you apprehend.This takes us back to ZaTAoMM. Picture the misty past! The Epoch is BG (before Gates) and nerds are tolerated but joyfully reviled. Technology's evil, computers are laughable. People Do Not Believe ETI is out there and they're sure God is. The World is ruled by USSteel and PONG is the best and only computer game for heaven's sake!. It is hard for you guys to believe this shit (I call into context, regretfully, my advanced relative decrepitude, to remind that I am able to speak to you from the past, before your birth.) My point? It's a *real* battle that really needed to be fought, so we should forgive Sagan any overzealous driving home of the points. You need only think on the Texas and Kansas school systems to worry if the serpent's really truly been slain.Comments on some excellent vignettes towards the end:Witches dreaming of flying by reason of tripping on nightshade ~~ don't get me started! That they "flew" using broomsticks, well it's all merely hinted at, but if you listen close you can hear Carl snickering at his own jokes.Computers are conscious, or soon will be. I thought this especially cool, because it will at least be true so far as I can tell, and you can do NO BETTER! I mean, I can't *know* that you are conscious either, (solipsism) only that you're clever. So philosophically, once machines are clever, we may as well ascribe consciousness to them: it's only fair. Carl is very comfortable with this, with the proposition that consciousness is no more than the result of mere complexity, taken to a sufficient extreme. That's very well adjusted of him: I'm somebody who *wants* there to be more to me than there apparently is. (...and I make a lot more of this point than he bothers to.)Another excellent anecdote was Thoth railing against hieroglyphics as the calculators and video games of the age, certain to corrupt young minds which, relieved of the requirement to memorize everything, would grow indolent and weak. At this juncture, Carl reminds us how great written language is with a taunt that it allows an author to leap remotely off the page and into your brain! ...and across the chasm of death, too, I thought: a form of eternal life. For that instant I was again impressed with how very imaginatively Carl Sagan is able to think. So I'll respectfully say, "No, I don't think it really sensible to imagine that Carl Sagan's prejudiced against the right brain." To the contrary, he's All About right brain; his own is probably 50% bigger than the left.---------------------post script: as a companion to the chapter on right/left brain thinking I warmly recommend "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" as a closely related romp through even further stretched conjectures of how our brain structure and thinking may be related.*** added 'cause Facebook publishes these without separating the paragraphs.
The most hauting question that this book poses is this : Chimpanzees can abstract. Like other mammals, they are capable of strong emotions.Why, exactly, all over the civilized world, in virtually every major city, are apes in prison? For a species that has proclaimed itself to be the rulers of Earth, this is not a very difficult question to answer for us. It is a single word : suppression. We humans never much liked competition from other creatures and history tells us that this was how we overcame all our natural predators through weaponry or guile in the eons past. A moment of reflection on our past brings up that question : why did the other humanoids not survive while our ancestors did ? How did they all gt wiped out ? Natural selection could not have been the only answer.This book is one that shook me out of cerebral complacency and like a good author, Sagan opens the cobweb laden windows of my brain and lets the light in.This is a book length introspection into the nature of human intellect. From the first tottering steps of our primate ancestors to today's technologically addicted life forms, how has the journey been for that mass of tissue between our ears ? This is what Sagan attempts to answer. In simple,lucid and easy to comprehend prose the author breaks down the story of how our brains assumed today's form and reflexes. It is a tour de force that mixes and matches history,paleontology, psychology and other branches of human understanding to come up with a fascinating study.The evolution of the brain and how the most primal fears in our psyche still rule our subconscious is a fascinating observation and forms the best part of this book. The aspect of the Triune brain and the R-complex's involvement in human behavior is what Sagan calls the Dragons chained away in the dungeons of our minds. Our basic aversion to reptiles and the dreams populated with snakes coupled with the dreams of a fall from a height are all speculated upon by Sagan in teh backdrop of our dreams. They were quire revelatory and while I might at a later point in time (with more reading)debate these points, they did rekindle my interest in the human brain's inner workings. I finished reading, put down the book and ran my fingers through my hair and muttered You are a rockstar to my brain. The kind of rockstar who you can never fully figure out is how it might react to that comment ! This book is highly recommended and it is no fluke that I rate all of Sagan's books so far as five stars. This is stuff that will genuinely interest the skeptical mind.
What do You think about Dragons Of Eden: Speculations On The Evolution Of Human Intelligence (1986)?
One of the most beautiful things I've ever read came from this book:"If the human brain had only one synapse-- corresponding to a monumental stupidity-- we would be capable of only two mental states. If we had two synapses, then 2^2 = 4 states; three synapses, then 2^3 = 8 states, and, in general, for N synapses, 2^N states. But the human brain is characterized by some 10^13 synapses. Thus the number of different states of a human brain is 2 raised to this power-- i.e., multiplied by itself ten trillion times. This is an unimaginably large number, far greater, for example, than the total number of elementary particles (electrons and protons) in the entire universe."
—Ashley
"There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with a movable "racket". Points are scored if the motion of the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting. There is a clear learning experience involved which depends exclusively on Newton's second law for linear motion. As a result of Pong, the player can gain a deep intuitive understanding of the simplest Newtonian physics - a better understanding even than that provided by billiards, where the collisions are far from perfectly elastic and where the spinning of the pool balls interposes more complicated physics.This sort of information gathering is precisely what we call play. And the important function of play is thus revealed: it permits us to gain, without any particular future application in mind, a holistic understanding of the world, which is both a complement of and a preparation for later analytical activities. But computers permit play in environments otherwise totally inaccessible to the average student."
—Ethan
واحدٌ من أمتع ما قرأت على الإطلاقيكاد يضاهي كتاب الكون في جماله وتفردهالطريقة التي قدم بها سيجن معلوماته لازلت قادرة على إدهاشي فالعلم عنده ليس مجرد مصطلحات جامدة ولا سطور محشوة بالمعلومات الجديدةكارل سيجن يملك دهشة الأطفال وهو قادر على انتزاع تلك الشهقات الطفلية منك مع كل كتاب جديدفلا شيء في الكون لا يثير عجبه وانذهالهولا أية خفقة تسري فيه لا يعتبرها معجزة متجددةأمتع ما جاء في الكتاب بالنسبة لي وقتها كان تعرفي على التقويم الكوني لأول مرةكما تمتعت للغاية بما كتب عن الغرض التطور للنوم والأحلاموبالطبع تلك التفنيدات الخاصة بتطور الدماغ البشريكل هذافي بوتقة واحدة تضم الأنثروبولجيا وعلم الأحياءالتطوري والتاريخ وعلم النفسربما هذا الخليط الممتزج بحنكة ورشاقة وصدق هو أكثر ما يجذبنيلقد امتلأ سيجن بالحب والتفاؤل وعشق الفضاء والكونوامتك أيضا تلك القدرة الفريدة على أن يظل نزيها لآخر أنفاسهولذلك فمع كل فصل يرتبط فيه العلم بالتاريخ بالمتعة الغير محدودةلا يسعك إلا أن تنحني احتراما امام هذا الكائن المتفردولكن غالبا ما سيبتسم سيجن لك كأخ في الإنسانيةوسيجذب يدك ليبحر وإياك في رحلة جديدةأيها الكارلأنا أحبك-------الكتاب موجود بالعربية بترجمة طيبة لسمير حنا صادقتحت عنوان تنينات عدن: تأملات في تطور ذكاء الإنسان
—Huda Yahya
