Out of our minds : what we think and how we came to think it

Author / Creator

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe

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Summary

Traversing the realms of science, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, and history, Fernández-Armesto reveals the tales of our imaginative leaps--from the first Homo sapiens to the present day....

Traversing the realms of science, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, and history, Fernández-Armesto reveals the tales of our imaginative leaps--from the first Homo sapiens to the present day. He explores how and why we have ideas in the first place, providing a glimpse into who we are and what we might yet accomplish. Unearthing historical evidence, he begins by reconstructing the thoughts of our Paleolithic ancestors to reveal the subtlety and profundity of the thinking of early humans. A paean to the human imagination, the author shows that bad ideas are often more influential than good ones; that the oldest recoverable thoughts include some of the best; that ideas of Western origin often issued from exchanges with the wider world; and that the pace of innovative thinking is under threat. --From publisher description.

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