The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

by Carl Sagan

Overview

The Pulitzer Prize Winner

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends—and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

"A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday...It's a delight." -The New York Times

Introductory music from the original score for COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey composed by Alan Silvestri, used with permission from Cosmos Studios, Inc. and Chappers Music. All rights reserved. Special thanks to Fuzzy Planets, Inc.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781531888459
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was the Director of Cornell University’s Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He played a leading role in the American space program and was an adviser to NASA since its inception. He briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperatures of Venus (answer: massive greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (answer: windblown dust), and the reddish haze of Titan (answer: complex organic molecules).

For his work, Dr. Sagan received the NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize for The Dragons of Eden. His 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage won the Emmy and Peabody awards.

The National Science Foundation declared that his “research transformed planetary science… his gifts to mankind were infinite.”

Read an Excerpt

THE WORLD is very old, and human beings are very young. Significant events in our personal lives are measured in years or less; our lifetimes in decades; our family genealogies in centuries; and all of recorded history in millennia. But we have been preceded by an awesome vista of time, extending for prodigious periods into the past, about which we know little—both because there are no written records and because we have real difficulty in grasping the immensity of the intervals involved.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Dragons of Eden"
by .
Copyright © 1986 Carl Sagan.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
1	The Cosmic Calendar	11
2	Genes and Brains	19
3	The Brain and the Chariot	51
4	Eden as a Metaphor: The Evolution of Man	85
5	The Abstractions of Beasts	111
6	Tales of Dim Eden	133
7	Lovers and Madmen	161
8	The Future Evolution of the Brain	197
9	Knowledge is Our Destiny: Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Intelligence	237
	Acknowledgments	249
	Bibliography	251
	Glossary	261
	Index	267

Editorial Reviews

A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday . . . It's a delight.”—The New York Times

“How can I persuade every intelligent person to read this important and elegant book? . . . He talks about all kinds of things: the why of the pain of human childbirth . . . the reason for sleeping and dreaming . . . chimpanzees taught to communicate in deaf and dumb language . . . the definition of death . . . cloning . . . computers . . . intelligent life on other planets. . . . Fascinating . . . delightful.”—The Boston Globe

“In some lost Eden where dragons ruled, the foundations of our intelligence were laid. . . . Carl Sagan takes us on a guided tour of that lost land. . . . Fascinating . . . entertaining . . . masterful.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From the Publisher