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Laddar... If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity (urspr publ 2022; utgåvan 2024)av Justin Gregg (Författare)
VerksinformationIf Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity av Justin Gregg (2022)
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If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal overturns everything we thought we knew about human intelligence, and asks the question: would humans be better off as narwhals? Or some other, less brainy species? There's a good argument to be made that humans might be a less successful animal species precisely because of our amazing, complex intelligence. All our unique gifts like language, math, and science do not make us happier or more "successful" (evolutionarily speaking) than other species. Our intelligence allowed us to split the atom, but we've harnessed that knowledge to make machines of war. We are uniquely susceptible to bullshit (though, cuttlefish may be the best liars in the animal kingdom); our bizarre obsession with lawns has contributed to the growing threat of climate change; we are sexually diverse like many species yet stand apart as homophobic; and discriminate among our own as if its natural, which it certainly is not. Is our intelligence more of a curse than a gift? As scientist Justin Gregg persuasively argues, there's an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn't more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don't need it to be successful. And, miraculously, their success arrives without the added baggage of destroying themselves and the planet in the process. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)591.513Natural sciences and mathematics Zoology Specific topics in natural history of animals Habits and behavior Instinct; Reason Animal intelligenceKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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You might wonder what all this has to do with Nietzsche, or with narwhals. They are only tangential, sort of a way to get a great title, I suspect, though the author did lead off with a discussion of Nietzsche, and how his intellect ultimately led to his final breakdown, because he saw things too clearly. He proposes Nietzsche would have been happier if he had been a narwhal, without the extraordinary brain power. Perhaps, but there are a few assumptions in his book that one has to swallow whole to accept the thesis, chief among them that the highest goal of life is, or should be, happiness. This isn't easy for some of us to swallow, and we don't see it in most animals, anyway. I am reasonably sure I would not call my cats happy, though much of the time they are contented, but those are two different things. And dismissing the creative output of the human mind as irrelevant might be true on a grand, large scale, but it isn't really true in the here and now; which is actually part of his point. Of course, another assumption that needs to be swallowed whole is that the outcomes (negative ones, like climate change) of the human intellect are inevitable, flowing from the very fact of a brain that is able to contemplate its own existence. Since I don't accept either of these premises, there are holes in his argument, though overall I find much to agree with.
It would help if he would learn how to write. I am fine with using sentence fragments from time to time for emphasis, or in conversation, since people talk that way, but in EVERY paragraph? Excessive. It makes reading difficult and unpleasant when you have to keep searching for a noun to form the subject of the sentence; eventually you realize it was in the previous sentence, but by then you have to reread the sentence because the fragment doesn't make a lot of sense without it. This annoying habit cost the book a half star. ( )