>>I don’t have much time today, but in a nutshell, he is irrelevant because he is oblivious to biology.<<
Well now, since most of what he deals with is history and sociology, and quite capably at that, I would submit this reflects a bit of myopia on your part.
I don’t have much time today, but in a nutshell, he is irrelevant because he is oblivious to biology.
Let’s see Diamond is a prof. of geography at UCLA; Winner of the National Medal of Science; Tyler Prize for Enviormental Achievment; Japan’s Comos Prize; a MacAuthur Foundation Feloowship. Has a PhD on the physiology and biophysics of membranes in the gall bladder from the University of Cambridge in 1961.
In this book he spends a good bit of the chapters on human health discussing how modern humans have evolved to deal with our high calorie; high fat diet.
The Third Chimpanzee is subtittled “The Evoloution and Future of the Human Animal”
Yep; he doesn’t understand biology so I guess you could say he is irrelvant because he doesn’t study biology.
BTW Biology isn’t the only tool you can use to understand society.
The one thing that often bothers me about evolutionary psychology is the exaggerated importance it gives to the environmental pressures of the African savanna, as if the following fifty or so thousand years played no role in the evolution of our species (except for skin colour, sickle-cell anaemia and lactose tolerance—I guess those seem PC enough to be mentioned without running a risk of sounding, well, not PC.)
There are people who get it, (Darwin, Galton, Cochran, Harpending, Miller, Hawks, just to name a few), but there are many more who won’t have any of it (yes, Diamond). If this is something that interests you (most of you have heard of “paleo diet”), you may want to check out Marlene Zuk’s upcoming book, Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live. It comes out on March 18.
Has anybody here read Philip Pullman’s version of the “Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm”?
Haven’t read that but I do have Grimm’s Fairy Tales Translated by Mrs. Edgar Lucas
If this is something that interests you (most of you have heard of “paleo diet”), you may want to check out Marlene Zuk’s upcoming book, Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live. It comes out on March 18
There are people who get it, (Darwin, Galton, Cochran, Harpending, Miller, Hawks, just to name a few), but there are many more who won’t have any of it (yes, Diamond). If this is something that interests you (most of you have heard of “paleo diet”), you may want to check out Marlene Zuk’s upcoming book, Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live. It comes out on March 18.
George, have you read any reviews of this book’ and if so how does it differ from Wrangham’s book “Catching Fire”?
There are people who get it, (Darwin, Galton, Cochran, Harpending, Miller, Hawks, just to name a few), but there are many more who won’t have any of it (yes, Diamond). If this is something that interests you (most of you have heard of “paleo diet”), you may want to check out Marlene Zuk’s upcoming book, Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live. It comes out on March 18.
George, have you read any reviews of this book’ and if so how does it differ from Wrangham’s book “Catching Fire”?
Cap’t Jack
No, I haven’t. The difference between Wrangham’s book and hers is, I believe, the time period: Wrangham talks about Lower Paleolithic, Zuk, I think, focuses on Upper Paleolithic.
And I am not going to read any reviews because I really want to read the book first. I get like that when I am convinced I will like something—it’s some sort of romantic-, blind-love thing.
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