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Editorial Review Product Description
Apes look and act far more like humans than other animals. Apes are super apes, just as apes are super monkeys. Portraits of the apes provide some glimpses into our closest cousins. [Shows in full color on Kindle apps for color screens.]
EXCERPT:
"It reminds me of what my colleague Gordon Orians said about views that make people feel good. As a behavioral ecologist, he speaks figuratively of the Ghost of Dangers Past (we dream of spiders and snakes, not current dangers such as cars and handguns). He says our human aesthetic sensibilities are similarly influenced by the Ghost of Habitats Past. Habitat selection by an animal is influenced by where it grew up, by where it sees others of its own species, and – especially when those criteria aren’t working very well – by some innate knowledge of what the species’ former habitats looked like…. A high-ranked vista for humans generally includes some water (stream, pond, seashore). A forest view isn’t as good as one with some scattered trees (not too tall, either; trees that spread out in horizontal layers like acacias get higher viewer ratings). A few large animals in the distance (but not too close for comfort) is an attractive option. And, for best effect, the scene should be viewed from a slight elevation, preferably framed in a way that suggests viewing from some shelter.
In short, I would conclude, it’s the view from a tree nest in our ancestral savanna home. Such gut feelings tell us something about our ancestors – indeed about what they liked to put in their guts. Such innate likings would have guided individuals in selecting a habitat suited to the better ways of making a living for their species, back then – telling them when to settle down, when to move on to “a better view.”
Oriental landscape architecture adheres to this savanna-tree-house formula, what with that little shelter on the artificial hill from which to survey the ponds and scattered trees. It’s species specific to us humans – a chimp or bonobo would have a different esthetic, likely featuring more of an inside-the-forest view of fruit trees. They might find our open spaces threatening.
I’ll be in the Rift Valley soon, so let me save tree-house esthetics until then. Maybe this belongs on the hominid bootstrap list, if we can ever figure out chimp esthetics as a basis for comparison." ... Read more Customer Reviews (11) 
Liberal trash
I've been reading "Understanding Human History" by Michael Hart which is in the same genre, when my daughter gave me "A Brain For All Seasons" to check out. William Calvin's book is sloppy, repetitive, heavily biased and patronizing. For example, when discussing the r-K continuum among human groups he talks down to us stupid people (anybody who would read this and think it was good must fit into this category) by explaining that a genetically controlled trait might be a "package deal" like getting leather seats and power windows together in a car. Look clown, you don't have to talk down to your audience unless you are writing your book for a bunch or morons (he was).
In another case he says that IQ does not have anything to do with intelligence (predicts whether you'll succeed in college, life, etc though!) and brain size differ between Asians and Blacks by more than 2 percent, and that wouldn't make much difference. Huh? 1370 (average Asian brain size) - 1270 cc (average black brain size)/1270 equals 7.9% on my calculator. Obviously he isn't the genius he thinks he is.
In another passage he says the Chinese failed to continue their seafaring expeditions (and go on to "discover" Europe) due to politics. This is true. He then goes on to put it into context, "you would have to imagine an ultraconservative takeover of the US that, for some reason, frowned on both airplanes and computers". Really? In the 1970's the "Progressives" told us we had to stop going to the Moon, put off going to Mars and stop launching money into space to spend it on the people on the earth. Seems like Mr. Calvin has it backwards. Besides, no one could call the Chinese conservative, they ALWAYS vote Democrat in the US. It's probably their progressive dictatorial proclivities that brought those westbound ships home, not the profit seeking conservative traits that the Europeans had when they sought gold and spice, tea and slaves when they conquered the entire world.
From there he goes on to tell us that hot means cold, warming means cooling, big brains helped evolution but didn't help Europeans and Chinese invent more stuff than Africans. What a clown.
People interested in science and real evolution cause and effect would be better off with Understanding Human History by Michael Hart. This guy is just a mouthpiece for bad math, bad science, and more government control of our economy.
A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change
The book is in fact a collected of notes and thoughts about various aspects of human evolution and its "actors". It is written rather to give some ideas for individual thinking than a comprehensive study of the subject introduced by the title. Unfortunately the book contains some mistakes (e.g. Homo sp. in Europe is not older than 1.0 Ma and absolutely not 1.7 Ma as stated on the page 39).
Nevertheless it could make a good reading for students and non-specialists interested in the subject. Remember, do not read this book without any additional source reading.
disjointed? Hard for me to get through
I purchased this book on a friend's recommendation as an accessible, easy-to-read book (we both really enjoyed "Guns Germs and Steel"). However, I had a hard time following this author in his discussions as he travels. I wasn't sure of the point he was trying to make in the chapters. I applaud the author for attempting to describe his theory at a laymen's level, but I'm not sure he was successful.
A Fascinating Account of How Abrupt Climate Changes might Have Affected Human Evolution
Human evolution is one of the great detective stories of the twenty-first century. How did this species, Homo sapien sapiens, come to be? Our written record provides some details for only about the last 10,000 years, but what about the millions of years on Earth beforehand? Charles Darwin's rock-solid theory of natural selection, while attacked from the political and religious right as unable to explain the "miracle" of life in the universe without reference to God's creation, remains at the center of all explanations that take a scientific perspective on the subject. William H. Calvin, on the faculty at the University of Washington's School of Medicine, offers in "A Brain for All Seasons" a modification of Darwin's theory that is both illuminating and reasoned. He argues that while Darwin thought in terms of eons of time and slow progression across thousands of generations, some evolutionary processes might be more immediate and striking.
Specifically, Calvin asserts that the capacity and complexity of the human brain grew significantly in response to cataclysm on the Earth. Cycles of radical and abrupt climate change, warm-and-wet versus cold-and-dry, help to explain the current state of human evolution. Ancient humans were driven to adapt within a few generations to abrupt climate change, a set of cycles between ice ages and warm seasons, forcing biological as well as other changes on those who survived (and probably few did). These "whiplash" climate shifts, as Calvin calls them, meant that those most adaptable survived and others did not. One major aspect of adaptability is brain power and reasoning. While not exclusive to Calvin, other scientists have made this case effectively, "A Brain for All Seasons" offers a reasoned, accessible explanation of how humanity came to be as it is today. It also offers a cautionary note about the potential for future abrupt climate change and what it might portend for the future of humanity. Wars over land and resources appear almost a certainty, he contends. Widespread starvation and death will also result. And again, those with the most adaptability will survive.
William Calvin's analysis is erudite and thought-provoking. It is also highly entertaining. Written as a travelogue that stretches across the globe, especially Africa and the Arctic, "A Brain for All Seasons" serves as an entrée for a lay audience into the world of paleobiology. Calvin does a good job of speaking to that broad audience, but as is the case with most books that seek to communicate scientific knowledge to non-scientists this one sometimes oversimplifies and overstates the evidence. It should be read, as should all books, with a critical mind, something that I'm sure William Calvin would appreciate. Taken altogether, however, it is a useful starting point in understanding how humans evolved from the distant past.
Challenging but well worth reading
This is not an easy book to read. Calvin aims high, setting out to present a coherent new model of how repeated, abrupt climate changes may have driven the evolution of the human brain. Since science has only known about Earth's history of climatic instability for a few years and many details remain to be filled in, Calvin has taken on a major challenge. As if that were not enough, in the second half of _A Brain for All Seasons_, he presents the latest ideas about the mechanisms that may have shifted the global climate from extreme to extreme in the past and may do so in the future, and presents an insightful analysis of the risks involved in our present denial-driven do-nothing approach toward climate change.
Unfortunately, a lot of the book reads as though Calvin were thinking out loud. He tends to follow his chain of thought wherever it leads at the time, which I found quite frustrating early on. However, he eventually weaves together the many strands he's mulling over, often in an original and thought-provoking way.
If you come away from the book with a clear understanding of his two main ideas, (1) that repeating cycles of large, abrupt climate shifts have taken place over the course of human evolution and provide a convincing ratcheting mechanism for increased brain size and complexity, and (2) that we urgently need to move past the now headshakingly stupid debate about whether or not human-induced climate change is real to a pragmatic analysis of the risks looming ahead and our options for dealing with them, it's well worth a bit of frustration at his style. In the end, I found the book more than worth the effort.
Robert Adler
Author of _Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation_, (John Wiley& Sons, 2002)
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