The Runaway Brain: The Evolution of Human Uniqueness

You might not suspect it, but we are currently living through a revolution in scientific knowledge. What we know about the human brain's workings and about the earliest history of our distant humanoid ancestors changes almost weekly. A new view of humanity is being forged - new theories appear all the time, splinter, are revised and adandoned. Scientists from different fields of research are finally co-operating and sharing their insights in order to map out a new view of the human brain. Paleaoanthropologists digging in Kenya, neuropyschologists building organic robots in their labs and geneticists unearthing the secret in all our genes have all thrown their ideas into the melting pot...where they combust. The way we view who we are, where we came from and how we came to think at all is being altered irrevocably. And this is the subject-matter of this book.

Christopher Wills is professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego.