Download or read book The Evolution of Human Wisdom written by Celia Deane-Drummond and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-10-18 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses key questions about the puzzle of human origins by focusing on a topic that is largely unexplored thus far, namely, the evolution of human wisdom. How can we best understand the human capacity for wisdom, where did it come from, and how did it emerge? It explores lines of convergence and divergence between Christian theology and evolutionary anthropology in its search to identify different aspects of wisdom. Critical to this discussion are the philosophical difficulties that arise when two very different methodological approaches to the manner of humans becoming wise are brought together. The relative importance and significance of human language is another area of intense debate in defining the meaning of wisdom and its expression. How far and to what extent does a theologically informed wisdom discourse push evolutionary anthropology to formulate new questions and vice versa? This volume shows that there is no simple consonance between evolutionary anthropology and theology. Yet, each discipline has much to learn from the other; the authors are in agreement that even in the midst of an awareness of dissonance and some tension, there can still be mutual respect. The goal of this book is to begin to develop a trans-disciplinary approach to the evolution of human wisdom, where each discipline is challenged to ask questions in a new way. This volume tackles the relationship between theology and science in a fresh way by focusing on a specific theme—wisdom—that is equally generative for both theology and evolutionary anthropology.
Download or read book Theology and Evolutionary Anthropology written by Celia Deane-Drummond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out some of the latest scientific findings around the evolutionary development of religion and faith and then explores their theological implications. This unique combination of perspectives raises fascinating questions about the characteristics that are considered integral for a flourishing social and religious life and allows us to start to ask where in the evolutionary record they first show up in a distinctly human manner. The book builds a case for connecting theology and evolutionary anthropology using both historical and contemporary sources of knowledge to try and understand the origins of wisdom, humility, and grace in ‘deep time’. In the section on wisdom, the book examines the origins of complex decision-making in humans through the archaeological record, recent discoveries in evolutionary anthropology, and the philosophical richness of semiotics. The book then moves to an exploration of the origin of characteristics integral to the social life of small-scale communities, which then points in an indirect way to the disposition of humility. Finally, it investigates the theological dimensions of grace and considers how artefacts left behind in the material record by our human ancestors, and the perspective they reflect, might inform contemporary concepts of grace. This is a cutting-edge volume that refuses to commit the errors of either too easy a synthesis or too facile a separation between science and religion. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of religious studies and theology – especially those who interact with scientific fields – as well as academics working in anthropology of religion.
Download or read book Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality Evolution Culture and Wisdom Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology written by Darcia Narvaez and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the William James Book Award Winner of the inaugural Expanded Reason Award A wide-ranging exploration of the role of childhood experiences in adult morality. Moral development has traditionally been considered a matter of reasoning—of learning and acting in accordance with abstract rules. On this model, largely taken for granted in modern societies, acts of selfishness, aggression, and ecological mindlessness are failures of will, moral problems that can be solved by acting in accordance with a higher rationality. But both ancient philosophy and recent scientific scholarship emphasize implicit systems, such as action schemas and perceptual filters that guide behavior and shape human development. In this integrative book, Darcia Narvaez argues that morality goes “all the way down” into our neurobiological and emotional development, and that a person’s moral architecture is largely established early on in life. Moral rationality and virtue emerge “bottom up” from lived experience, so it matters what that experience is. Bringing together deep anthropological history, ethical philosophy, and contemporary neurobiological science, she demonstrates where modern industrialized societies have fallen away from the cultural practices that made us human in the first place. Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality advances the field of developmental moral psychology in three key ways. First, it provides an evolutionary framework for early childhood experience grounded in developmental systems theory, encompassing not only genes but a wide array of environmental and epigenetic factors. Second, it proposes a neurobiological basis for the development of moral sensibilities and cognition, describing ethical functioning at multiple levels of complexity and context before turning to a theory of the emergence of wisdom. Finally, it embraces the sociocultural orientations of our ancestors and cousins in small-band hunter-gatherer societies—the norm for 99% of human history—for a re-envisioning of moral life, from the way we value and organize child raising to how we might frame a response to human-made global ecological collapse. Integrating the latest scholarship in clinical sciences and positive psychology, Narvaez proposes a developmentally informed ecological and ethical sensibility as a way to self-author and revise the ways we think about parenting and sociality. The techniques she describes point towards an alternative vision of moral development and flourishing, one that synthesizes traditional models of executive, top-down wisdom with “primal” wisdom built by multiple systems of biological and cultural influence from the ground up.
Download or read book Becoming Human written by Ian Tattersall and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1999 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the evolution of humankind--who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.
Download or read book The Evolved Nest written by Darcia Narvaez, PhD and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look into nurturing and parenting in the natural world, supplemented with original illustrations For readers of Becoming Animal and World of Wonders A beautiful resource for Nature advocates, parents-to-be, Animal lovers, and anyone who seeks to restore wellbeing on our planet, The Evolved Nest reconnects us to lessons from the Animal world and shows us how to restore wellness in our families, communities, and lives. Each of 10 chapters explores a different animal’s parenting model, sharing species-specific adaptations that allow each to thrive in their “evolved nests.” You’ll learn: How Wolves build an internal moral compass How Beavers foster a spirit of play in their children How Octopuses develop emotional and social intelligence How, when, and whether (or not) Brown Bears decide to have children What their lessons can teach you--whether you’re a parent, grandparent, caregiver, or childfree Psychologists Drs. Darcia Narvaez and Gay Bradshaw show us how each evolved nest offers inspiration for reexamining our own systems of nurturing, understanding, and caring for our young and each other. Alongside beautiful illustrations, stunning scientific facts, and lessons in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, we learn to care deeper: to restore our innate place within the natural world and fight for an ecology of life that supports our flourishing in balance with Nature alongside our human and non-human family.
Download or read book Religion in Human Evolution written by Robert N. Bellah and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal
Download or read book The Fragile Wisdom written by Grazyna Jasienska and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So many women who do everything right to stay healthy still wind up with breast cancer, heart disease, or osteoporosis. In The Fragile Wisdom, Grazyna Jasienska provides an evolutionary perspective on the puzzle of why disease prevention among women is so frustratingly difficult. Modern women, she shows, are the unlucky victims of their own bodies’ conflict of interest between reproductive fitness and life-long health. The crux of the problem is that women’s physiology has evolved to facilitate reproduction, not to reduce disease risk. Any trait—no matter how detrimental to health in the post-reproductive period—is more likely to be preserved in the next generation if it increases the chance of giving birth to offspring who will themselves survive to reproductive age. To take just one example, genes that produce high levels of estrogen are a boon to fertility, even as they raise the risk of breast cancer in mothers and their daughters. Jasienska argues that a mismatch between modern lifestyles and the Stone Age physiology that evolution has bequeathed to every woman exacerbates health problems. She looks at women’s mechanisms for coping with genetic inheritance and at the impact of environment on health. Warning against the false hope gene therapy inspires, Jasienska makes a compelling case that our only avenue to a healthy life is prevention programs informed by evolutionary understanding and custom-fitted to each woman’s developmental and reproductive history.
Download or read book Instinctual Intelligence written by Theodore J. Usatynski and published by . This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instinctual Intelligence is the first book that explores the evolution of human instincts. It offers uniquely modern approaches to align the passion and power of our instinctual heritage with the more enlightened possibilities of human life. Get to understand how of our basic instinctual systems- self-protection, social connection, resource gathering, playfulness and sexuality, and survival responses- function in everyday life. Learn how the full expression of instinctual intelligence becomes restricted by the time we reach adulthood. Drawing on leading-edge research in evolutionary neurobiology, clinical psychology, and spiritual development, explore how athletes (Tiger Woods), musicians (Madonna), business leaders (Oprah), and spiritual practitioners (Dalai Lama)- and learn how they achieved mastery in their chosen fields. Each person's instinctual intelligence simultaneously evolves the biological, social, cultural, and spiritual fabric of humanity.
Download or read book Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential written by Ted Chu and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millennia, great thinkers have contemplated the meaning and purpose of human existence; but while most assumed that humanity was the end point of creation or the pinnacle of evolution, Ted Chu makes the provocative claim that the human race may in fact be a means rather than an end—that humankind will give rise to evolutionary successors. In this wide-ranging and authoritative work, Chu reexamines the question of human purpose in light of the extraordinary developments of science and technology. Arguing that a deep understanding of our place in the universe is required to navigate the magnitude of the choices that lie ahead, he surveys human wisdom from both East and West, traces the evolutionary trajectory that has led to this point, and explores the potentials emerging on the scientific frontier. The book addresses the legitimate fears and concerns of “playing God” but embraces the possibility of transcending biological forms and becoming or creating entirely new life-forms.
Download or read book Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature written by Chet Shupe and published by Bookbaby. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shupe's book goes beyond self-help. It reveals how our emotional connections to one another have been severed, by our dependence on legal systems. Shupe reminds us that humans once lived in a state of contentment, because they depended on each other to survive. But our current dependence on legal systems has deprived us of our greatest need--to love and to be loved by our fellow man. Shupe's book informs us of something modern people fail to grasp: We humans do have an inborn wisdom, endowed by evolution. It is essential to our happiness, and to the wellbeing of life, that we be true to this inborn map of life. Humans created civilization, because we thought life would be better if everyone complied with sovereign laws. In terms of material benefits, civilization has succeeded. But depending on laws--not emotional intelligence--to maintain order, has so socially isolated us that reality, as we experience it, is a spiritual wasteland. Unable to emotionally engage in our surroundings, we have no access to the wisdom of human nature, which reveals itself exclusively through feelings in response to one's immediate circumstances. The result of this spiritual alienation is pain. To manage it, we modern humans space ourselves out on beliefs, ideologies, drugs, hope, dreams--and even the promise of science. When those fail to quell the pain, people turn to suicide--the only option left. Shupe's answer is to return to the natural spiritual homes in which Homo sapiens once thrived. But people cannot establish a spiritual home, merely by design or intent. Spiritual homes will eventually form naturally: When enough people become disillusioned with the promises of modern life, they will acquire a new perspective on what life is about. Among spiritually awakened people, a real home is organic. Indeed, for humans to experience a natural sense of emotional and material comfort, a spiritual home--one that is maintained by our emotional intelligence--is the only option that exists.
Download or read book New Thought Ancient Wisdom written by Glenn Mosley and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2006-04 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Glenn R. Mosley chronicles the history of the movement, including biographical sketches and the philosophies of pioneers and influential leaders linked to the movement's development and growth. These include Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, the founders of Unity; Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind; Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ Science; Ralph Waldo Trine, philosopher, mystic, teacher, and early mentor of New Thought; Joel Goldsmith, founder of The Infinite Way, among others.
Download or read book Shadow Sophia written by Celia E. Deane-Drummond and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do humans who seem to be exemplars of virtue also have the capacity to act in atrocious ways? What are the roots of tendencies for sin and evil? A popular assumption is that it is our animalistic natures that are responsible for human immorality and sin, while our moral nature curtails and contains such tendencies through human powers of freedom and higher reason. This book challenges such assumptions as being far too simplistic. Through a careful engagement with evolutionary and psychological literature, Celia Deane-Drummond argues that tendencies towards vice are, more often than not, distortions of the very virtues that are capable of making us good. After beginning with Augustine's classic theory of original sin, the book probes the philosophical implications of sin's origins in dialogue with the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Different vices are treated in both individual and collective settings in keeping with a multispecies approach. Areas covered include selfishness, pride, violence, anger, injustice, greed, envy, gluttony, deception, lying, lust, despair, anxiety, and sloth. The work of Thomas Aquinas helps to illuminate and clarify much of this discussion on vice, including those vices which are more distinctive for human persons in community with other beings. Such an approach amounts to a search for the shadow side of human nature, shadow sophia. Facing that shadow is part of a fuller understanding of what makes us human and thus this book is a contribution to both theological anthropology and theological ethics.
Download or read book Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science written by Stanislav Grof and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1984-06-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical revaluation of ancient spiritual systems long ignored or rejected because of their assumed incompatibility with science. Here are Swami Muktananda on the mind, Swami Prajnananda on Karma, Swami Kripananda on the Kundalini, Joseph Chilton Pearce on spiritual development, Jack Kornfield on Buddhism for Americans, Claudio Naranjo on meditation, and much more.
Download or read book The Evolution of Adam written by Peter Enns and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can Christianity and evolution coexist? Traditional Christian teaching presents Jesus as reversing the effects of the fall of Adam. But an evolutionary view of human origins doesn't allow for a literal Adam, making evolution seemingly incompatible with what Genesis and the apostle Paul say about him. For Christians who both accept evolution and want to take the Bible seriously, this can present a faith-shaking tension. Popular Old Testament scholar Peter Enns offers a way forward by explaining how this tension is caused not by the discoveries of science but by false expectations about the biblical texts. In this 10th anniversary edition, Enns updates readers on developments in the historical Adam debate, helping them reconcile Genesis and Paul with current views on evolution and human origins. This edition includes an afterword that explains Enns's own theological evolution since the first edition released.
Download or read book A Handbook of Wisdom written by Robert Sternberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-13 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A topic ignored in mainstream scientific inquiry for decades, wisdom is beginning to return to the place of reverence that it held in ancient schools of intellectual study. A Handbook of Wisdom, first published in 2005, explores wisdom's promise for helping scholars and lay people to understand the apex of human thought and behavior. At a time when poor choices are being made by notably intelligent and powerful individuals, this book presents analysis and review on a form of reasoning and decision-making that is not only productive and prudent, but also serves a beneficial purpose for society. A Handbook of Wisdom is a collection of chapters from some of the most prominent scholars in the field of wisdom research. Written from multiple perspectives, including psychology, philosophy, and religion, this book gives the reader an in-depth understanding of wisdom's past, present, and possible future direction within literature, science, and society.
Download or read book A Natural History of Human Thinking written by Michael Tomasello and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Tomasello maintains that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together and coordinate thoughts. A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition.
Download or read book The Wisdom of the Bones written by Alan Walker and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-09-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fascinating. . . . As engaging an explanation of how scientists study fossil bones as any I have ever read." --John R. Alden, Philadelphia Inquirer In 1984 a team of paleoanthropologists on a dig in northern Kenya found something extraordinary: a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, a creature that lived 1.5 million years ago and is widely thought to be the missing link between apes and humans. The remains belonged to a tall, rangy adolescent male. The researchers called him "Nariokotome boy." In this immensely lively book, Alan Walker, one of the lead researchers, and his wife and fellow scientist Pat Shipman tell the story of that epochal find and reveal what it tells us about our earliest ancestors. We learn that Nariokotome boy was a highly social predator who walked upright but lacked the capacity for speech. In leading us to these conclusions, The Wisdom of the Bones also offers an engaging chronicle of the hundred-year-long search for a "missing link," a saga of folly, heroic dedication, and inspired science. "Brilliantly captures [an] intellectual odyssey. . . . One of the finest examples of a practicing scientist writing for a popular audience." --Portland Oregonian "A vivid insider's perspective on the global efforts to document our own ancestry." --Richard E. Leakey
