The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (Coronet Books)

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One day, the six Descendants went through labour and laid fourteen eggs, among the great anticipation of the whole of Eden. They have grown up to be fourteen powerful dragons, and the mightiest of all were the two oldest ones, Aiden and Edna. They were the two best candidates for the throne: holding the Supreme Power stone and becoming the Supreme Guardian of Eden. This book is crammed full of fascinating bits of information, intriguing theories, humor, vision, and some caustic observations about society as a whole,” Virginia Tech philosophy of science professor Joseph Pitt wrote in the journal Human Ecology. “What it does not contain is intellectual balance and rigor.” What drew Pitt’s ire in particular was that Sagan spent a significant portion of the book trumpeting a little-known, out-there theory from Yale University physiologist and psychiatrist Paul D. MacLean. Triune brain theory Dragons might also be a metaphor for the ‘reptile brain’ in humans, which controls our aggression and rituals. Another theory is that perhaps humans fear the dragon inside of themselves and other people. While parts are outdated, other parts make for fascinating scientific information that is still just as relevant today as it was in 1977. This book introduces the "Cosmic Calendar", where the entire history of the Universe since the Big Bang is set to scale as if it occurred in one year. The earth did not form until September and all of "recorded" history occurred in the last hour before midnight-exactly the kind of humbling truth that Sagan delivered so well. The parts on primate and early human evolution are fascinating and I imagine would be even more eye-opening to someone who had not been formally educated on those subjects. I love it when Sagan extends the scientific data to social and political issues, and there is plenty of that here, though perhaps less than in some of his other books.

When keycap have enough time to get hard inside the pressure pot, the next step is cleaning and sanding to create a ultra smooth surface for each keycap. There are 4 step for sanding, and the very last step is create a glowing and clearly surfaces. Dr. 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.How can I persuade every intelligent person to read this important and elegant book? . . . He talks about all kinds of things: the why of the pain of human childbirth . . . the reason for sleeping and dreaming . . . chimpanzees taught to communicate in deaf and dumb language . . . the definition of death . . . cloning . . . computers . . . intelligent life on other planets. . . . Fascinating . . . delightful.”—The Boston Globe In this chapter Sagan famously maps the age of the universe, nearly 14 billion years, into a single year. We see that if the Big Bang starts on January 1st at 12:01 am, then humans don’t arrive to the timeline until December 31st at 10:30 pm, and all of our recorded history can be confined to the final 10 seconds of the year! Powerful stuff. At its core this is a thought provoking book that resonates. It is short at only nine chapters so I will review the chapters here — because many are true gems and the rest are pretty good. With this in mind I am skeptical of some of the brain science presented in this book. I do not pretend to be any kind of expert myself, but some of the scientific models presented here may have been at the forefront of neuroscience in 1977, but today have become outdated or even disproven. Sagan spends much time explaining Paul MacLean's "triune brain" hypothesis, where the brain has three largely distinctly functioning areas (the neocortex, limbic system, and R-complex), and also stresses differences in function of the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Those sections still make for fascinating reading as Sagan makes tremendous explanations and draws profound social and historical insights from these models. Just don't think you're getting perfectly up-to-date scientific data. Sagan also spends much of the end of the book speculating on the future of computers and human-made machines, an area that obviously has seen tremendous advances since 1977. He could not have imagined that someone like me would sit at a laptop computer and type away about his book 36 years later. But despite being hugely outdated, I found this section to be extremely enjoyable and interesting because Sagan was predicting a future that now has already happened. Most of his predictions were pretty accurate. Dragon from the East is a supernatural animal appearing from the ancient times. Despite being depicted with no wings, the dragon can fly among the clouds, hide in or turn into water or fire, can change color as an ability to blend in with their surroundings, as an effective form of camouflage, or glow in the dark. It also acquired an almost unlimited range of supernatural powers such as forming clouds and rains, control over water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods. Speaking of this, they suggested that some of the worst floods in ancient Asia were believed to have been the result of a mortal upsetting a dragon. That’s why in Chinese and also Vietnamese cultures, dragon is the symbol of yang, representing the universe, life, existence, and growth.

In chapter2, Sagan briefly summarizes the entire evolution of species starting from the Big Bang to the beginning of the human civilization with the help of a " Cosmic Calendar", an analogy where one year in the calendar corresponds to the time since the Big Bang. Sagan used the same analogy in the more-widely known television series Cosmos. Carl Sagan was, and to this day is, generally regarded as an honest and skeptical broker of scientific information. That he presented such a disputed theory essentially as fact to the lay public is a bit surprising. What’s more, Carl Sagan continued to push the theory three years later in his far more widely read book, Cosmos. He wrote: He was also a recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences. A central theme of Sagan's book is the idea that what makes humans special is how we harness the split in our minds. The ability to dream wildly, but also to apply logic and reason to those wild thoughts. The book itself is a vivid example of this capacity. It ends with a firm conviction that the survival of our species depends on education, and shows how the same technologies that threaten our survival can be harnessed to allow children to understand concepts at a young age that were once the purview of accomplished 18th century scientists and mathematicians. And while Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are just now experiencing an explosion of interest, Sagan writing in 1977 showed a clear understanding of the ways in which those technologies could someday augment our ability to, among other things, search the galaxies for intelligent life beyond our pale blue dot. (Like most 20th century writers, Sagan didn't fully grasp the effect smartphones would have on our society.) Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature.Especially, as we have different forms and sizes of the dragon, it takes several days or even weeks to complete all of them without any mistakes. If there is something wrong, we need to spend more time to start again. And of course, it needs not only time but also the patience of our team to make the most perfect one. The love of work is a motivation for our artists to deal with unexpected things.