The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human - Hardcover

Tattersall, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151005206 ISBN 13: 9780151005208

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001

Synopsis

Nothing fascinates us more than explorations of human origins,
and nobody tells the story better than Ian Tattersall.

What makes us so different? How did we get this way? How do we know? And what exactly are we? These questions are what make human evolution a subject of general fascination. Ian Tattersall, one of those rare scientists who is also a graceful writer, addresses them in this delightful book.

Writing in an informal essay style, Tattersall leads the reader around the world and into the far reaches of the past, showing what the science of human evolution is up against-from the sparsity of evidence to the pressures of religious fundamentalism. Looking with dispassion and humor at our origins, Tattersall offers a wholly new definition of what it is to be human.

Delightful stories, scientific wisdom, fresh insight-the perfect science book.

About this title

About the Author

IAN TATTERSALL is curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, and the author of many books and articles. Becoming Human won the distinguished W.W. Howells Prize of the American Anthropological Association. An expert on both fossil humans and lemurs, Tattersall has done fieldwork in places as varied as Madagascar, Yemen, and Vietnam.

Reviews

Tattersall, the curator of human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History and a prolific author (Becoming Human, etc.), laments in his preface that the book's contents "take you where they will" and do not necessarily lead from one to the next but he is just being modest. In truth, these introductory essays on human origins complement each other nicely. The first chapter, a primer on scientific basics, emphasizes the collective nature of scientific endeavor and answers debunkers of evolution, who would dismiss it as "only a theory." An essay on modern evolutionary theory zeroes in on the idea that evolutionary change comes in sporadic spikes (rather than gradually), which lays ground for his essays on speciation in human evolution. With his essays on the first hominid bipeds and toolmakers, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons (the first "moderns"), Tattersall arrives at his specialty, and it shows, making for the most satisfying reading of this collection. ("Written in Our Genes?" is a tiresome and predictable attack on evolutionary psychology, however.) These essays are not intended to push the bounds of the current paradigm, but rather to entertain and to fascinate, which they do often. (Nov.)Forecast: Fans of Becoming Human and other Tattersall texts will recognize his name and pick this one up; neophyte browsers may decide that the Museum of Natural History affiliation sets the author of this book apart from a crowded pack.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In eight essays, anthropologist and American Museum of Natural History curator Tattersall (Becoming Human) explores the current understanding of organic evolution in terms of science and reason. He stresses the creative diversity of life forms throughout biological history, including the past existence of different hominid species. His own interpretation of evolution maintains that there have been three major episodic innovations in the emergence of humankind (each separated by about two million years): upright bipedality, Paleolithic technology, and the modern bodily anatomy. Of special interest is Tattersall's critical analysis of the so-called Neandertal problem. Oddly, he does not discuss space travel or genetic engineering in regard to the future of our species. Furthermore, Tattersall does not rigorously emphasize the power of scientific inquiry and the fact of organic evolution in the face of ongoing threats to empirical explanations, e.g., postmodernism, biblical fundamentalism, and religious creationism. Consequently, this is not the groundbreaking and helpful book it could have been. Even so, it is suitable for large science collections.
- H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lengthening his list of popular works on paleoanthropology, Tattersall's suite of eight engaging essays addresses the subject of evolution, explaining why his profession believes what it believes. His central theme is to upend the notion that human evolution consists of little more than a long "single-minded trudge from primitiveness to perfection." By isolating ourselves on a pedestal, Tattersall argues, we will never properly understand our antecedents. By way of example, he homes in on the proposed explanations for the size of the human brain. It seems self-evident that our noggins arose for some adaptive advantage, but Tattersall holds that such thinking misunderstands evolution. The human brain attained its size hundreds of thousands of years before the first archaeological evidence of symbolic thinking. A more convincing view, he argues, is the principle of "exaptation," wherein some anatomical change occurs but goes "unused" until a later environmental alteration makes it advantageous to survival. A perceptive and persuasive introduction to human origins. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151005206
• ISBN 13: 9780151005208
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224