The Secret of Our Success PDF Epub Download
Read online
You can read this ebook online in a web browser, without downloading anything or installing software.
Download file formats
This ebook is available in file types: PDF or EPUB or both (encrypted)
Read on a mobile device, PC, or Mac
Alternatively, you can download this book to your PC or smartphone and read it offline.
For (encrypted):
You will need to install one of these apps
PC or Mac: Adobe Digital Edition, Bluefire Reader.
iOS and Android: Ebook Reader, Adobe Digital Edition, Aldiko Reader iOS, Aldiko Reader Android, PocketBook iOS, PocketBook Android.
For (drm free):
You can read this eBook on any device that supports DRM-free EPUB or DRM-free PDF format.
Share Ebook
The Secret of Our Success
How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us SmarterJoseph Henrich
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper
Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations.
Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory.
Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
Published: October 27, 2015
Title: The Secret of Our Success
Author: Joseph Henrich
ISBN: 9781400873296
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Formats: PDF | ePub
ISBNs:
9780691166858
9781400873296
Get PDF/ePub eBook [instantly]
Monthly Special!*
Click here to get coupon codes and how to use it (up to 50% discount).