The Dragons of Eden [antikvár]

acob Bkonowski was one of a small group of men and women in any age who find all of human knowledge—the arts and sciences, philosophy and psychology—interesting and accessible. He was not confined to a single discipline, but ranged over the entire panorama of human learning. His book and television series. The Ascent of Man, are a superb teaching tool and a remarkable memorial; they are, in a way, an account of how human beings and human brains grew up together. His last chapter/episode, called "The Long Childhood," describes the extended period of time—longer relative to our lifespan than for any other species—in which young humans are dependent on adults and exhibit immense plasticity—that is, the ability to learn from their environment and their culture. Most organisms on Earth depend on their genetic information, which is "prewired" into their nervous systems, to a much greater extent than they do on then- extragenetic information, which is acquired during their lifetimes. For human beings, and indeed for all mammals, it is the other way around. While our behavior is still significantlv controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short time scales. We have made a kind of bargain with nature: our children will be difficult to raise, but their capacity for new learning will greatly enhance the chances of survival of the human species. In addition, human beings have, in the most recent few tenths of a percent of our existence, invented not only extra-genetic but also extrasomatic knowledge: information stored