Welcome to the life of Stephen Boyden! Nature and Humanity beautifully interwoven in his book titled "The Biology of Civilization". A general read, meant for people like you and me, and just about anyone else around us.
Stephen toggles around the history of human civilization and the ever changing environment of this planet. What he calls biohistory, is simply the history of life on earth and the emergence of man's most evolved biological attribute - culture. Culture has immense impact on not only the human race, but also on the other species and environment around us. For example, we can see that our current usage of energy and earth resources are highly ecologically unsustainable and exhaustive. The need of the hour is to amend these socio-economic practices for life to be still viable on this planet.
We have all read how life began on earth. But how did human culture evolve? This capacity for culture has evolved over a few million years ago with the emergence of the ability to develop and practice sign language for communication. Language is highly complex, involving a plethora of grammatical rules, alphabets, words and phrases, all tied up to make 'meaningful sentences' and ofcourse the biology - brain, larynx and tongue which all coordinate for speech. Culture is not only about language, but also encompasses acquiring knowledge, having ideologies and beliefs.
To sum up, studying human history along with the biological evolution of mankind is biohistory. Stephen concludes by suggesting a 'cultural renaissance', a transformation needed to shift to a ecologically more sustained society.
Stephen toggles around the history of human civilization and the ever changing environment of this planet. What he calls biohistory, is simply the history of life on earth and the emergence of man's most evolved biological attribute - culture. Culture has immense impact on not only the human race, but also on the other species and environment around us. For example, we can see that our current usage of energy and earth resources are highly ecologically unsustainable and exhaustive. The need of the hour is to amend these socio-economic practices for life to be still viable on this planet.
We have all read how life began on earth. But how did human culture evolve? This capacity for culture has evolved over a few million years ago with the emergence of the ability to develop and practice sign language for communication. Language is highly complex, involving a plethora of grammatical rules, alphabets, words and phrases, all tied up to make 'meaningful sentences' and ofcourse the biology - brain, larynx and tongue which all coordinate for speech. Culture is not only about language, but also encompasses acquiring knowledge, having ideologies and beliefs.
To sum up, studying human history along with the biological evolution of mankind is biohistory. Stephen concludes by suggesting a 'cultural renaissance', a transformation needed to shift to a ecologically more sustained society.
No comments:
Post a Comment