The Accidental Species Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (Audible Audio Edition) Henry Gee Martin Dew Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : The Accidental Species Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (Audible Audio Edition) Henry Gee Martin Dew Audible Studios Books
The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being "animal" and started being "human". In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe.
Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy.
He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world - they are not, indeed, unique to our species. The Accidental Species combines Gee's firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution - the key is not what's missing, but how we're linked.
The Accidental Species Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (Audible Audio Edition) Henry Gee Martin Dew Audible Studios Books
The key to understanding H. sapiens is the process of natural selection and throw out the term evolution. The search for "missing links" is futile as each hominid species is unique and should be considered as such rather than placed in a questionable chart of who was the ancestor modern humans. It is remarkable how much of Darwin's early theories continue to hold up. Gee clearly cites our attempt to justify human superiority as a product of progressive evolutionary traits is pure myth. Viruses are far more advanced in their ability to adapt and spread than humans will ever be. Humans are not the only species to use "language," "tools," or technology puts us in our place as just another unique species on the planet with the one exception, we may be the one to destroy our host. One of the best books on the nature of human evolution and exceptionally thought provoking. Would love to make this required reading for all students of biology at the college if not the high school level.Product details
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The Accidental Species Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (Audible Audio Edition) Henry Gee Martin Dew Audible Studios Books Reviews
Here's a knowledge tester and expander for filling in information gaps in my knowledge of human evolution studies. It's a fascinating read written by someone with a broad background who's obviously experienced in discussing scientific subjects.
It is a nice read, presenting some unorthodox views and data. However, author often falls in the same pitfalls as the mainstream scientists he lashes against. It's also a bit of a dry read from time to time. All in all, not bad for single read.
Book Review The Accidental Species...Misunderstandings
of Human Evolution
BY Henry Gee, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2013, pages 218
reviewed by Samuel A. Nigro, MD copyright c May 2016
"Evolution is a word we use to describe changes in organisms due to the interaction of hereditary variation, superabundance, environmental change, and time. Evolution has neither memory nor foresight. It has no scheme, design, or plan....In and of itself, evolution carries no implication of progression or improvement. Absolutely none. Zip. Nada. " (Preface- 1%).
Two pages later "In this book I shall show you how and why the view of evolution presented in the popular media is wrong and why we cannot use it to bolster our own position in creation. I shall also show you how to challenge what one reader of a draft of this book has called "human exceptionalism"--the tendency to see human beings as exceptional by virtue of various attributes as language, technology, or consciousness. There is nothing special about being human, any more than there is anything special about being a guinea pig or a geranium. This insight should allow you see the world afresh, and marvel at each and every creature as it is, for its innate wonder and uniqueness, not as a way station toward some nebulous, imagined transcendence."
Another two pages "In reality, science is about neither Facts nor Truth, but the quantification of doubt...All scientific discoveries are provisional, set to be overturned by results gained from more data, better instrumentation, and new ideas....That is, science is not about Truth, but Doubt; not Knowledge, but Ignorance; not Certainty, but Uncertainty."
And he ends his Preface with "Once upon a time we thought the earth was the center of the universe, but were shocked to find that this was not the case. We thought that Man was the pinnacle of Creation, but despite Darwin, many still cling to this view--for which there is neither any excuse nor justification."
After his Preface destroys contemporary evolution but with Gee adamantly still believing in it, we are then treated to ten chapters of his doubt mania--worth scanning for his proclaimed negations, his science based dogmatic Doubts, his declared Ignorances, and his pontificated Uncertainties. We read about fossils, dogs, crows, bacteria, pigs, people, ginuea pigs, prehumans, geraniums, and more non-human things galore. This becomes a real spiritual experience as is common from pseudo-scientists expressing their beliefs outside the periodic table. It was a fun-head shaking scan as I imposed his unFactual unTruth "science" dogma on his own work.
The penultimate Chapter 11 The Way We Think is worthy of brief comment. Basically, "self-awareness" is "sentience" and all creatures have it as a "materialist" identity to existence. Gee obviously confines consciousness of self giving no expansion to consciousness-of-consciousness (C2) which clearly enables humans to partially escape from materialism, such as being able to fly without feathers, write with computers, among other human creations, as well as un-natural anti-human destructions like contraception, abortion, genderlessness, children as irrelevant, and anti-nature polluting everything almost. For Gee, "thinking" is, as for all other creatures, without the awareness to celebrate birthdays or the significance of consciousness-of-consciousness.
The last chapter is "Afterword The Tangled Bank"--about 5 kindle pages. He professes that he wants to end his book on a "crumb of comfort" because reviewers were distressed at his "extended dustup" of everything he minimalizes. His offered comfort is that all existence scenarios are still meaningless including the "stories" humans tell about any thing and every thing, but that humans must take comfort in "stories"--like he did in chapters 2 thru 10. Thus, he closes by unwittingly speaking about his story-filled book, proving it to be an oxymoronic example of his anti-existential nihilism and his own "imagined transcendence".
An excellent evaluation of current findings relating to human evolution. The importance of this evaluation is that evolution is a random process that has the potential to modify a species in multiple directions.
This book is loaded with super informative tidbits that made the book an entertaining read. I didn’t agree with the overall point of the book (that homo sapiens aren’t all that special). But it was obvious that he had an incredible amount of knowledge and reading this book gave an excellent window into the blurry world of anthropology.
Would 100% recommend.
A clear exposition of descent with modification being directionless, contingent with the environment of the time, and not 'guided' in any way towards an outcome that suggests progress.
My favorite book of 2014. You thought that evolution was some “cosmic striving for order and perfection,” right? Sorry, but an objective reading of the evidence leads an open mind to a very different conclusion. The author, Henry Glee, has a well functioning BS detector and obviously loves shredding other scientists who cling to their human exceptionalism based specious arguments. I would not get into a science argument with this guy!
The key to understanding H. sapiens is the process of natural selection and throw out the term evolution. The search for "missing links" is futile as each hominid species is unique and should be considered as such rather than placed in a questionable chart of who was the ancestor modern humans. It is remarkable how much of Darwin's early theories continue to hold up. Gee clearly cites our attempt to justify human superiority as a product of progressive evolutionary traits is pure myth. Viruses are far more advanced in their ability to adapt and spread than humans will ever be. Humans are not the only species to use "language," "tools," or technology puts us in our place as just another unique species on the planet with the one exception, we may be the one to destroy our host. One of the best books on the nature of human evolution and exceptionally thought provoking. Would love to make this required reading for all students of biology at the college if not the high school level.
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