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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Immoderate Greatness explains how a civilization’s very magnitude conspires against it to cause downfall. Civilizations are hard-wired for self-destruction. They travel an arc from initial success to terminal decay and ultimate collapse due to intrinsic, inescapable biophysical limits combined with an inexorable trend toward moral decay and practical failure.
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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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Top ten Sunday Times Bestseller
‘Engaging, ambitious and creative’ Guardian
Where are we? Are we alone? Who are we? Why are we here? What is our future?
Human Universe tackles some of the greatest questions that humans have asked to try and understand the very nature of ourselves and the Universe in which we live
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