Big Brains and the Human Superorganism
Big Brains and the Human Superorganism

Author: Niccolo Leo Caldararo

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1498540880

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This book examines why humans have big brains, what big brains enable us to do, and how specialized brains are associated with eusociality in animals. It explores why brains expanded so slowly, and then why they stopped growing. This book whittles down the theories on brain size evolution to a few that represent testable hypotheses to identify logical and practical explanations for the phenomenon. At the core of this book is data derived from original, previously unpublished research on brain size in a number of social mammals. This data supports the idea that evolution of the brain in humans is the result of social interaction. This book also traces the products of the social brain: ideology, religion, urban life, housing, and learning and adapting to dense complex social interactions. It uniquely compares brain evolution in social animals across the animal kingdom, and examines the nature of the human brain and its evolution within the social and historical context of complex human social structures.

The Human Superorganism
The Human Superorganism

Author: Rodney Dietert, PhD

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1101983914

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"Eyeopening... Fascinating... may presage a paradigm shift in medicine.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Teeming with information and big ideas... Outstanding.” —Booklist (starred review) The origin of asthma, autism, Alzheimer's, allergies, cancer, heart disease, obesity, and even some kinds of depression is now clear. Award-winning researcher on the microbiome, professor Rodney Dietert presents a new paradigm in human biology that has emerged in the midst of the ongoing global epidemic of noncommunicable diseases. The Human Superorganism makes a sweeping, paradigm-shifting argument. It demolishes two fundamental beliefs that have blinkered all medical thinking until very recently: 1) Humans are better off as pure organisms free of foreign microbes; and 2) the human genome is the key to future medical advances. The microorganisms that we have sought to eliminate have been there for centuries supporting our ancestors. They comprise as much as 90 percent of the cells in and on our bodies—a staggering percentage! More than a thousand species of them live inside us, on our skin, and on our very eyelashes. Yet we have now significantly reduced their power and in doing so have sparked an epidemic of noncommunicable diseases—which now account for 63 percent of all human deaths. Ultimately, this book is not just about microbes; it is about a different way to view humans. The story that Dietert tells of where the new biology comes from, how it works, and the ways in which it affects your life is fascinating, authoritative, and revolutionary. Dietert identifies foods that best serve you, the superorganism; not new fad foods but ancient foods that have made sense for millennia. He explains protective measures against unsafe chemicals and drugs. He offers an empowering self-care guide and the blueprint for a revolution in public health. We are not what we have been taught. Each of us is a superorganism. The best path to a healthy life is through recognizing that profound truth.

Neuroscience and Religion
Neuroscience and Religion

Author: Volney P. Gay

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780739133927

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This is a unique set of multidisciplinary reflections on how the neurosciences shape our understanding of religious experience and religious institutions. Twelve scholars and scientists assess how advances in the neurosciences affect our traditional sense of mind, self, and soul.

The Superorganism
The Superorganism

Author: Bert Holldobler

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 9780393067040

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of "The Ants" render the extraordinary lives of the social insects--ants, bees, wasps, and termites--in this visually spectacular volume. 110 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.

The Will and Its Brain
The Will and Its Brain

Author: H. H. Kornhuber

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 0761858628

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In The Will and its Brain, Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke present evidence that proves we can record activity from the human brain occurring prior to our volitional actions. They claim that we have free will, albeit not absolutely free, but realized in degrees of freedom.

The Economic Superorganism
The Economic Superorganism

Author: Carey W. King

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-07

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 3030502953

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Energy drives the economy, economics informs policy, and policy affects social outcomes. Since the oil crises of the 1970s, pundits have debated the validity of this sequence, but most economists and politicians still ignore it. Thus, they delude the public about the underlying influence of energy costs and constraints on economic policies that address such pressing contemporary issues as income inequality, growth, debt, and climate change. To understand why, Carey King explores the scientific and rhetorical basis of the competing narratives both within and between energy technology and economics. Energy and economic discourse seems to mirror Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion: For every narrative there is an equal and opposite counter-narrative. The competing energy narratives pit "drill, baby, drill!" against renewable technologies such as wind and solar. Both claim to provide secure, reliable, clean, and affordable energy to support economic growth with the most benefit to society, but how? To answer this question, we need to understand the competing economic narratives, techno-optimism and techno-realism. Techno-optimism claims that innovation overcomes any physical resource constraints and enables the social outcomes and economic growth we desire. Techno-realism, in contrast, states that no matter what energy technologies we use, feedbacks from physical growth on a finite planet constrain economic growth and create an uneven distribution of social impacts. In The Economic Superorganism, you will discover stories, data, science, and philosophy to guide you through the arguments from competing narratives on energy, growth, and policy. You will be able to distinguish the technically possible from the socially viable, and understand how our future depends on this distinction.

Transcendence
Transcendence

Author: Gaia Vince

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2020-01-21

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0465094910

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In the tradition of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, a winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books shows how four tools enabled has us humans to control the destiny of our species "A wondrous, visionary work." --Tim Flannery, scientist and author of the bestselling The Weather Makers What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that launched us into the Space Age and beyond. Provocative and poetic, Transcendence shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something marvelous.

An Ethnography of the Goodman Building
An Ethnography of the Goodman Building

Author: Niccolo Caldararo

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-04-25

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 3030122859

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“An Ethnography of the Goodman Building vividly incorporates a wide variety of methods to tell the story of class struggle in a building, neighborhood, and city that is replicated globally. I read it as a number of boxes inside each other opened in the course of reading. Caldararo recounts the building’s personal “biography” to convey not only the “facts about,” but the “feelings about” the flesh and blood of the building and its surrounding neighborhood.” —Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York, USA “This unique contribution to the field of urban and regional studies counteracts current trends in the ethnographies of urban movements by offering, with great hindsight, an analysis from a physical space, and from first-hand experience. The focal point is one building, and the author is a former tenant. This perspective is appealing, especially in an era of global connections where macro social movements are on the front line of urban life and research.” —Nathalie Boucher, Director and Researcher, Respire, and Affiliated Professor Assistant, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada. Through in-depth analysis and narrative investigation of an actual building occupation, Niccolo Caldararo seeks to not only offer an historical account of the Goodman Building in San Francisco, but also focus on the active resistance tactics of its residents from the 1960s to the 1980s. Taking as its focal point the building itself, the volume weaves in and out of every life involved and the struggles that surround it—San Francisco’s urban renewal, ethnic clearing, gentrification, and municipal governance at a time of booming urban growth. Caldararo, a tenant at the center of its strikes and activities, provides a unique perspective that counteracts current trends in ethnographies of urban movements by grounding its analysis in physical and tangible space.

A Mental Ethnography: Conclusions from Research in LSD
A Mental Ethnography: Conclusions from Research in LSD

Author: Niccolo Caldararo

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-02-20

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 3031137450

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There has recently been a renewed interest in both casual use of psychedelics as well as experimental use and attempts to discover therapeutic value. There is an effort to recapture the achievements and failures of past work to guide present use. This book is based around material derived from unpublished scientific research from Dr. Robert Mogar’s laboratory and built upon by forty years of field research by the author. The author Niccolo Caldararo participated in a number of studies of perception, including sensory deprivation and psychotropic drugs, some of recent manufacture or discovery and some of primitive or traditional societies. He places this analysis of the physiological aspects of hallucinations, delusions, visions and dreamsn context through an , as well as cross cultural data on dreams, dreaming and drug use and the social value of hallucinations, dreams and visions. The book reviews ethnographic literature in this area and contributes to a comprehensive evaluation of past work done in this area.

The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene

Author: Richard Dawkins

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780192860927

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Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science