The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

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But this book, one of his best, shows that he was just as interesting when he focused on man's origins, as opposed to his destination. What's consistent with theories of Sagan's time and today is that much of our brain activity is subconscious, and the sensation that we are actively directing our behavior is largely an illusion.

Even though this book is now out of print, if you can get your hands on a copy, I would say that you are unlikely to regret doing so. At this time, it is still a theoretical field, but that does not mean that it is not based on hard science. A witty and well-informed account of the evolution of intelligence, in a rather handsome edition with a wrap-around colour illustrated jacket by Don Davis. 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.Introductory music from the original score for COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey composed by Alan Silvestri, used with permission from Cosmos Studios, Inc. Recently, I decided to bring a more educated and critical mind to Dragons of Eden, and I now realize why I read it so fast the first time: lucid, thought-provoking .

In fact, despite our incredible capacity to reason, we spend an awful lot of time operating out of the tribal, ritualistic, reptilian parts of our brain. Since a reptile has been the downfall of man once, it’s possible man stays away from reptiles to avoid another mistake such as the one committed by Eve. Sagan received the NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and (twice) for Distinguished Public Service, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award.

However, he has left one of the most compelling legacies that will continue to enhance the human perspective for a long time. He also talks about the mysterious communication used by whales and dolphins that still defies comprehension. The book offers to explain the evolution of the human species from the beginning of the Big Bang to our current time period. My initial interest was to find out what he thought about the probability of intelligence developing. Sagan speculates on theories that even now are being confirmed -- such as that structures inside the brain are responsible for spiritual or religious experiences or ecstasy.

The best measure of intelligence of an organism is not the mass of the brain, but the ratio of the mass of the brain to the total mass of the organism. A book of the same title came out in 1980, and was on The New York Times bestseller list for 7 weeks. Sagan is quite upbeat about chimp intelligence and he spends a sizable part of the book talking about experiments that reveal chimps’ prowess in using sign language. Sagan's recounting and descriptions of those fears have major ramifications for the development of artificial intelligence. As one might expect with a popular scientist, Sagan does touch on some fairly outrageous topics to engage and, perhaps, entertain the reader but at the heart of the matter are scientific principles which he has a knack of explaining to non-scientists though often I did find my mind glazing over in parts.Sagan has made seminal contributions to the study of planetary atmospheres, planetary surfaces, the history of the Earth, and exobiology. Sagan’s discussion of animal intelligence hems uncomfortably close to ethical discussions about the killing of animals that are still so pertinent; what gives us the right to clearly assign personhood to a one-month-old fetus but not to a two-year-old chimpanzee, to have serious qualms about terminating the life of the former while cheerfully ending the life of the latter? Some of our reptilian connections raise mundane but fascinating questions; for instance, Sagan wonders whether the shushing sound we make for communicating silence or disapproval is a leftover of the hissing sound of reptiles.

I have two young children, my wife and I are full-time students, and we have been broke in both money and sleep for many years now.The title is derived from his thesis that the innate mammalian fear of reptiles is a genetic endowment left over from a titanic battle.