Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe

by John Hands

Specialist scientific fields are developing at incredibly swift speeds, but what can they really tell us about how the universe began and how we humans evolved to play such a dominant role on Earth?

John Hands’s extraordinarily ambitious quest is to bring together this scientific knowledge and evaluate without bias or preconception all the theories and evidence about the origin and evolution of matter, life, consciousness, and humankind.

This astonishing book provides the most comprehensive account yet of current ideas such as cosmic inflation, dark energy, the selfish gene, and neurogenetic determinism. In the clearest possible prose it differentiates the firmly established from the speculative and examines the claims of various fields such as string theory to approach a unified theory of everything. In doing so it challenges the orthodox consensus in those branches of cosmology, biology, and neuroscience that have ossified into dogma.

Its striking analysis reveals underlying patterns of cooperation, complexification, and convergence that lead to the unique emergence in humans of a self-reflective consciousness that enables us to determine our future evolution.

This groundbreaking book is destined to become a classic of scientific thinking.

(67 black and white illustrations)

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Evolution, Biology, Philosophy, Anthropology

704 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2016

Reviews

[David Rubenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazingly ambitious book. It covers such a wide range of topics--I have never seen such a comprehensive non-fiction book. It starts out with a detailed description of theories of the origins of the universe. Here, John Hands is at his best, as he sorts out the various theories. He reasons why some of the theories are still in the running, while others are not borne out by the available evidence.

John Hands continues to discuss the origins of life. He describes the prevalent theories, and gives his opinions about which theories are most realistic. He describes evolution from the earliest microbes to the present-day complex organisms. He considers the evolution of humans and the origins of consciousness. He points out the ways in which humans differ from all other animals.

Then, the book goes into a history of the human race. The development of science, technology, and philosophy are covered in some detail. He points out that many so-called "world-wide" philosophy books skip almost completely the philosophies of the East, and concentrate almost entirely on those of the West. While John Hands does devote attention to Eastern philosophies, he also spends much more time on Western ones.

This is not an entertaining book. There is not a trace of humor, and there is no effort taken to make it easy on the reader. However, the sheer scope of the book, and the intelligent unbiased descriptions of the science, history, and philosophy, make this a book deserving of one's attention. I recommend the book for people who are truly curious, and want an unbiased view of our understanding of human evolution.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author really needs to chill out, watch a Neil deGrasse Tyson video on the universe and put the wonder back in science instead of trying to tear it apart. Dark Matter, Dark Energy are not currently observable and we just have educated guesses to what they are. As Tyson says, we can just as easily call them Fred & Barney until we know more about them. They are just place holders for now. That's the way science works. The author just tries to tear apart the science. The teams that discovered the universe was expanding and hypothesized Dark Energy deserved the Nobel Prize, but this book just doesn't like Dark Energy, Dark Matter and a host of other standard science.

Science never proves anything. Our knowledge is what we consider to be 'justified true belief". Sometimes we have to use mathematics and theory to account for manifestations. That doesn't mean we are necessarily wrong, but we use every tool at our disposal to explain nature by using nature. The author seems to want to go beyond nature. He quoted Einstein twice in the book to the effect that Einstein believed in a "transcendental intelligence". The author sees that as a good thing, and he doesn't think the mathematics alone can explain the phenomena.

The author really doesn't like standard (he uses the obnoxious term 'orthodox') science. It's a pity. For within our current best understanding of science there are many awe inspiring stories to be told. Look at LIGO and its discovery of gravitational waves (ripples) through out the fabric of space-time. They measured the contraction and the expansion of space itself. They used Einstein's General Theory, known physics and mathematics about black holes, quantum theory and a whole host of other theories and used mathematical computer simulations to determine what happens when two black holes walk into a bar.... A story like that is so much more interesting then the constant picking apart of the standard science which the author constantly does in the book, and the author loses the forest for the trees because he doesn't realize that even without science being perfect we can still use what we think we know and tell incredibly interesting stories and use that to see space-time itself contract and expand.

Science will always be underdetermined, for any set of facts about nature there will always be multiple theories to explain that data. But the author doesn't seem to understand this and sees that as an opportunity to show that science is faulty.

The author would summarize our current understanding of our science about a big topic, then criticize it, and then present alternate ways of looking at it, and then present some of his usually far out conclusions.

I would say that there was almost nothing new in this book that I hadn't read elsewhere. All of the statements on matters about science or philosophy I had read elsewhere.

The author has a pernicious teleological bent to his presentation. He really seems to like Fred Hoyle. He'll quote the absurd statement that life forming randomly is on the order of a tornado sweeping through a junk yard and making a 747. The author's favored model for the universe seemed to be Hoyle's QSSC (probably stands for quasi steady state crap, I'm too lazy to look it up and I know the 'C" does stand for crap). He really thinks fine tuning of the universe is the best explanation for the explanation of some of nature's constants. He could be right, but there is a reason why we don't measure the heights of basketball players in light years. They would be the same to the 17th decimal place just as some of the 'fine tuned' constants are. He at least owes the reader the other side. The author is not a creationist but he does quote from the absurd creationist Michael Behe favorably, and I would think a host of creationist believers would love this book since he offers a plethora of criticisms on the standard explanations of science.

He believes 'psychic energy' can explain certain natural phenomena, that entropy (the second law of thermodynamics) needs a fifth force to explain how it is constantly increasing, that insight should be put back into philosophy instead of only being reason based, the start of life is a near impossible event and so on.

I have nothing good to say about this book and can't recommend it. I don't know why I finished it. It reminded me of the movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space", I just wanted to see what other disasters awaited. I regret starting this book, and definitely would not recommend it to anyone.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

However interesting, this whole book, seems to be based on a conceptual fallacy: that science always must be empirically verified and lead to predictions. Hands’ definition of science is: “The attempt to understand and explain natural phenomena by using systematic, preferably measurable, observation or experiment, and to apply reason to the knowledge thereby obtained in order to infer testable laws and make predictions or retrodictions.” This sounds reasonable, but in his screening of the sciences he foremost stresses the empirical aspect. When you think about it, this way you eliminate a considerable portion of what generally is considered to be science. And that is exactly what Hands does in this book.

Hands is on a collision course with two domains where science does not work as empirically as he likes them to be: cosmology and evolutionary biology. He leaves hardly anything intact in cosmology, the theories about how our universe came into existence from the Big Bang until a few minutes later. According to him, that is a bunch of theoretical bogus for which there is hardly any empirical evidence. And in evolutionary biology, he points to numerous non-empirically founded assumptions and incongruities.

I must confess that I am not qualified to refute his criticism with concrete scientific arguments: Hands, in my opinion, has done his best to study the many areas he covers; he is a chemist by training, but has also thoroughly studied physics, biology and neurology, etc. He is said to have worked on this book for 10 years, and it shows.

Hands undoubtedly points to some weaknesses in scientific theory development, but he wrongly assumes that science can and should only be "evidence-based". In the more practically oriented sciences such as medicine and psychology I can follow that up to a point, but for the others, science is, in my opinion, just as much a reasoned and transparent attempt to capture a number of phenomena in a theory that provides insight. Such a theory is by definition preliminary, and should be supported by evidence as far as possible. But setting the bar so high on the empirical level is asking for problems.

The book also exudes a high degree of ‘self-made man’- and ‘lone cowboy’- tone. Let me explain: Hands offers an accumulation of definitions that are applied very strictly, he derogatorily presents the relative consensus in a particular scientific domain as 'the orthodox model', accuses academics of a condescending attitude towards dilettantes (like him), and in this whole book he does not show an ounce of humour. Moreover, with his nagging criticism, he unwittingly opens the door to conspiracy theories and also to aberrations such as creationism.

Actually, I should only give this book 1 star, but I'm going to be lenient, because of the tremendous effort Hands has done to dive into very difficult matters, and - with my apologies - because of a personal weakness for people who sail against the current. If there is one merit of this book, it is that Hands succeeds in making you think about what we too often accept as evident, and that's always a good thing. Lice in the fur, they always are necessary, but the author really should have made his book less into a ranting exercise.

[Sense of History]

The title of this book is downright misleading. This is not a study of 'human evolution’: only in the last fifth of the book mankind appears. Cosmosapiens seems more in line with what Big History offers: an overview of the history from the Big Bang to the arrival of the homo sapiens. And yet again, it isn't: the focus is on a very critical screening of the theories about the evolution from the Big Bang to the sapiens species. There are a lot of issues with Hands’s approach, as I've indicated in my review in my general account: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

I have to concede that on human history and the study of the earliest human species, Hands hits the right note, in being very critical to the spectacular theories of most paleo-anthropologists whenever they find a bit of an ancient human fossil and their boasting about a revolutionary new view on the origins of humanity. And I like the way he stresses that the ‘jump’ the homo sapiens made is on the level of ‘reflective consciousness’. But given the way he handles both cosmology and biology, constantly lashing out against ‘orthodox academics’, one shouldn’t depend on this book to get a good view on human history.

[Charlene · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am 12 hours into this book with 18 hours more to go. At the suggestion that we scientists still, in 2016, cannot explain the evolution of the flagella, I have to put this book down, at least for a while. Scientists can and have explained the evolution of the flagella. Just like eyespots, which turned into eyes, the flagella evolved in complexity. It is in no way "irreducibly complex." Scientists have proven this by switching out proteins. The flagella shows flexibility, not irreducible complexity. No author who would suggest such a thing in 2016 could ever be called a science writer, ever. This author can only be called a person who is presented with evidence and does not know how to understand and digest that evidence. Instead, he would rather concoct crazy scenarios in his mind. He is welcome to do that, but he is not welcome to call that process science. That process is called imagination, make believe, and in this case, stupidity.

[John Hands · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not surprised that reviewers have rated it as Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement, that The Telegraph (UK) rated it as one of the best science books of 2015, and that 12 leading philosophers, scientists, and sociologists have praised it, not least for its astounding scope and lucidity. COSMOSAPIENS Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe is a must-read for anyone interested in the questions of what we are, where we came from, and why we exist. Be warned: its conclusions may surprise you.

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy Shitballs! I know I can be rambly sometimes – I’ve had to edit out a third if its length to make it fit. Sheesh. Here is (No joke) my abbreviated review.

Recently---deleted awesome story about Harry Potter due to length---but not right now. This monster of a book was something I was anxious to dive into. I don’t have it in front of me to look at, but memory says it’s a summary of all human knowledge about our origins, of the cosmos, of the solar system, of the origin and evolution of life on earth, and the rise of humanity.

First, COSMOLOGY: The first third of the book is dedicated to the origin of the universe and our current understanding of the size and shape of the cosmos, more or less. I have very mixed feelings about this. As I am a huge lover of space and the cosmos and he spends most of his time explaining the flaws of the current models of the big bang.

I guess my problem, if you want to call it that, is that he is a non-expert evaluating the data in a highly technical field and finding it lacking. I run into this problem myself, by the way. See, I can’t remember when I was introduced to the inflationary version of the big bang theory, I know I’d never heard of it when I was a kid, and very obsessed with this sort of thing, but it was all the rage when I rediscovered my love of the sciences in my twenties.

Essentially, the issue is this, when Edwin Hubble famously realized that galaxies were, in fact, galaxies (and not planetary nebulae within our own galaxy) and were also moving away from us at disturbing speeds (due to redshift), it was easy for people to start working backwards from there and realizing that as you go back in time all these galaxies would have been much closer together, in fact, everything must have originated from a single point.

Makes sense, right? It’s just that up until that time it was the consensus amongst sciency types that the universe was eternal, without beginning. The very idea that the universe may have had a starting point was disturbing, it, at least to the folks at the time, implied that a universe with a beginning meant something had to cause it.

As a digression, it reminds me of a story I once heard, that just after the results of the COBE mission was being reviewed (the first all sky survey of the cosmic microwave background radiation) a debate on the existence of God was being prepared for at our local University and the physics department was asked to provide someone for the negative (there is no God) position. They had to reply that the organizers would have to reach out the philosophy department, as the physics dept was ‘fresh out’ of atheists.

The story was meant to illustrate that the big bang implied a creator. And the evidence of the big bang was considered rock solid after the data gathered matched so closely to predictions of what the afterglow of a big bang would look like. They were even able to narrow down the origin of the universe to approximately 13.7 billion years.

All that is great, except that very small inconsistencies in the data don’t EXACTLY match the models, and as other data gathering programs have been run subsequently, those inconsistencies have become more pronounced. It’s a bit of a problem.

Now, put a pin in that, there has been another problem folks have struggled with regarding the big bang for some time, it’s that best we can figure, the universe would have to either be Open (the bang that originated the universe forced the geometry of the cosmos to be hyperbolic… um, so parallel lines will get further and further apart over time. This means the universe will fly apart and all that) or Closed (the opposite problem, the universe ends in a big crunch – gravity overpowers the momentum of the expansion and the universe ends in a hot, dense singularity that looks similar to how it began) or Flat (parallel lines remain parallel – the universe’s expansion slows and slows, but never quite stops. This is the least likely possible outcome, as, I mean, what are the odds of that? It’s a razor’s edge of perfectly attuned parameters to allow that to happen).

After decades of only speculation, in the late nineties data from other observations started coming in that indicated the universe was flat. The improbability of that was enough to, again, start all the God talk again.

Meanwhile, Alan Guth had become somewhat famous for his idea that in the very early universe, just after the big bang started, well, banging, that some unknown force just made the universe grow by several orders of magnitude many times faster than the speed of light. This solved all sorts of mathematical problems and produced a pretty flat universe to boot. Atheists were free to breathe easy once again. Science had re-killed god.

I kid, except I’m not. Not really. I mean, I’m not sure if my explanation made any sense, so just in case it doesn’t – inflation posits that the rapidly expanding universe super-duper quickly expanded for a very brief period of time before slowing back down to normal expansion again.

Now, that is all my interpretation of events, I’m not bothering to look any of this stuff up, and I’m dosing this heavily with my personal opinions. I’m probably wrong as a matter of fact, and my opinions could very well be the conclusion of some faulty logic. Whatever, it’s still what I think. As soon as I realize I’m mistaken I’ll correct it (at least in my head, probably not this post, I plan on forgetting I ever wrote this about 10 minutes after I hit the ‘post review’ button.

Regardless, I’ve always had an uneasy take with the inflationary model of the big bang, it feels VERY reminiscent to Ptolemy’s epicycles as an explanatory means of the motion of the planets. You know, it’s a complicated, nonsensical addition to a model to correct for some observations not lining up with what was expected.

I can’t expect cosmologists to just chuck the big bang altogether (remember, redshift of galaxies and all that) but something about the current models feel very wrong to me. Whatever, I’m a layman. I can point out historical antecedents where the scientific consensus has been wrong (The Ether, remember that?), but I can’t offer any meaningful critiques. I just shrug and think this is the best explanation we can come up with at the present time given the data we have.

So, finally, I get to this book. The author here is a bit like me, a non-expert, although one who spent a DECADE researching, and he’s done a systematic review of the inflationary big-bang model of the origin of the universe and has concluded that it’s almost entirely nonsensical and self-contradictory, I think he says something along the lines that this can’t be really referred to as a theory, or hypothesis, it’s just mythmaking.

Those are my words, not his, he said he submitted this to many cosmologists for review and received almost universal disdain. Some responses were belligerently angry, but few offered any corrections of fact.

I’m tempted to say that when an outsider reviews a field of experts and concludes the field is entirely wrong, that we have a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (where the outsider is so ignorant of the topic that they are unaware of how ignorant they actually are, giving them a false sense of confidence) and so some of this rage the author reported could have been frustration on the part of scientists that are continually combating people that attack their positions based on religious grounds, and misunderstand the details, interpretations, and conclusions at every turn. It can make it hard to have an honest conversation about where our ignorance lies.

So, the author has to overcome, at least in my mind, the larger issue that he is simply not equipped to speak authoritatively about the topics he is critiquing. I also don’t have the expertise necessary, so I just wait for people smarter than me to explain it better so I can understand, or eventually figure out something that does make sense.

Because, honestly, the author’s take is that there is a conspiracy to suppress minority views for other theories that may better explain the data gathered about the cosmos to date comes across to me as sour grapes. He has sought out people with dissenting views and listened to them complain about how unfair they’ve been treated, and then wrote about it, then submitted to the defenders of the consensus views and was surprised at their resultant outrage. I’m sure if I were an astrophysicist and people were constantly sending me stuff talking about the long odds of random events creating and sustaining life I’d probably be ready to snap at someone who clearly read and parroted lots of intelligent design arguments in writing a critique of that field of study.

So I’m concerned. I feel like I’m getting a somewhat biased review of the state of the field here. That said, I share his dissatisfaction with the status quo. However, it’s the best explanation we currently have. I’m way more okay with it than he is.

Although there was at least one alternate theory of the origin of the cosmos that I liked but I won’t share it because I may steal it for a story later.

Second, EVOLUTION: On this topic I feel a bit less at ease than I do with space based stuff. However, I feel like many of the complaints I had about the Cosmology section carry over here.

First off, he states that the evidence of biological evolution having and continuing to occur is “overwhelming” but seems to think the current model of natural selection is useless as a mechanism, and Darwinism, Neo-Darwinism and Ultra-Darwinism are all useless as descriptors for how evolution happened.

I also had a great deal of frustration with this part of the book. I think it had something to do with how I’ve read multiple books by the likes of Niles Eldridge, Stephen J Gould, Richard Dawkins, Peter Ward, and others mentioned in this section, and they all, I believe, advocate the general soundness of Natural Selection. They have had ongoing disagreements about the minutia of how it works, but punctuated equilibrium (Gould & Eldridge) fits quite well within the broader category of Natural Selection (a term, I must point out, that the author dislikes because selection implies a selector, and thusly infers an end goal, while ‘natural’ implies something completely different.)

But I’m dumbfounded at how these concepts are parsed out and then criticized for not being all-encompassing. Like, sexual selection doesn’t work on species that don’t have sex. Yeah, I think I get that. Or that horizontal gene transfer wasn’t accounted for by Darwinsism (the Origin of Species was published years before Mendel’s insights into heredity were – of course it’s wrong in detail).

In all, I really couldn’t shake the feeling that his is looking into the process of science – ideas being formed, hypothesis created, others critique or test the hypothesis – and making it seem like it’s, again, a large conspiracy to snuff out dissenting opinions. I don’t want to be too hard on something I know so little about, but when he started talking about the “morphic fields” that shape the emergence of specialized cells and organs I was struck by how ridiculous it sounded as a possible legitimate contender for a mechanism for evolution. Might as well offered voodoo as a possible means. He offers this up like it’s just as legitimate a possibility without even the slightest hint about how this undetected field might possibly work.

He mentioned that when he submitted the section regarding biological evolution for review from experts, one of the responses he frequently got back was along the lines of “You got your facts right, but don’t seem to understand what they mean.” He seemed to dismiss this out of hand as hubris from the respondents.

I’m kinda sympathetic to that line of thinking from the biologists, I’m not sure what his complaints are about the lack of inclusivity of the mechanisms of evolution. It seems very reasonable that mutations occur and on rare occasions are beneficial. Citing that those occur doesn’t mean Polyploidy never happens and the two mechanisms are incompatible with one another.

Anyway, again, I’m in over my head a bit when we dive into the details, but I’ve not been sold on the idea that the field is in such disarray. As far as I know, Abiogenesis, the leap from unicellular to multi-cellular life, the evolution of sexual reproduction, the rise of consciousness…. These are all areas that are poorly understood. It makes sense that we’d be all over the map coming up with ideas of how those things occurred.

The author’s point is to give a kind of ‘state of the union’ address on these topics, not tear them apart and call them names. He rightly points out that any point of ignorance regarding any detail of evolution is deemed a victory by those religious groups who deny evolution is a real thing, and so a sort of ‘circling of the wagons’ mentality in the field would make sense to me. Like the Cosmology section before, it paints a picture that having honest conversations about the areas of ignorance that lie in a body of knowledge isn’t possible. There is a real danger that other parties will misunderstand, misinform others, and possibly use it as launch pad to insert their claims, based on ideology instead of evidence, into education and governmental policy. It’s scary stuff.

In some ways I feel like his complaints about Cosmology are more intellectually justifiable than his about evolution. His dismissal of Richard Dawkins’ “Selfish Gene” hypothesis seems almost gleefully done as he states authoritatively that it’s logically incompatible with what we know about evolution. I dunno, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s wrong in detail, much the way Darwin’s thoughts about blended characteristics is demonstrably wrong, The Selfish Gene was proposed 40 years ago now. But I also have to confess, of Dawkins’ books specifically about evolution, I’ve only read ‘The Blind Watchmaker,’ ‘Climbing Mount Improbable,’ and ‘An Ancestor’s Tale.’

Alos, ‘An Ancestor’s Tale’ is the best survey of evolution I’ve ever read, just an FYI. I know Dawkins has a bad rep, but he can write some wonderful things about the beauty of nature and the marvels of evolution.

Where was I? I should probably consider winding down here but I have so much more to cover. The book goes on to explore the evolution of consciousness in humans, and the changes that led us to modern humans. He gets very speculative here, odd, I think, given that speculation is sort of frowned upon throughout the book (although, now that I think about it, it’s taking speculative notions and passing them off as legitimate theory that he seems to be railing against).

Third, WHAT IT ALL MEANS That said, I found the section on the evolution of consciousness fascinating – this is such a wide-open area of inquiry that all sorts of things sound plausible given our limited knowledge in the area.

It wasn’t just the rise of consciousness, but a look at the rise in superstition, religion, philosophy & science. I was really into these final sections until he dropped a bombshell that sort of soured me on the whole thing.

And I don’t want to come across as an ass here, but if I do, well, I guess I just do. He briefly detours into a conversation of psychic phenomena, out of body experiences and remote viewing. Basing most of this on research done by the governments in the 70’s. He quotes a person or two that states Psychic phenomena is real and the data backs this up.

Bullshitbullshitbullshit. I would be lying if I pretended I was an expert, or even that knowledgeable on the topic, but it’s sensible that the reason the govt quit sponsoring psychic research was because it was a poor investment (i.e, The Men Who Stare at Goats). I know that all these out-of-body experiences from people that die in an operating room have haven’t passed the only test I’m aware of (which is placards that can only be seen from someone looking down from the ceiling {like, on the back side of surgical lights or something}. If only one person came back from dying on the operating table and said they could read the cards hidden around the room, then yeah, there would be some compelling evidence. But no one has ever done that. Ever. Seems odd).

Five minutes and Google could have dispelled the most common claims of psychic phenomena. I’m not going to ever say that there is absolutely no way it’s not real, but I the James Randi Foundation had a standing million dollar prize for anyone that could demonstrate a psychic ability under controlled conditions. I’m not sure it’s still ongoing (James Randi is quite old these days) but it went unclaimed for DECADES.

And there have been numerous studies, almost always done by true believers within the profession (think of the Bill Murray scene in the first Ghostbuster’s movie) and we still have nothing that goes beyond expected deviations given a large enough sample size.

Example: Famous experiments in the 70’s involving psychics that were done in labs with scientists carefully monitoring concluding this shit was dead-on real. Story closed.

Except the psychic subjects later revealed they were faking it all that had duped the whole of the scientific community using simple magicians tricks (Again, James Randi was involved). Seriously, the evidence presented in this book for exploring this stuff further threatens to undermine everything else he’s written.

I wound up being all over the map in my opinions about this giant book. The author is trying to differentiate what we know from what we believe. It’s tough, and one especially difficult given that he’s talking about things right at the frontiers of knowledge. What we know, what we can know and what we can’t, even in principal, ever know.

I was frustrated, but this was an incredible undertaking. He may be demonstrating some bias (unintentionally, I’m sure) in how he’s filtering and interpreting what he’s investigated. I think he shows both cynicism and gullibility when reviewing data. We all do, but I can almost smell the cognitive biases he puts on display here while trying to be fair and honest.

I’d really like to read a detailed counter-argument to his critiques of the scientific establishment to see if the things I suspect he’s misrepresented or misunderstood are actually errors on his part, or if he’s accurately portrayed the state of our knowledge and the culture that prevents non-orthodox ideas to having a place in the scientific community.

As it stands, I can’t recommend this book to anyone. It was worth the read, at least for me, and it forced me to think about some stuff I’ve not thought about deeply enough – but it shows some errors of logic, in my opinion, in its critique of science and what it can offer as a means of gathering knowledge.

[Mehtap exotiquetv · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Hands unternimmt eine kleine Zeitreise mit dem Leser. Beginnend mit der Entstehungsgeschichte des Universums und welche offenen Fragen wir noch haben und welche Theorien es dazu gibt. Von Big Bang bis zur Evolutionstheorie von Darwin wird alles detailliert in über 790 Seiten zusammengefasst!

Ich bin überrascht über die Argumentationsstruktur des Autors. Bei der Naturgeschichte des Menschen von der Entstehung des Universums bis Heute, hätte ich jetzt nicht eine dauerhafte schizophrene Erklärung erwartet. Einerseits erklärt er alles nüchtern und wissenschaftlich und im anderen Moment artet er in komplett fragwürdige Richtungen aus und wirkt auch sehr pessimistisch. Ich verstehe, dass es natürlich Lücken in sämtlichen Bereichen der Wissenschaft gibt aber das bedeutet doch nicht, dass der wissenschaftliche Ansatz deshalb nicht legitim sei.
Ich habe ehrlich gesagt nicht verstanden, was die Pointe dieses Buches ist, ausser, dass er allem gegenüber skeptisch steht aber wofür er steht, dass konnte man nie erkennen.

Er hat es sich sehr einfach gemacht mit confirmation bias und sich nur die Rosinen gepickt, die seine Ansicht stützen. Ohne seine persönlichen und subjektiven Schlussfolgerungen wäre das Buch eine gute Ansammlung von Themen der Entstehungsgeschichte des Universums, biologische Evolution und die kulturelle Entwicklung gewesen weil es eben auch alternative wissenschaftliche Thoerien in den Vordergrund rückt. Aber leider werten seine persönlichen Ansichten das Buch ab und verschmälern das Leseerlebnis enorm.

Schade.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few months ago, reviewing Noam Chomsky's What Kind of Creatures Are We?, I mentioned I was intrigued by his lecture on "mysterianism" - the scientific quest to compass the limits of what we can know scientifically. John Hands has published a massive set of notes on exactly this topic. It's quite a performance. I picked up this book expecting some kind of summa, analogous maybe to Ken Wilber's 1995 blockbuster Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Cosmosapiens is nothing of the kind. Instead Hands surveys the domains of cosmology, physics, evolutionary biology, philosophy – an ambition that will strike readers as impossible, ludicrous and astonishing. According to Hands all the grand theories of the world are species of imaginative overreach. We really cannot know, at least following the canons of inductive and deductive reasoning, most of we think we know about the history of the cosmos or the evolution of the human species.

His conclusion, which emerges in bits throughout the book, verges on mysticism, similar to Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere or (unmentioned by Hands) Owen Barfield's evolution of consciousness. For me the argument ended exactly where it started to get interesting. Readers' reception will vary.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cosmosapiens is a complex, deep, thought-provoking read that is difficult to sum up.

Learned and provocative are words that come to mind, but so are dense slog.

This is probably another one of those books that many will buy but few will read...cover to cover.

Its agnosticism about science, as a knowledge system, won't help the general reader. Many people are not interested in reading about the limits of knowledge and the human nature of knowing, even in science, that is more about socially constructed realities; politics; career angst, and the politicization of facts and their reception in the scientific world.

Cosmosapiens is an important book but one that is looking in two directions at the same time:

1) How science does not and probably cannot know everything

2) How important science is a way to know the world/universe about us

Mr. Hands, nonetheless, has produced an excellent, if overly long, survey book on the intellectual and political nature of scientific knowledge...but one that is ultimately unsatisfying.

A must read for scientific wonks and committed nerds...others may wish to give it a pass.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a 4-star, 400-page book here, hidden inside a 2-star, 600-page one. The author, John Hands, has clearly done a great deal of research in areas such as cosmology, evolutionary theory, and many other areas of science. He has written a rather readable and coherent summary of the current state of each of these, along with some productive criticism that does fill a void in the current discussion. For example, discussions of cosmology are normally limited to either restatements of the current leading orthodoxy as if it were beyond question, or religious-motivated objections that often amount to little more than 'not everything is completely figured out therefore God'. When Hands points out that inflation (in the cosmological sense), dark matter, dark energy, and the cosmological constant amount to an impressive number of fudge factors (he puts it a little bit more diplomatically), I have to say he has a point. As for the multiverse theory, it is perhaps the greatest violation of Occam's Razor ("More things should not be used than are necessary") imaginable. Clearly there is something going on with the current situation in cosmology, more than just the normal filling in of the details; any theory that needs this many fudge factors to fit the data is missing something fundamental.

His criticisms of current orthodoxy in evolutionary theory, which he calls NeoDarwinism, seem a bit less convincing, in proportion to the greater success of that orthodoxy in explaining currently known data. The avalanche of genetic data in the last 20 years, for example, has helped enormously in filling out the evolutionary tree, and for the most part confirmed it, even though that data was entirely unavailable when the NeoDarwinian synthesis was developed. There are, to be sure, some issues like epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer that add some complexity to the issue, but most evolutionary theorists recognize that, and I think the current orthodoxy is considerably less rigid than Hands gives it credit for. There are also cases like the famous "peppered moth industrial melanism", where Hands is aware of the controversy that attached to the results in the late 20th century, but does not seem to be aware of the fact that it was extensively replicated and validated in the early 21st.

He also finds it inexplicable that humanity's "genetic Eve" could be something like 100,000 years before our "genetic Adam". The reason, however, is not so hard to see, and it is that male genetic lines are more often exterminated (resulting in more older branches of the Y chromosome disappearing altogether, such that the most recent universal male ancestor becomes more recent). It is an uncomfortable result, pointing at a long pre-history of one tribe exterminating all the males of another, then impregnating their females, and it doesn't play into his preferred narrative of a general upward level of cooperation in the universe.

Because, that is Hands' general thesis, although he takes a deucedly long time to get to it. He sees parallels in the bringing together of particles to form matter, the bringing together of atoms and molecules to form life, the bringing together of different forms of life to form macroscopic organisms such as plants and animals, the bringing together of animals to form human societies, and a hoped-for bring together of all societies to form some future more advanced civilization, presumably without the conflict which forms such a part of our current events and past history. It's a grand vision, and there is some validity to it I think, but there are very real objections to be made (e.g. the brutal nature of the NeoDarwinian synthesis, and the brutal nature of much human prehistory that pushed societies to scale up). Hands does a good job of pointing out where the current scientific orthodoxy falls short of its ideals of openness to all data, but he has some blind spots himself.

All of which would be more forgivable, as we all do have blind spots, but he does go on quite a bit too long. It's a big story he's telling, but he stops to recap too often, and I found myself losing patience and skimming towards the end. Then, there is some dabbling in consciousness-as-fundamental-to-the-universe, which for all I know could be true but which seems quite outside the realm of even informed speculation, at this point.

Still, worth reading, if you're interested in seeing a reasonably well-researched outsider's critique of scientific orthodoxy, and you're not too much of a completionist to skim when appropriate. If there is no editor, let the reader be one.

[Martin Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apuesto a que cuando estaban en la escuela primaria o secundaria tenían un compañero sabihondo que siempre le llevaba la contraria a los maestros, demostrándoles que habían caído en algún error (y disfrutaban haciéndolos rabiar)… ¿no? Pues bueno, me da la impresión que John HANDS era uno de esos niños que podía resultar insufrible para los maestros poco pacientes (y también para sus compañeros de clase), y es la fecha que aún no se le quita la costumbre.
Antes de leer este libro, yo daba por sentado que los sabios científicos ya habían aclarado el origen del universo, qué es la vida y cómo surgió en nuestro planeta, y cómo el mecanismo de la evolución por medio de la selección natural dio origen a la diversidad de la Naturaleza, la especie humana incluida… pues resulta que gracias a John HANDS ahora resulta que nada de esto es seguro y que, dada la escasez de evidencias, es poco probable que lleguemos a elucidar plenamente estos y otros aspectos científicos. Al menos, eso es lo que concluye el niño insufrible después de revisar todas las hipótesis y teorías relacionadas con el tema. A lo largo de todo el libro, el autor presenta el estado actual de nuestra comprensión, lo critica y luego presenta una serie de teorías alternas, generalmente no aceptadas por el statu quo, y finalmente sus conclusiones personales, algunas de ellas un tanto descabelladas.
Este es un libro complejo y enormemente ambicioso, y no puede ser de otra manera, si el autor pretende revisar (y cuestionar) lo que “sabemos” sobre la evolución de la humanidad… ¡desde el origen del Universo! La lectura de este libro de páginas grandes y letra pequeña resultó un desafío intelectual de buena magnitud, porque además hay que leerlo con mucha atención porque, desafortunadamente, la edición en español adolece de un sinnúmero de “errores de dedo” y frases erróneas, probablemente debido a una traducción distraída y a una revisión/edición incluso más distraída. Por ejemplo: en la página 293 dice (los subrayados son míos):

”Sin embargo, sondeos llevados a cabo en 2000 en los planetas Halley, Hyakutake y Hale-Bopp mostraron que el hielo de estos cometas…”

¡ups!... Por fortuna, este tipo de errores son evidentes (aunque me cuesta trabajo perdonarlos en un libro de esta naturaleza) y no son demasiados (creo haberme dado de cuenta de unos cuatro a lo largo de todo el libro). Más frecuentes son los errores “de dedo”, que proliferan a lo largo del libro: “Unievrsity”, “las principales ideas sobre la ida” en lugar de “las principales ideas sobre la vida”, “ara” en lugar de “para”, “…los organismos transicionales que Estan peor adaptados…” en lugar de “están”… y así. También me cuesta trabajo perdonar estos detalles, por un lado, porque son numerosos y, por otra parte, porque de repente interrumpen el flujo de la lectura (¿¿¿¿por qué habla de las ideas sobre la “ida”????).
Concluyendo, el alcance total del libro y las descripciones razonablemente imparciales de la ciencia, la historia y la filosofía, hacen de este un libro que vale la pena leer, si estás interesado en conocer un punto de vista diferente respecto a las hipótesis científicas generalmente aceptadas de la evolución humana.

[D.L. Morrese · Rating 2 out of 5]

What are we and why are we here? Humans have been asking these questions throughout recorded history. Before writing came along, I have no doubt they were a topic of conversation around the fire as our ancestors roasted their mammoth steaks.

In the last few centuries, we've been using a new tool, science, to help us find answers, and it has proved remarkably effective. John Hands acknowledges this, but the main focus of Cosmosapiens
The first point is true. Life, the universe, and everything began a very long time ago—almost 14 billion years, judging from the evidence we currently have. Much has happened since then. Science looks for evidence, clues, facts—things that can be observed, analyzed, and measured. The data we gather today can provide good information about the results but not about the causes. Those must be inferred. Imagine you're a detective and your job is to discover who committed a murder. Given a pristine crime scene, a skilled investigator (say someone like Sherlock Holmes) can gather clues and conclusively demonstrate that the murderer was Mr. Green in the library with the wrench. But what if the crime happened a thousand years ago in a house that has since been burned to the ground, razed, replaced, and the plot later razed again to build a parking lot? Multiply the detective's difficulties by whatever astronomical figure you wish, and that's the kind of problem scientists have in discovering the origins of life and the universe. Extracting a conclusive answer from the remaining clues is difficult. Does this mean it's impossible? Of that, I'm not so sure.

Whereas I can appreciate the considerable effort it took to write Cosmosapiens, I can't say that it demonstrates its central thesis, and it's certainly not enjoyable. The prose is stiff, academic, and it does not express either the joy or the enthusiasm for discovery that you find in some popular books on science. On the contrary, it carries a defeatist tone like that of a disillusioned fan over the latest disappointing movie in a once-favorite series.

I have no objection to pointing out open issues, flaws, and inconsistencies in and between current scientific theories. Challenging popular beliefs, theories, and assumptions is a key component of science, after all. But some of the criticisms Hand offers seem exaggerated or a case of picking nits. He also fails to explicitly offer alternatives.

He does, however, imply support for conjectures that, to me, seem dubious at best. One is the idea that 'reflective consciousness' represents a phase change, which he claims is demonstrated by the human ability to ask the questions posed at the beginning of this review. Such questions are so qualitatively different from those that other animals ponder (such as: Where are the best bananas?) that the emergence of our capacity to ask them must have been relatively sudden and is possibly inexplicable by the process of natural selection. I do not find his argument convincing.

I am also left unconvinced by his distinction between superstition and insight, which he seems to offer as an alternative to science for obtaining knowledge. Superstition, which falsly attributes natural events to supernatural causes, and insight, which he defines as 'Seeing clearly the essence of a thing' are, I think, much less distinct than he claims them to be. Insight is a subjective impression, an aspect of intuition, but it does not provide knowledge in the way that science can. Different people in different cultures will interpret their insights differently. One may attribute them to the influence of ancestral spirits. Another to the word of God. A scientist from our age will probably regard his or her insights as possibilities and attempt to develop theories based on them. Insights in and of themselves, do not provide 'direct understanding' in any objective way as he seems to claim.

Another of his less than convincing speculations is the possible existence of 'psychic energy'. No clear definition is offered, but he also infers the existence of a psychic field. This seems ironic in that the first part of the book derides theoretical physicists for posing the existence of alternate universes, dark matter, and other highly speculative notions.

His summaries of, and objections to, existing scientific theories are interesting, and he is quite correct in that they have so far not provided conclusive answers to fundamental philosophical questions about the origins of life and the universe. But science as we currently practice it is still young. Whether you mark its beginning with Galileo or Darwin, it's only been around a short time. But in those few centuries, science has revealed far more useful information than have all of the insights and speculations in our recorded history. Science may not be the only tool available to help us understand our existence, but it has proved to be the best we've ever developed.

[Cj Dufficy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Turgid, patronizing, contradictory, hypocritical, mismatch of title and content. However long and dense and wide ranging a tome this is I must disagree with other reviews which hale the depth and ambition and supposed difficulty to produce. I hazard a guess at the process: a) take the consensus view b) apply arbitrary definitions of your own c) claim failure to succeed within these definitions is a failure of point a not point b, d) repeat until you run out of paper. Afterwards offer the non-consensus view and apply none of the same rigor trying to deceive the reader with false equivalence (reiki, esp etc..). As can be often felt when reading such books those who commissioned the book already knew what the researcher should conclude before he started and he wholeheartedly agreed before sentence was written or evidence reviewed.

There are literally hundreds of examples of failed arguments in this book. But in his own terms he fails to explain the world and humans as we experience them everyday, he completely excludes environmental factors in human progress or why billions are living a modern hunter/forager experience in an urban setting and not producing art or science. He fails to offer an explanation of why the self reflective mind hides its true characteristics so successfully from all but 1/145 near death experiences studied or from the rest of humanity for that matter. Human altruism as an entertainment or low cost phenomenon is easily brushed aside in life or death and political choices where personal survival quickly comes to the fore. His idea of linear progress of cooperation is nonsense ans not at all borne out by the geopolitical world we experience every day where individuals combine in self interest to disadvantage others in pursuit of resources.

I could go on forever but I spent enough time reading this bs to continue thinking about it now.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

One quote came to mind soon after starting this book. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it." The author covers many topics I have a working knowledge of, but even I had a hard time sorting through what he was trying to say. Maybe he should have spent less time putting together this piece of junk and more time actually learning about physics, biology, and even chemistry (the only area of science he has any qualifications in).

I haven't finished, but I can't force myself to read any more. If you like science at all, don't pick up this book. This isn't about human evolution, the origins of the universe, or anything remotely scientific. All it is is an examination of what "orthodox" (my god how pretentious) science has to say about the world around us, why the author thinks that's wrong, and what he, an expert in nothing, thinks is right. It's okay to question what we think we know, but at least put forth an alternative explanation rather than bashing theories you don't understand. When you make any notable contributions in your own field, then I'll listen to what you have to say about someone else's. I can't comprehend how one person could bring themselves to write an entire book on fields of study they know nothing about, bash the theories and ideas those fields put forth, and offer up nothing in their place.

I'm pissed that I was conned into reading even a page of this pseudo-scientific BS masquerading as intelligent examination.

[Steve Harvy · Rating 5 out of 5]

COSMOSAPIENS is possibly the best popular summary of the universe since Stephen Hawking's BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME. Professor Hands is a double barreled threat: He has a high end knowledge of physics and cosmology, biology, neuroscience, and world culture + an unusually clear and powerful style. The overall effect is truly colossal like reading Blake or Milton or listening to Wagner.

COSMOSAPIENS is going to be a classic. This book explains how the original Big Bang theory relates to its Inflationary Model postscript. There are of course many variants of the inflationary universe, but they all have one thing in common: They will all blow your mind! Why should the universe be limited to a mere 13.8 billion light years in every direction? Who can limit the fecundity of God-Nature and who can limit Her scope and range?

This book has every prospect of sinking deep into the popular mind and of remaining there for many many years.

[Nilesh Jasani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cosmosapiens should be read as a different type of "Big History". It strings together three evolutions from the start of time in the universe to Today in human society. The evolutions of matter, life and ideas are explained with a lot of information and tremendous summarizations. The author does a good job (and simultaneously a terrible injustice, described later) in laying out what theories truly explain as well as merely speculate/assume/doubtfully conclude about the phases of these evolutions.

The information work is encyclopedic in scope. Almost every reader is likely to have many "aha" moments when they come across something they have never heard before.

The book must be commended for the structure and the logical flow. Disparate topics are tied well under sensible, novel categorizations. Every chapter, and sets of chapters, are introduced and concluded with hard-hitting, precise messages. The body of the text detail the basis well - mostly through satisfactory summary of the theoretical work underpinning the subjects under consideration. The pace is absolutely hectic given the scope of the work, and one can always complain about the overlooked details as a result. However this is trifling compared to what the book contains and covers.

While the author is tremendous in adding the structure and coherence to a vast body of different type of work, he is almost a different person when airing the flaws of nearly any widely acclaimed theories. He repeatedly sounds bitter while describing their shortcomings (many trivial) while disdainful discussing any of their achievements. The author seems to have a deep-rooted love for underdog theories not accepted by what he sees as the mainstream groups. A small fraction of these rejected ideas are absolutely right, but the way author celebrates them while repeatedly denouncing the accepted wisdom, he appears to yearn for the theoretical world to be run by those seen as loonies by the scholars, who in turn to be thrown out as the arrogant, self-serving, egoistic idiots.

Try answering "the factors that led to Donald Trump as President". Even with all the information on how we got here, no two scholars are likely to agree on any answers propounded. Of course, no models or theories can explain what happened billions of years ago or even a couple of centuries ago except as basic outlines. The smallest model that would explain everything is the universe itself. The rest - whenever looked in detail - will only have inadequacies. As a result, most scientific models will improve over time. Every explanation will raise more questions. Throw in the fact that scientists are individuals building their own reputations, careers etc - most specialists have much more to contribute through criticisms of others' work than constructive of their own.

The author fails to realize - despite his otherwise laudable perspicacity - that the champions of Neo-Darwinian theories or the biggest proponents of the Big Bang are well aware of the flaws highlighted and more. When they reject some alternate hypothesis, they do that on account of lack of sufficient evidences. If every alternate idea were to be tested before rejection, a research budget thousands of times over cannot prove sufficient. Science will continuously be jolted by outside theories every now and then, but still more than 999 out of 1000 of those theories are wrong. The reverse is true about the mainstream ideas: all of them will need modifications over time and none can truly explain even a sliver of the whole, but what they explain as of now is more than anything else. Scientists all agree that all the theories are fallible eventually or outside the narrow contexts assumed.

But for the repeated, needless hammering of the mainstream, the book is a good read for those more interested in the research work summarized.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are many bad reasons to challenge scientific orthodoxy, so it is probably understandable that a lot of its defenders are rather quick to deride critics as cranks, charlatans, shills, fanatics, etc. It's still a shame, though, and I'm always glad to see evidence of serious and agenda-free scepticism. Cosmosapiens is admirably ambitious, and covers plenty of interesting ground. I suspect that some of Hands's criticisms of scientific overconfidence are well-founded.

Unfortunately, Cosmosapiens isn't everything it could have been. Most of Hands's criticisms of scientifix orthodoxy are impossible for me to independently evaluate with any confidence. This is probably inevitable, though I wish he had taken more care to avoid the trap of being sufficiently long-winded to be boring, but still too shallow to convey useful understanding. And there were times, especially later in the book, when it was clear to me that Hands was at best failing to engage deeply with some of the ideas he rejected, and at worst strawmanning them. Which, of course, weakens my confidence in the accuracy and fairness of the other sections.

The sections in which Hands argued in favour of particular conclusions, rather than simply pointing out flaws in mainstream ideas or methods, seemed quite weak to me. I couldn't help but wonder what the sceptical Hands of the first two-thirds of the book would have said of the rather rushed, shallow account he gives of his favoured ideas regarding reflective consciousness, cooperation, complexification, the uniqueness of humanity, and so on.

I don't really blame Hands for running out of steam -- even with all its flaws, researching and writing this book must have been an exhausting task, and he deserves credit for what he did achieve. Perhaps, though, he would have done better to restrict Cosmosapiens to a critical review of scientific orthodoxy. He could then have advanced his own ideas, and defended them in detail, in a separate book. I began by praising Hands's ambition, but ultimately I think he tried to do too much in one go.

The prose, structure etc. are fine, but not good enough to save the book from being quite a slog. (It's very long -- excluding notes, glossary, etc. the page count is <600, but those are large pages and I would guess the word count is closer to what you'd expect from something pushing 1000 pages.)

[Paul Ispas · Rating 5 out of 5]

De mult nu am mai avut o relație cu o carte așa cum am avut cu Cosmosapiens. Hands și-a propus să spună povestea omenirii folosind toate teoriile științifice actuale, de la crearea universului și până la procesele noi de gândire, precum gândirea filozofică și cea științifică, încercând astfel să dea o imagine asupra întrebării ”ce suntem”. Și mie mi se pare că i-a ieșit mai bine decât orcărui alt scriitor care a avut această tentativă.
Am citit câteva critici aduse cărții, și majoritatea sunt critici făcute fără o lectură completă. Mai mult, ideea de a vedea drept pretențioase anumite termene care descriu problemele ideologizării științei mi se pare contraproductiv. Deși John Hands a reușit ce și-a propus legat de istoria teoriilor științifice, a reușit un pic mai mut: critica comunității științifice care, prin granularizarea generată de specializare a ajuns să nu fie capabilă să poarte discuții holistice, ci strict punctuale.
Mă bucur că am citit această minunată lucrare.

[Jon Huxtable · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endorsed by leading scientists and philosophers, COSMOSAPIENS reviews with exceptional clarity for the non-specialist reader the current scientific evidence that shows how we evolved from the earliest matter and energy at the beginning of the universe. In doing so Hands shows how many scientific theories, like the Big Bang and Neo-Darwinism, have become dogma contradicted by observational and experimental evidence. His findings about what we are, where we came from, and why we exist are beautifully argued. (For the record, he dismisses creationism and Intelligent Design.) His conclusions about humankind’s unique possession of reflective consciousness and our ability to control our own evolutionary future are mind-blowing.

[Kevin Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodness gracious, is this ever a dense tome! The premise underlying all this scholarly erudition is: much of what science currently thinks it knows is wrong. Which has been true throughout the history of science, so I'm not sure I needed 600 pages of well-researched exposition to convince me of that. "Wide-ranging" doesn't begin to describe the scope of this book, and "polymath" doesn't begin to describe its author. Mr. Hands elucidates and pokes holes in the prevailing theories of the origin and evolution of the universe, of matter, of life, of humans, and of consciousness. Did I read every word of this book? No, and I doubt you will either, you just don't seem that eggheaded to me, dear reader. Look, this book IS some kind of achievement. But Hands starts out by asking weighty questions about who we are, where we came from and where we are going and finally, 600 pages later, his answer seems to be "Dunno" except he assumes where we're headed has to do with the further evolution of consciousness and the role of collaboration over competition. Was this book a good use of my time? Dunno.

[Sabin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite the book. The author sets out to put humans into the context of the universe. And this one, lengthy volume isn’t nearly long enough for what he ends up doing. It’s not just a review of our current scientific understanding of space, time, life and ourselves, rather it’s a critique of the currently accepted scientific theories about those things. And the author is out for blood. He exposes and criticizes scientific dogmatism in all its forms, from grant committees, peer review journals to school curricula. And himself being outside academia means that he doesn’t give too much care about whom he pisses off. I did feel that some attacks were a bit too heavy-handed, so I’m not sure if maybe there’s a bit of resentment there, a bit like Aesop’s fox. However, this should not be used to undermine his arguments.

So he starts from the very beginning. He questions the big bang hypothesis and the additions needed to make it work, multiverses, inflation and an alternative hypothesis of a quasi-steady-state universe, then he goes on to tackle the theory behind how we understand the formation of the planets and stars, which compound some of the question marks left in previous chapters; then another chunk deals with how organic molecules of more than 13 atoms originated, which could then become the building blocks of life, takes a big swing at neo darwinism and its current model of gradualism in evolution, and accepts Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium on philosophical grounds. He contends that in evolutionary theory the disagreements between the various camps are mostly in the details, but they are further accentuated by believers in creationism and also by the influence that religion and superstition have on the scientists’ own beliefs. Then he moves to the emergence of consciousness in humans to the point when humans engendered reflective consciousness and then the evolution of human thinking through three phases, primitive, philosophical and scientific, followed by a critique of reductionism and the hyperspecialization of scientists. It’s a tall order to fit all these topics and systematize them in a book, even a 700 page book, but the author managed to do an admirable job.

Some of his arguments could rub someone who’s a materialist/physicalist, myself included, the wrong way. I felt that his conclusions about the mind and the brain were a bit too far fetched. So the mind is distinct from the brain, granted. Then we have systems theory which explains emergence in a pretty coherent way, so we could consider that what we call mind emerges from the physical brain. But then we have experience and qualia and the fact that somebody who describes a physical phenomenon like the colour red cannot be said to have experienced the colour red. So the author leaps to the conclusion that the mind cannot emerge from the brain because the physical brain cannot have experiences like the mind has. And, thus, we should be looking for some kind of psychic energy to connect all the dots. But what if we allow for another level of emergence? Let experiences make sense at the level of the mind and the mind make sense at the level of the brain. So I can experience love because I can reflect on that experience by using my brain cells which send electrical signals created by chemical processes engendered by molecules which are held together by an electrostatic force, whose atoms are composed of elemental particles held together by electromagnetic and nuclear forces. For me, one more level of emergence wouldn’t hurt and I’d rather have this than the psychic energy of men who stare at goats. But we don’t know exactly how this works, so I wouldn’t even think about stopping somebody who wants to try out the psychic energy hypothesis. Maybe they can even do science in this field.

But the main point remains, the scientific establishment is rather dogmatic and while this is not the first book that I read where this issue is tackled, Kuhn and Gleiser come to mind, I commend the author for using his bare knuckles to tackle this problem.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this review has a theme, it’s not “evolution”, the actual theme of Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe. More specifically (incoming quote warning, prepare yourself), that book’s focus actually is on that and more: “In recent times, nobody has stepped back from examining the leaf on one branch to see what the whole evolutionary tree is showing us about what we are, where we came from, and why we exist. This quest is an attempt to do just that: to ascertain what science can reliably tell us from systematic observation or experiment about how and why we evolved from the origin of the universe and whether what we are makes us different from all other animals.”

The book of the hour, as you can see, covers a lot. My review though is one of a more modest theme: redemption. It’s very rare for me to DNF a book nowadays. On one hand, one should not keep on reading something one truly dislikes, but on the other, it’s always wise to pick out books that contain at least a modicum of interest to the reader. I felt—six months ago at least—that Cosmosapiens sounded great, but after even that first chapter compounded by the impressive amount of notes and diagrams (70 pages of them), I may have bit off more than I can chew. We can admit we overdid and perhaps then I did just that.

Since then, however, I’ve read several books that tackle the ‘entangled histories of science and religion’ (that should serve as a major hint as to one of them!) and even a few that touched upon the Enlightenment. This time I came prepared and also eager to see a long-form study of evolution from an author who may not be a ‘new atheist’, but definitely seems to have views pretty close to them. Which is kind of ironic when one considers essentially all the founding fathers of science were devoutly religious. They studied the world not to disprove God, but to glorify God. My allegiance more or less lies with them, but I’m always willing to read a viewpoint that may disagree if it’s well thought out and a 700 page book on that subject may fit the bill.

(Reader warning: if you are not into theological talk and just want to read more about the book, skip the next three paragraphs)

Given my religious studies background, I need to spend more time talking about Scripture, something, John Hands touches on right at the beginning and returns to in the book’s penultimate section. On the note of God and the Bible, in chapter one, John Hands brings up an interesting statistic: “63% of Americans believe the Bible is the word of God and literally true.” This, if...ah taken literally...is unfortunate, but most likely it contains shades of gray. He goes on, however, to attempt to disprove the Bible with a smorgasbord of facts on the geological history of the earth, space, and of course, evolution.

What he does not seem to ‘get’ is at least within Judaism, we have many a thinker from as far back as Philo in the 1st century, Maimonides a millennia later, and others who have said in so many words: (and I paraphrase) if Scripture seems to contradict science, Scripture is not wrong, but you may be reading it the wrong way. Thus, if the world is obviously older than 5-6000 years, then it may be wise to view the account in Genesis 1 as a metaphor for the Big Bang, something accepted by most any scientist and also can gel with traditional religious beliefs as a Big Bang needs a Prime Mover.

He actually does address ‘Scripture as metaphor’, but seems to rely on one academic and not the wealth of historical texts that back this up. This did not necessarily dampen my expectations for the nuts and bolts of the book (as you can see with my rating), but it does show he somewhat resembles Richard Dawkins in his slapdash view of religion making him more of what the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks called a “Christian atheist” than anything else (see Not In God’s Name, page 50 eBook). John Hands, agnostic by his own admission in the book’s introduction, can also be grouped here.

Jumping out from Scripture to science, we get a book extremely light on the former and almost cloyingly heavy on the latter. For those not coming from STEM backgrounds, there’s going to be swaths of this book that are going to be tough to digest; Khan Academy this is not. However, the man has a point to make and dare I say an ax to grind. Even early on he brings up a potential issue with the peer review process probably more common within STEM publications than other forms of academia where binary results can quickly invalidate past work: if the editor of the publication has in front of them something that may seem totally sound, but also may invalidate their life’s work, would you still allow it to be published? Again, I am not even an armchair scientist so for the point in question regarding a paper covering our universe’s origin, I can’t say who’s right or not, but an interesting observation nonetheless.

Before even diving into this immense from (super) macro to ultra micro look at evolution and its relationship to mankind, like I sometimes do, I perused some of the reviews. Some loved it, some hated it. In the latter there were those who came from scientific backgrounds and seemed to have found fault with some of the conclusions the author made. Given my background, I’ve no idea who’s right and I won’t even attempt to pick a side; my purpose of reading Cosmosapiens perhaps is different from most (and surely those with heavy STEM backgrounds who found fault!): to gain exposure to various more technical ideas and theories to help flesh out areas of knowledge I was severely lacking in, to perhaps gain a smidgen more interest as well, and to thus perhaps now be keen to read more books on these subjects that beforehand I’d never even attempt to open. In that regard, Cosmosapiens for me was both a huge feat and a huge help.

A ton—and I mean A TON—is covered here. As noted, this is from big to small and not just the physical world, but the philosophical world as well. The chapter on the flow of thinking from day-to-day hunter-gatherer to relating natural phenomena to humanity and also the supernatural during primeval times was an eye-opener. For those deeply religious, the hard science focus of most of it (the ‘soft’ chapters like the one mentioned here may only account for a quarter of the book) along with some uncomfortable yet important observations on the evolution of our own thought deserve deep retrospection. Cosmosapiens is not a call to renounce believing in higher powers; if anything, one can see it as another solid example of the wonderment of God’s creation OR see it as proof it may be all hocus-pocus, atoms and quarks, neutrons and electrons.

[Radu Rafa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read only the first pages, and then renounced reading it because of the amount of errors discovered in such short time. For example, in the very beginning of Chapter 1, he says that people were preoccupied by existential questions for at least 25,000 years. Now this is a controversial affirmation, since the most archaic form of writing dates only 6,000 years ago. So it's really a speculation with no reference.

Just below he says that the empirical method became prominent because of Ch. Darwin. Indeed Ch Darwin contributed to its popularity, but there were other scientist before him who really formulated it - Newton being an example.

In the next chapter he supports the view of 19th century philologist Max Muller who said that one of Rigveda's creation stories dates back to 4000 BC, despite the fact that nowadays the oldest parts of Rigveda ar believed to have been composed at the mid of 2nd millennium BC.

Therefore, there are loads of speculations in this book which claims to promote a scientific view on human evolution. The author is not to blame, because he hitched a task greater than his potency.
Overall, I don't recommend the book, although it is a good example of vast knowledge any human should have.

[mono · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why is this a book? There's only enough original content for a short paper.

Spoilers:
Science can't replace religion and can never explain 'why' we exist.

Critiques:
The reason no earth sized planets have been found is due to limits on telescopes and spectral analysis. We can only detect planets that pass through direct paths in front of stars, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. As technology improves, we'll know more - https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/na...

It's also hard to take the author seriously when they go on about intelligent design, but never mention the Fermi paradox.

The last two chapters are the only worth reading and that's questionable.

[Chuy Ruiz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really just got through it because I don't like leaving books unfinished, and I wanted to see if he wrapped up in some different way than the tone of most of the book. It did not. He is skeptical to a fault. It's almost an approach of "we can't know something with 100% certainty, so we really don't know anything." It's quite a bizarre way to look at things. He bashes "orthodox" science constantly. And proposes that since we can't be sure of something, it may as well be anything. I was impressed with the breadth of topics he covered, and the amount of work that must have gone into this book. But that's about the nicest thing I can say about it.

[Rory Dow]

Absolute masterpiece! I have never read anything that crosses through so many academic schools of thought and with such a constant feedback loop of self reflection. Every assumption is questioned, and the assumptions within that questioned again, until John Hands gets to the roots of what we really just do not know yet. Revealed so many orthodox "truths" that I've been taking as fact. Really would recommend to anyone interested in gleaning some perspective on the scale of what came before us and what there is left to find out.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book and massive piece of intellectual analysis, incredibly well researched. It deals with the limitations of many accepted scientific paradigms with logical analysis of the underlying theories, hypothesis and contentions to demonstrate the limitations with current scientific knowledge. A real tour de force!

I have read some of the negative criticisms and these mostly appear to be from those "scientists" who prefer their own belief systems against empirical data. As Hands points out just believing in a theory is insufficient.

[Mircea Poeana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dimensiunea cosmica" a vietii, de la Geneza pana in momentul actual.
Mai degraba un tratat stiintific, argumentat si fundamentat pana la detaliu, o lucrare de referinta greu de citit, avand in vedere abordarea stiintifica.
De parcurs incet si cu grija de a nu fi coplesit de prezentarile complexe, pentru ca in fond creatia lui John Hands este o calauza luminoasa spre aflarea destinului nostru astral.

[Edward Laauwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not everything John says is true, but the way he writes makes the reader think and judge for himself.

In an era where most writers of books seem to think it is their duty to impose their limited world-view on the masses this book is the exception that helps...really helps.