Free Delivery Over $100
|
|
|||
|
||||
Awards
OverviewWe are a weird species. Like other species, we have a culture. But by comparison with other species, we are strangely unstable: human cultures self-transform, diverge, and multiply with bewildering speed. They vary, radically and rapidly, from time to time and place to place. And the way we live - our manners, morals, habits, experiences, relationships, technology, values - seems to be changing at an ever accelerating pace. The effects can be dislocating, baffling, sometimes terrifying. Why is this?In A Foot in the River, best-selling historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto sifts through the evidence and offers some radical answers to these very big questions about the human species and its history - and speculates on what these answers might mean for our future. Combining insights from a huge range of disciplines, including history, biology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, sociology, ethology, zoology, primatology, psychology, linguistics, the cognitive sciences, and even business studies, he argues that culture is exempt from evolution. Ultimately, no environmental conditions, no genetic legacy, no predictable patterns, no scientific laws determine our behaviour. We can consequently make and remake our world in the freedom of unconstrained imaginations. A revolutionary book which challenges scientistic assumptions about culture and how and why cultural change happens, A Foot in the River comes to conclusions which readers may well find by turns both daunting and also potentially hugely liberating. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Felipe Fernández-Armesto (William P. Reynolds Professor of History, William P. Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame)Publisher: Oxford University Press Imprint: Oxford University Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.30cm Weight: 0.488kg ISBN: 9780198744429ISBN 10: 0198744420 Pages: 304 Publication Date: 08 October 2015 Audience: College/higher education , Undergraduate , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Weird Planet 1: Challenging Change 2: The Frustration of Science 3: The Great Re-Convergence 4: The Chimpanzees' Tea Party 5: The Limits of Evolution 6: The Imaginative Animal 7: Facing Acceleration 8: Towards the Planet of the Apes Afterword: In the Vatican Garden Notes IndexReviewsA mix of wide and deep learning and rigorous argument, beautifully written ... [a] delightful and indispensable book. John Gray, Literary Review This is big history to the utmost degree, an attempt to unite science and history in a single explanatory scheme much like the work of Jared Diamond. Excessively erudite, extraordinarily wide-ranging, and written with great clarity... Fernandez-Armesto is sure to stir up debate, lure others into similar speculation, and perhaps strengthen the chance of closer mutual endeavors between the physical sciences and the humanities. --Publishers Weekly Author InformationFelipe Fernández-Armesto is the William P. Reynolds Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His work has been recognized as pioneering across a very wide range of fields, including global history, environmental history, colonial history, maritime history, religious history, art history, the history of ideas, Mediterranean history, Spanish history, American history, the history of cartography, and the history of language. He has published numerous best-selling history books, including Civilizations, Millennium, 1492: The Year Our World Began, and Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration, also published by Oxford University Press, which was awarded the World History Association Prize. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
||||
