The Dragons of Eden

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the album, see
The Dragons of Eden (album)
.
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
LC Class
BF431 .S2
Followed byBroca's Brain 

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence is a 1977 book by

intelligence
may have evolved.

Sagan discusses the search for a quantitative means of measuring intelligence. He argues that the

myths. The title "The Dragons of Eden" is borrowed from the notion that man's early struggle for survival in the face of predators, and in particular a fear of reptiles, may have led to cultural beliefs and myths about dragons
.

The Dragons of Eden won a Pulitzer Prize.[2] In 2002, John Skoyles and Dorion Sagan published a follow-up entitled Up from Dragons.[3]

Summary

The book is an expansion of the

Memorial Lecture in Natural Philosophy which Sagan gave at the University of Toronto. In the introduction Sagan presents his thesis – that "the mind ... [is] a consequence of its anatomy and physiology and nothing more" – in reference to the works of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[citation needed
]

In chapter 2, Sagan briefly summarizes the entire evolution of species starting from the Big Bang to the beginning of the human civilization with the help of a "Cosmic Calendar", an analogy where one year in the calendar corresponds to the time since the Big Bang. Sagan used the same analogy in the more-widely known television series Cosmos.

It is disconcerting to find that in such a cosmic year the Earth does not condense out of interstellar matter until early September, dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year's Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last 10 seconds of December 31; and the time from the waning of the Middle Ages to the present occupies little more than one second.

Reception

Writing for the

New York Times, John Leonard called the book "a delight" and described Sagan as "a scientific Robert Redford, handsome and articulate and all business." The book was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1978.[4]

In popular culture

In 2008, an album called The Dragons of Eden was released by keyboard player and producer

Bryan "Brain" Mantia. The album derives its track titles from the book's chapters.[citation needed
]

See also

References

  1. ^ pp. 38–40, hardback ed.
  2. ^ The Pulitzer Prizes: 1978 Winners
  3. ^ Skoyles, John & Sagan, Dorion. Up from Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence. McGraw-Hill, 2002, p. xi.
  4. ^ Dicke, William (December 21, 1996). "Carl Sagan, an Astronomer Who Excelled at Popularizing Science, Is Dead at 62". The New York Times. Retrieved May 8, 2021.

External links

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