In Are You an Illusion? today’s scientific orthodoxy, which treats the self as nothing more than an elaborate illusion, comes under spirited attack. In an impassioned defence of the importance of our own thoughts, feelings and experiences, Mary Midgley shows that there’s much more to our selves than a jumble of brain cells.
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In Our Own Image is a work of comparative philosophical theology. It is a study of the roles anthropomorphism and apophaticism play in the construction of conceptual models of ultimate reality. Leading scholar Wesley J. Wildman considers whether we create our ideas of God. He offers a comparative analysis of three major classes of ultimacy models, paying particular attention to the way those classes are impacted by anthropomorphism while tracing their relative strengths and weaknesses.
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This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.
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John Barrow is increasingly recognized as one of our most elegant and accomplished science writers, a brilliant commentator on cosmology, mathematics, and modern physics. Barrow now tackles the heady topic of impossibility, in perhaps his strongest book yet.
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In just a few years, our understanding of the human past has changed beyond recognition as new discoveries and advances in genetic techniques overturn long-held beliefs and make international news.
Drawing upon expert literature and the latest research, HUMANS: FROM THE BEGINNING is a rigorous but accessible guide to the human story, presenting an even-handed account of events from the first apes to the rise of the first cities and civilisations. Along the way, we learn about the emergence of modern human behaviour, prehistoric art, early modern human migrations from Africa, the peopling of the world, and how farming and agriculture replaced hunter-gathering.
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