Really interesting interdisciplinary speculative science book about the development of human intelligence, written in a lovely prosaic voice that makes it accessible to and engaging for anyone. There have been significant scientific advancements that add nuance and complexity to some of the ideas he discusses but itās still useful as a conceptual framework for understanding and itās interesting to see the conclusions he was able to draw with his brilliant mind based off of the limited information that was available at the time. He raises a lot of thought provoking questionsāits greatest value is as a philosophical textāand I think itās still more than worth your time to read today.
āAs a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.ā
