
We Are A Weird Species. Like Other Species, We Have A Culture. But By Comparison With Other Species, We Are Strangely Unstable: Human Cultures Self-transform, Diverge, And Multiply With Bewildering Speed. They Vary, Radically And Rapidly, From Time To Time And Place To Place. And The Way We Live — Our Manners, Morals, Habits, Experiences, Relationships, Technology, Values — Seems To Be Changing At An Ever Accelerating Pace. The Effects Can Be Dislocating, Baffling, Sometimes Terrifying. Why Is This? In A Foot In The River, Best-selling Historian Felipe Fernández-armesto Sifts Through The Evidence And Offers Some Radical Answers To These Very Big Questions About The Human Species And Its History — And Speculates On What These Answers Might Mean For Our Future. Combining Insights From A Huge Range Of Disciplines, Including History, Biology, Anthropology, Archaeology, Philosophy, Sociology, Ethology, Zoology, Primatology, Psychology, Linguistics, The Cognitive Sciences, And Even Business Studies, He Argues That Culture Is Exempt From Evolution. Ultimately, No Environmental Conditions, No Genetic Legacy, No Predictable Patterns, No Scientific Laws Determine Our Behaviour. We Can Consequently Make And Remake Our World In The Freedom Of Unconstrained Imaginations. A Revolutionary Book Which Challenges Scientistic Assumptions About Culture And How And Why Cultural Change Happens, A Foot In The River Comes To Conclusions Which Readers May Well Find By Turns Both Daunting And Also Potentially Hugely Liberating.
This book investigates the fundamental drivers of human cultural change and why human societies exhibit such rapid, unpredictable transformation compared to other species. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a historian with extensive academic credentials, synthesizes data from fields as diverse as biology, archaeology, and business studies to challenge the notion that culture is governed by evolutionary or environmental determinism. He argues that human behavior is largely exempt from biological constraints, suggesting that our capacity for imagination allows us to remake our world with unprecedented freedom.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Critics and readers often note the ambitious breadth of the author's interdisciplinary approach, which challenges conventional academic boundaries. Scholars frequently highlight the text as a provocative contribution to the debate between biological determinism and human agency in cultural evolution.
Page Count:
304
Publication Date:
2015-01-01
ISBN-10:
0191061840
ISBN-13:
9780191061844
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