Raymond Neubauer
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231150705
- eISBN:
- 9780231521680
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231150705.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This book explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. It describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. It ...
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This book explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. It describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. It portrays four species with high brain:body ratios—chimpanzees, elephants, ravens, and dolphins—and shows how each species shares with humans the capacity for complex communication, elaborate social relationships, flexible behavior, tool use, and powers of abstraction. The book describes this constellation of qualities as an emergent self, arguing that self-awareness is nascent in several species besides humans and that potential human characteristics are embedded in the evolutionary process and have emerged repeatedly in a variety of lineages on our planet. It demonstrates that human culture is not a unique offshoot of a language-specialized primate, but an analogue of fundamental mechanisms that organisms have used since the beginning of life on Earth to gather and process information in order to buffer themselves from fluctuations in the environment. The book also views these developments in a cosmic setting, detailing open thermodynamic systems that grow more complex as the energy flowing through them increases. Similar processes can be found in the “self-organizing” structures of both living and nonliving forms. Recent evidence indicates that planet formation may be nearly as frequent as star formation. Since life makes use of the elements commonly seeded into space by burning and expiring stars, it is reasonable to speculate that the evolution of life and intelligence that happened on our planet may be found across the universe.Less
This book explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. It describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. It portrays four species with high brain:body ratios—chimpanzees, elephants, ravens, and dolphins—and shows how each species shares with humans the capacity for complex communication, elaborate social relationships, flexible behavior, tool use, and powers of abstraction. The book describes this constellation of qualities as an emergent self, arguing that self-awareness is nascent in several species besides humans and that potential human characteristics are embedded in the evolutionary process and have emerged repeatedly in a variety of lineages on our planet. It demonstrates that human culture is not a unique offshoot of a language-specialized primate, but an analogue of fundamental mechanisms that organisms have used since the beginning of life on Earth to gather and process information in order to buffer themselves from fluctuations in the environment. The book also views these developments in a cosmic setting, detailing open thermodynamic systems that grow more complex as the energy flowing through them increases. Similar processes can be found in the “self-organizing” structures of both living and nonliving forms. Recent evidence indicates that planet formation may be nearly as frequent as star formation. Since life makes use of the elements commonly seeded into space by burning and expiring stars, it is reasonable to speculate that the evolution of life and intelligence that happened on our planet may be found across the universe.
