The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain

The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain

Author: Terrence W. Deacon

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1998-04-17

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0393343022

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.


Man and Nature

Man and Nature

Author: George P. Marsh

Publisher: Courier Dover Publications

Published: 2021-04-14

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 0486847284

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This landmark text analyzes the impact of human action on nature by linking the environmental degradation of ancient Mediterranean civilization to the United States of the 1800s. As profoundly topical today as it was in 1864.