The Ape That Understood The Universe, How the mind and culture evolve
Steve Stewart-Williams, 2018
What would happen if an alien scientist came from another planet and decided to study the behavior of the prominent earthly species; humans? That is the premise of Williams book; To look at human behavior apart from cultural bias and determine how this “collection of atoms”, “this vast colony of single-celled organisms” known as a human being came to evolve and how did these beings come to form huge organized competing groups or tribes that have come to dominate this small rocky planet? No surprise that the Alien’s conclusions would mirror some of Darwin’s evolutionary conclusions and also those of Richard Dawkins theories of selfish-genes and of the evolution of cultural memes.
“A chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg” This is in essence explains the gene’s view of evolution which is that reproduction is the only thing that matters in the competition of what genetic behaviors and traits will reproduce and predominate over the long run. From this premise one can surmise that in evolutionary psychology innate reproductive behavior is extremely determinate. Because of sexual differences in reproductive potential and parental investment, male and female reproductive strategies differ. In choosing mates women seek not only fitness but also resources, status and committed parental investment. Males in contrast can maximize reproductive success by not only acquiring wealth and status to attract females but also by seeking multiple mating opportunities without parental investment. This subject along with sexual dimorphism, polygyny, kin bias, the Cinderella syndrome, altruism are all explained in the context of why they exist and are evolutionarily favored behaviors.
The most interesting part of the book from my perspective was the section on cultural memes and how cultures evolve along the same principles as biologic evolution. A meme is an idea or unit of culture that can reproduce itself inside multiple human brains. “The core idea of memetics is that, like genes, memes are subject to natural selection, and that selection favors “selfish” -memes that, through accident or design, are good at getting themselves replicated and keeping themselves in circulation in the culture. This applies not only to chain letters and hoax virus warnings, but right across the board”.
Language, for example, is also a meme and “Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues… A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue”. Science is another cultural meme that is also subject to the laws of evolution. “Science involves the two key elements of Darwinian evolution; variation and selection”. “In effect, the scientific method establishes a struggle for existence among theories, which ultimately in the survival of the fittest theories: those that best explain the facts”. The power of cultural evolution in effect explains human dominance of the planet. “Our superpower as a species is not our intelligence: It’s our collective intelligence and capacity for cumulative culture; our ability to stockpile knowledge and pass it down from generation to generation, tinkering with it and improving it over time. Biological evolution can give rise to the eye, but cumulative cultural evolution can give rise to entities every bit as complex as the eye; airplanes, smart phones, legal systems and the internet”.
Unfortunately, all memes are not true or beneficial to humans or human societies. The author explains how religions, while fostering societal cohesion and cooperation, can also become parasitic to a society, sucking off resources to build huge cathedrals and supporting non- productive activities as well as fostering sometimes disastrous interreligious conflicts. The internet has facilitated a way for memes that appeal to the human base emotions such as fear, anger, resentment and shock to proliferate across the globe at the speed of light with consequences to societal political and social order still not totally understood. Cultural evolution can also change biological evolution. The acquisition of lactose tolerance in herding pastoral societies is cited as one example. A possible consequence of birth control technology could be the gradual extinction of deceptive promiscuous behavior as it would become a nonviable reproductive strategy.
This is a great summary of what this book is about: “Like every aspect of human nature, our knack for culture evolved initially as a gene copying strategy – unlike any other gene copying strategy – our culture opened up an entirely new arena for evolution by natural selection. It brought into existence a new replicator: the meme. And memes had a very different agenda than the genes that made them possible. As memetic evolution picked up steam, humans were transformed. No longer we were devices designed solely to pass on our genes. Suddenly, we became hybrid creatures, torn between passing on our genes and passing on our memes. This vision of our species helps to explain much of what most puzzled the alien scientist: our religions, our art, music and science. Cultural evolution is the key to unraveling the deepest mysteries of the human mind”. “What’s next? What does the future hold for the gene-meme hybrids we call human beings? Will we escape the earth and colonize other worlds, or will we drive ourselves to extinction? Will we engineer ourselves into a species of Einsteins, or will our intellectual faculties deteriorate, like our ability to make vitamin A? Will we cast off our superstitions by exposing them to rational scrutiny, or will our superstitions evolve into more virulent forms like bacteria in response to antibiotics? Will we tame our inner demons – our tendency to scapegoat, our proneness to moral panics – or will we just keep swapping one fashionable prejudice and mass delusion for another until the end of time”?
“The evolution of culture has been the ultimate game changer for our species. It has enabled us to understand ourselves and the world to a degree far beyond what a neutral observer couid reasonably expect of an ape. It has allowed us to start reshaping the world in accordance with our wishes and whims. And it has begun to entrust us with the power to direct our own evolution but the evolution of all other life on this planet. This is an awesome responsibility, and one we may or may not be fit to carry. Whether we like it or not, though, our evolving culture is pushing our species ever-more firmly into the driver’s seat of our planet Earth as a whole. For better or for worse – perhaps for better and for worse - this appears to be the destiny of the strangest animal in the world: the ape that understood the universe”.
This is a great readable compendium of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. If you’re not familiar with these subjects you will get a new perspective on human behavior, possibly your own, and an understanding of political and social behavior including those of a certain orange politician and his accolades.
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Worthy successor to Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene"
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2019
This book follows the path charted by Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" and Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal". The book covers a lot of the same material exploring evolutionary psychology with elaborate examples. Where it primarily differs from the two is in the evolutionary explanation of human behaviors (including differences between the sexes) contrasted with the 'Blank Slate' position taken by by several sociologists - the claim that human behavior including gender differences are purely a function of culture. Stewart-Williams makes a compelling argument for why the 'culture only' theory cannot be a satisfying explanation for many of the most common ubiquitous behaviors and gender differences and where an evolutionary approach is the only reasonable explanation.It's commendable how Stewart-Williams treads on the subject of gender differences - a landmine esp. in the current socio-political environment: he's uncompromising on his passionate advocacy of the evolutionary drivers of differences but balances this with the abundant caution needed to prevent readers from drawing incorrect conclusions and worse, using it as evidence to perpetuate social inequality and nullify hard won gains on that front.The final chapter on Memetics is also new territory (not covered in detail in the other two books), but lacks the readability of the rest of the book.While several reviewers find the "Alien assessment" construct instructive it didn't work for me: I was left bewildered and could not get past the assumption that a super intelligent alien would either not be a product of natural selection itself or unaware of the concept.Overall a worthwhile read - to use an idea from the book, demonstrates sufficient inclusive fitness to survive on my rather small bookshelf at the expense of some other hapless book that will now be donated to the local library.
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2019
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2020
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2019
This book follows the path charted by Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" and Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal". The book covers a lot of the same material exploring evolutionary psychology with elaborate examples. Where it primarily differs from the two is in the evolutionary explanation of human behaviors (including differences between the sexes) contrasted with the 'Blank Slate' position taken by by several sociologists - the claim that human behavior including gender differences are purely a function of culture. Stewart-Williams makes a compelling argument for why the 'culture only' theory cannot be a satisfying explanation for many of the most common ubiquitous behaviors and gender differences and where an evolutionary approach is the only reasonable explanation.
It's commendable how Stewart-Williams treads on the subject of gender differences - a landmine esp. in the current socio-political environment: he's uncompromising on his passionate advocacy of the evolutionary drivers of differences but balances this with the abundant caution needed to prevent readers from drawing incorrect conclusions and worse, using it as evidence to perpetuate social inequality and nullify hard won gains on that front.
The final chapter on Memetics is also new territory (not covered in detail in the other two books), but lacks the readability of the rest of the book.
While several reviewers find the "Alien assessment" construct instructive it didn't work for me: I was left bewildered and could not get past the assumption that a super intelligent alien would either not be a product of natural selection itself or unaware of the concept.
Overall a worthwhile read - to use an idea from the book, demonstrates sufficient inclusive fitness to survive on my rather small bookshelf at the expense of some other hapless book that will now be donated to the local library.
It's commendable how Stewart-Williams treads on the subject of gender differences - a landmine esp. in the current socio-political environment: he's uncompromising on his passionate advocacy of the evolutionary drivers of differences but balances this with the abundant caution needed to prevent readers from drawing incorrect conclusions and worse, using it as evidence to perpetuate social inequality and nullify hard won gains on that front.
The final chapter on Memetics is also new territory (not covered in detail in the other two books), but lacks the readability of the rest of the book.
While several reviewers find the "Alien assessment" construct instructive it didn't work for me: I was left bewildered and could not get past the assumption that a super intelligent alien would either not be a product of natural selection itself or unaware of the concept.
Overall a worthwhile read - to use an idea from the book, demonstrates sufficient inclusive fitness to survive on my rather small bookshelf at the expense of some other hapless book that will now be donated to the local library.
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2018
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Amazon Customer
Une introduction brillante à la psychologie évolutionniste
Reviewed in France on November 29, 2021
Glen Brumby
A most important and interesting topic
Reviewed in Australia on November 12, 2020
