Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny Reprint Edition

by Robert Wright (Author)

125 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0679758945

ISBN-10: 9780679758945

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In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next.

In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Exciting and intellectually stimulating?well-written, witty, and quite timely as we consider the challenges of our global, interconnected future."?The Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Inside Flap

In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history-and discerning where history will lead us next.
In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance-a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (January 9, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780679758945
ISBN-13: 978-0679758945
ASIN: 0679758941
Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 125 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #281 in Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
- #287 in Books > Business & Money > Skills > Business Writing
- #669 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Anthropology

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the dynamics of mankind are better understood when one considers mankind through the nonzero lense

April 27, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

i agree with president clinton who once said this is a book everyone should read. the dynamics of mankind are better understood when one considers mankind through the nonzero lense. this book is easy to read, though i wish the author had recapped and built on each point as the book progressed (only because i am that sort of reader who would have benefited from repetition.) i lend a lot of my books out, and give many away. but this book will stay on my shelves because i know i'll refer to it in years to come.

4 people found this helpful

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Yet here we are with our Brains "switched on".

April 15, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is an outstanding read, even if you do not end up agreeing with everything, even most things the author lays out. The book covers Cultural Evolution, Biological Evolution, and the possibility that these processes have a Direction, Purpose,and Design(er) and Purpose, through the mechanism of Increasing Complexity driven by Cooperation in order to reap Zero Sum Benefits.
The most compelling case is made for Cultural Evolution, Followed by Biological Evolution, and a distant third for Intelligent Design. Given that Cultural Evolution is currently on the threshold of a paradigm shift which we and our children will impact and be impacted by this discussion alone is worth the price of the book! There is an entire other sociology book waiting to be written on what options we as a species should consider as this paradigm shift (or singularity) approaches....Sadly Prof. Wright's spends very little time here and his prescriptions are less than heartening. Nonetheless the strong case he makes for the directional nature of Cultural Evolution and the divergent possible outcomes this represents are fascinating independently of whether one buys his arguments (or those of Stephen Jay Gould) regarding Biological Evolution.... for as the title of this review says..."Yet here we are with our Brains switched on!" as any readers is likely to be after finishing this book.

5 people found this helpful

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Patrick McCormack

Adds more to knowledge than the time it takes to read.

April 10, 2000

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Non-Zero is an very good book, showing an arc to human (and physical, biological, natural) history. That arc is complexity, and cooperation, through the additive effects of cooperation.
The book is readable, almost chatty. The author fleshes out a truth long known by sociologists. Emile Durkheim stated the thesis most cogently -- the sum of social facts (human society) is greater than their individual parts (given persons). In other words, people who cooperate do big things, like go to the moon, or raise hundreds of bushels of corn, or make movies. The author brings clarity and readability to this thesis.
I do not think that the book is terribly original -- the author cites authoritative sources for nearly every insight he presents. What this book gives is scope, a view that has taken a step back from encrusted academic language and simply communicates it's message.
The book is far too hopeful. An example: the author describes the social insurance that comes from potlatch and similar ceremonies, the sharing of material wealth. But surely burning the wealth is a degenerative form of this useful insurance ritual? The author could have explored the entire idea of degeneration in non-zero-sumness -- in other words, when cooperative beneficial behavior becomes perverse -- in better detail. He writes off degenerative social behavior as social dead ends -- which does not particularly help 20 million dead kulaks in Soviet Russia, and won't help 200 million dead Americans if there is a smallpox related terrorist incident.
In fact, Wright is far too sanguine about the downsides of cultural evolution, and he is ignorant of the entire literature dealing with the affairs of states as they struggle over diplomacy and war. His insights translate poorly into an understanding of this century.
For his next book, or article, I think Wright should explore counter-examples to his thesis in greater detail. But this book communicates well a thesis that is particularly important today: the globalization of nonzerosumness -- cooperate or die!
The most important line in the book, comes when Wright calls for more love, more cooperation, a greater supply of spiritual well being -- as an antidote to terrorists, angry men, those persons alienated from modern society. Isn't this what the Pope fosters by apologizing? If making Serbians feel a bit more appreciated prevents ambushes, murders, a holocaust, why not?
Why not? Well, Wright needs to examine the difference between cooperation and placating the evil... His hopefulness in some ways is an artifact of willful historical ignorance --- or he is criminally naive.
It is a compliment to an author that his writing raises these questions. This is the sort of book that entertains, but leaves the reader thinking. That is a high compliment. Wright has gone exploring among the dross and over-written tomes of sociology and anthropology, and mined the gold. The result is a book that is better than the sources it uses. One is left feeling that the author is hugely smug about the analytical wedge he uses to make his points, entirely unwilling to expose the weaknesses his game theory incorporates.
But the reader is also left feeling better educated about, and more aware of, of the questions left on the table. Given that these questions are central to the survival of human kind, the book is a good start to thinking about human survival, spiritual growth, and what humans can do when they embrace complexity and cooperate. In some ways, when Wright is wrong, that is the most important part of the book...

4 people found this helpful

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A Must Read for Anthropology Buffs and Futurist Geeks Alike

December 28, 2009

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A compelling assertion of the inevitability of the emergence of more and more complex connections between humans in society and even genes which, as the other reviewers mention, covers human history in a brush strokes similar to those of Jared Diamond's Gun's, Germs and Steel, focusing on the large trends of the last five thousand years.

Yes, dense; yes, ambitious. But the importance of nonzero sumness has never been so eloquently and ingeniously demonstrated.

One star is removed for the loose and muddled chapters that bookend the rest of the work. They contain valid points, but sloppy writing.

2 people found this helpful

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