Of particular interest to me was the discussion of human brain evolution from Australopithecus Africanus onwards, and how each species' brain was an improvement on the old, to the detriment of our cousins within the genus. He wrote that it was important for society to allow for such broad and powerful thinkers - multi-disciplinarians, but that the evidence shows a steep 'decline' towards specialisation. In “The Dragons of Eden” he turns himself to the world of Biology, a subject in which he admits he is not an expert relying on such experts to supplement his thinking. Sagan advances a chilling and all too likely hypothesis, that humans killed off apes who they thought came dangerously close to mimicking their linguistic capabilities.

I started diving into Sagan's writings a few years ago, and this was one I held off on the longest because with I was afraid my background in neuroscience would lead me to be distracted -- or perhaps even a bit disappointed -- by the dated information I'd hear from one of my heroes. If the human brain had only one synapse-- corresponding to a monumental stupidity-- we would be capable of only two mental states. The best measure of intelligence of an organism is not the mass of the brain, but the ratio of the mass of the brain to the total mass of the organism. It ends with a firm conviction that the survival of our species depends on education, and shows how the same technologies that threaten our survival can be harnessed to allow children to understand concepts at a young age that were once the purview of accomplished 18th century scientists and mathematicians.But, since I have yet to find that book, I’m giving Sagan a curve and ranking his book a four out of five.

The final chapter ties it all up into a neat package with his belief in extra-terrestrial intelligence. Sagan received the Pulitzer Prize and the highest awards of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation, and many other awards, for his contributions to science, literature, education, and the preservation of the environment. The question of whether we will one day sail the galaxies, or blow ourselves up in a nuclear shooting match (or make our planet uninhabitable through environmental damage), is one that Sagan asked for the rest of his life.Even though this book is now out of print, if you can get your hands on a copy, I would say that you are unlikely to regret doing so. Although dragons are mythical creatures, there are real animals that resemble dragons, one example is the Komodo dragon–a reptile that can weigh up to 300 pounds and be 10 feet in length (oh and did I mention they are venomous? Just like in "Cosmos" he manages to create a book which has the intrigue of a novel but is also packed full of information. Anybody looking for more authoritative and specialist works on neurobiology and evolutionary psychology might not find this as helpful, as it is speculative, although you can't deny Sagan is gifted, perhaps as much as any scientist-author, in crafting such illuminating and lucid prose. He was also a recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences.

Desde el análisis de la cantidad de información contenida en un cromosoma, hasta las posibles líneas evolutivas del futuro cerebro humano.This book is one that shook me out of cerebral complacency and like a good author, Sagan opens the cobweb laden windows of my brain and lets the light in. The book is jam-packed with incredible facts and information that will require readers to take a moment to soak it all in. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society, (" for his extraordinary contributions to the development of planetary science…As a scientist trained in both astronomy and biology, Dr. Edges The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a. The title "The Dragons of Eden" is borrowed from the notion that man's early struggle for survival in the face of predators, and in particular a fear of reptiles, may have led to cultural beliefs and myths about dragons.

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.Sagan is quite upbeat about chimp intelligence and he spends a sizable part of the book talking about experiments that reveal chimps’ prowess in using sign language. 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. Sagan's role in developing the "Cosmos" series, one of the most successful series of any kind to be broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System, and his book The Dragons of Eden (1977) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978. 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. It is disconcerting to find that in such a cosmic year the Earth does not condense out of interstellar matter until early September, dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.