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    Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies
    Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies
    Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies
    Audiobook3 hours

    Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies

    Written by Edward O. Wilson

    Narrated by Jonathan Hogan

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least seventeen?among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge- dwelling shrimp?have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation. Whether writing about midges who "dance about like acrobats" or schools of anchovies who protectively huddle "to appear like a gigantic fish," or proposing that human society owes a debt of gratitude to "postmenopausal grandmothers" and "childless homosexuals," Genesis is a pithy yet path-breaking work of evolutionary theory, braiding twenty-first-century scientific theory with the lyrical biological and humanistic observations for which Wilson is known.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 19, 2019
    ISBN9781980029779
    Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies

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    Reviews for Genesis

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    • 4/5
      Seems paradoxical that the general focus of the book it”s not social behavior of species but main steps toward it, loosing in the way the fact, that cooperation is substantial to cell’s integration as organs in the body: or that electrical shocks in some fish are sort of concerted action executed by cells localized in different body places. The example of the dolphin and anchovies or the one for the birds or the locusts all remember that cooperation is an intrinsic cell characteristic, and what lies below is some sort of communication. But the book”s title is great.
    • 4/5
      I liked the material, but Hogan's voice tends to drone so I had to rewind a few times.
    • 5/5
      I was enthralled by this book. I got to see the wide ranging ideas of a noteworthy biologist and his approach to the complexity of the animal kingdom. Wilson organizes evolution into six transitions:1. Origin of Life.2. The invention of complex cells.3. The invention of sexual reproduction (DNA & multiplication of species).4. The origin of organisms composed of multiple cells.5. The origin of societies.6. The origin of language.The idea or process of altruism is a crucial factor in evolution. With so many species abounding allows scientists to better codify the process of reconstructing what happens in evolution. But eusociality is not a common outcome, where the individual organisms allow themselves certain different roles of living such as bees and wasps. Natural selection shows us how various species compete and move to possibly more cooperation (or not). The aspect of violence is prominent within higher mammals, particularly humans and sows that nature is not really gentle. But Wilson closes with the virtue of storytelling among all human societies.
    • 4/5
      One of the things I like best about reading E.O. Wilson's books is his ongoing willingness and excitement to engage with new and recent scholarship and discovery. He's not just repeating the same ideas he wrote about forty years ago: he's revising them and updating them based on current research, and also putting long-held views in conversation with the new data.
    • 4/5
      Nice concise treatment with a deeper discussion of the tension between individual selfishness and group cooperation. Lots of examples from the insect world that is Wilson's expertise.