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The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human
An “absorbing” look at how our species evolved, from the curator of human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History (Kirkus Reviews).What makes us so different from those other animals? How did we get this way? How do we know? And what exactly are we? These questions are what make human evolution a subject of general fascination. Ian Tattersall, one of those rare scientists who is also a graceful writer, addresses them in this delightful book.Tattersall leads the reader around the world and into the far reaches of the past, showing what the science of human evolution is up against—from the sparsity of evidence to the pressures of religious fundamentalism. Looking with dispassion and humor at our origins, Tattersall offers a wholly new definition of what it is to be human.“Unparalleled insight.” —Donald C. Johanson, author of The Beginnings of Humankind
183 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2001
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September 1, 2019
Lively, interesting, but not entirely objective
There are eight essays. The first one, "What's So Special about Science?" explains to the general reader what science is and what it isn't. One of the points Tattersall makes is that "scientists are emphatically not...steadily building up a picture of the truth." (p. 8) Instead, "the solution of one scientific problem regularly leads to the identification of others...," so that the "successful climbing of an intellectual summit has always revealed new peaks beckoning beyond." (p. 7) Tattersall adds on page 30 that "science is a system of provisional knowledge" that "does not seek to understand ultimate causation..."
In the second essay, "Evolution: Why So Misunderstood?" Tattersall argues that many people think that science is an "authoritarian" system that "produces axioms that are unchanging for the ages." Consequently science runs afoul of other authoritarian (read: religious) systems that feel threatened from without. I think this is a good argument, but I think it is also the case that evolution is so incredibly complex that it is not easy to understand or appreciate. Tattersall writes on page 29 that "The notion of evolution is, after all, a pretty simple one..." Yes, the notion is relatively simple, so simple that Thomas Henry Huxley exclaimed, "How very stupid of me not to have thought of that!"; but after the notion comes an amazing, really stupefying mass of complexities. In truth very few people really understand even the basics of evolution beyond the initial idea. And within the ranks of the experts there are endless arguments.
The next two essays, "The Monkey in the Mirror"and "Human Evolution and the Art of Climbing Trees" reminds us that monkeys cannot recognize their reflections in the mirror, but that we and the chimpanzees can. Here Tattersall gives us his view on consciousness and its evolution based primarily on evidence from the fossil record. Tattersall's position is highly tentative and emphasizes how little we really know.
In the next chapter, "The Enigmatic Neanderthals" Tattersall sums up what we know about the Neanderthals and what happened to them. I was interested to notice that his ideas are not far removed from those presented fictionally many years ago by William Golding in his novel The Inheritors, namely that we somehow, probably by violent force, brought the big and strong Neanderthal to extinction. Golding (and the evolutionists of his day) emphasized the murderously deceptive mentally agile of homo sapiens as the decisive factor while Tattersall believes the jury is still out on exactly why they disappeared. Another possibility is that our diseases killed them, but most probably it was a combination of factors that led to their demise.
The final three essays attempt to account for our "humanity" and where we might go from here. Tattersall makes the very important point that speciation can only occur in isolated populations; consequently our population being both six billion strong and in full interaction, there is little prospect, barring catastrophe, for our further evolution. He writes, "the trend is exactly the opposite to what is required for any meaningful evolutionary change..." (p. 190) Of course there is cultural evolution to consider, a subject that Tattersall understandably does not address in a collection of essays on biological evolution. For some ideas about what may become of us through cultural evolution see, Pierre Baldi's The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution (2001) or Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999).
I have a couple of bones to pick (if you will) with Tattersall. First there is the little matter of attributing to Shakespeare the famous phrase "nasty, brutish and short" (p. 170) in describing human life in the wild. As most political and social science majors know, the phrase is from the Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes. Also, even appreciating that Tattersall is taking a causal tone here and forsaking the sort of scientific rigor and fairness shown in more academic tomes, there is no excuse for this from page 50, "Much of the discussion of adaptations doesn't even have...[some minimal basis in empirical fact], as we will discover when we look at the arrogant pseudo-science of evolutionary psychology in a later essay."
Tattersall does take a quick look at evolutionary psychology in a later essay, but in no way does he support his dismissive charge or even indicate just who or what it is that is "arrogant." It is especially distressing to note that Tattersall throughout this book again and again prefaces his suppositions with words like "It seems reasonable to conclude..." or something similar (see for example, pages 96 and 98) yet he denigrates evolutionary psychology for no greater crime than drawing reasonable conclusions. He writes that his argument with evolutionary psychology is in its undue reliance of genetics (beginning on page 170), but actually the power of evolutionary psychology comes not from assigning behaviors to genes, but from drawing insights into our behavior from the process of evolution and from the behavior of other animals. From that evidence, it is reasonable to conclude any number of things, and they are worth noting, even if there is no way they can be proven, anymore than a host of Tattersall's conclusions about human evolution can be proven.
Furthermore he accuses (again unnamed) evolutionary psychologists of "defending rape as an adaptive behavior..." (p. 178). I personally know of no evolutionary psychologist who would do such a thing. Why doesn't Tattersall name one? What evolutionary psychology is saying is not that rape can be defended. It can't. But that there are evolutionary reasons for its existence. This is quite a different statement. There are evolutionary reasons for murder, etc., but in recognizing them, that does not mean we are "defending" them or are in any way in agreement with them anymore than Tattersall is in agreement with what we presumably did to the Neanderthal.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
There are eight essays. The first one, "What's So Special about Science?" explains to the general reader what science is and what it isn't. One of the points Tattersall makes is that "scientists are emphatically not...steadily building up a picture of the truth." (p. 8) Instead, "the solution of one scientific problem regularly leads to the identification of others...," so that the "successful climbing of an intellectual summit has always revealed new peaks beckoning beyond." (p. 7) Tattersall adds on page 30 that "science is a system of provisional knowledge" that "does not seek to understand ultimate causation..."
In the second essay, "Evolution: Why So Misunderstood?" Tattersall argues that many people think that science is an "authoritarian" system that "produces axioms that are unchanging for the ages." Consequently science runs afoul of other authoritarian (read: religious) systems that feel threatened from without. I think this is a good argument, but I think it is also the case that evolution is so incredibly complex that it is not easy to understand or appreciate. Tattersall writes on page 29 that "The notion of evolution is, after all, a pretty simple one..." Yes, the notion is relatively simple, so simple that Thomas Henry Huxley exclaimed, "How very stupid of me not to have thought of that!"; but after the notion comes an amazing, really stupefying mass of complexities. In truth very few people really understand even the basics of evolution beyond the initial idea. And within the ranks of the experts there are endless arguments.
The next two essays, "The Monkey in the Mirror"and "Human Evolution and the Art of Climbing Trees" reminds us that monkeys cannot recognize their reflections in the mirror, but that we and the chimpanzees can. Here Tattersall gives us his view on consciousness and its evolution based primarily on evidence from the fossil record. Tattersall's position is highly tentative and emphasizes how little we really know.
In the next chapter, "The Enigmatic Neanderthals" Tattersall sums up what we know about the Neanderthals and what happened to them. I was interested to notice that his ideas are not far removed from those presented fictionally many years ago by William Golding in his novel The Inheritors, namely that we somehow, probably by violent force, brought the big and strong Neanderthal to extinction. Golding (and the evolutionists of his day) emphasized the murderously deceptive mentally agile of homo sapiens as the decisive factor while Tattersall believes the jury is still out on exactly why they disappeared. Another possibility is that our diseases killed them, but most probably it was a combination of factors that led to their demise.
The final three essays attempt to account for our "humanity" and where we might go from here. Tattersall makes the very important point that speciation can only occur in isolated populations; consequently our population being both six billion strong and in full interaction, there is little prospect, barring catastrophe, for our further evolution. He writes, "the trend is exactly the opposite to what is required for any meaningful evolutionary change..." (p. 190) Of course there is cultural evolution to consider, a subject that Tattersall understandably does not address in a collection of essays on biological evolution. For some ideas about what may become of us through cultural evolution see, Pierre Baldi's The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution (2001) or Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999).
I have a couple of bones to pick (if you will) with Tattersall. First there is the little matter of attributing to Shakespeare the famous phrase "nasty, brutish and short" (p. 170) in describing human life in the wild. As most political and social science majors know, the phrase is from the Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes. Also, even appreciating that Tattersall is taking a causal tone here and forsaking the sort of scientific rigor and fairness shown in more academic tomes, there is no excuse for this from page 50, "Much of the discussion of adaptations doesn't even have...[some minimal basis in empirical fact], as we will discover when we look at the arrogant pseudo-science of evolutionary psychology in a later essay."
Tattersall does take a quick look at evolutionary psychology in a later essay, but in no way does he support his dismissive charge or even indicate just who or what it is that is "arrogant." It is especially distressing to note that Tattersall throughout this book again and again prefaces his suppositions with words like "It seems reasonable to conclude..." or something similar (see for example, pages 96 and 98) yet he denigrates evolutionary psychology for no greater crime than drawing reasonable conclusions. He writes that his argument with evolutionary psychology is in its undue reliance of genetics (beginning on page 170), but actually the power of evolutionary psychology comes not from assigning behaviors to genes, but from drawing insights into our behavior from the process of evolution and from the behavior of other animals. From that evidence, it is reasonable to conclude any number of things, and they are worth noting, even if there is no way they can be proven, anymore than a host of Tattersall's conclusions about human evolution can be proven.
Furthermore he accuses (again unnamed) evolutionary psychologists of "defending rape as an adaptive behavior..." (p. 178). I personally know of no evolutionary psychologist who would do such a thing. Why doesn't Tattersall name one? What evolutionary psychology is saying is not that rape can be defended. It can't. But that there are evolutionary reasons for its existence. This is quite a different statement. There are evolutionary reasons for murder, etc., but in recognizing them, that does not mean we are "defending" them or are in any way in agreement with them anymore than Tattersall is in agreement with what we presumably did to the Neanderthal.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
May 6, 2017
I only give this 2 stars because the author argues the case for a theory of evolution called punctuated equilibrium. This view is that animal species stay constant for long periods of time and then change suddenly. The original theory of Darwin is that species change on a continuous gradual basis.
The problem is the fossil record is too incomplete to tell which theory is true. Given a lack of evidence I go with Darwin.
This book is about the evolution of humans and how we got our large brains and killed off the Neanderthals. The author argues the Neanderthals were a completely different species from us with whom we could not possibly interbreed. The book came out just before it was found that 5% of our genes are from interbreeding with the Neanderthals.
So just 2 stars here for bad science from this author.
The problem is the fossil record is too incomplete to tell which theory is true. Given a lack of evidence I go with Darwin.
This book is about the evolution of humans and how we got our large brains and killed off the Neanderthals. The author argues the Neanderthals were a completely different species from us with whom we could not possibly interbreed. The book came out just before it was found that 5% of our genes are from interbreeding with the Neanderthals.
So just 2 stars here for bad science from this author.
December 20, 2017
Some of the essays were more interesting than other. There were some little nuggets of information that I enjoyed, but I think I'll have to read something more substantial by Tattersall. As such it's a nice way to get acquainted with his style and some of the views he holds.
August 15, 2022
This is a mix of essays so there is little depth. However, some of the essays are interesting. I'm not sure I agree with everything but Tattersall always educates.
July 15, 2013
This year I have read several science-for-mass-audiences books written by scientists, and this, published in 2002, was the most up-to-date. I bought it hot-off-the-presses, on the strength of an excerpt published in SciAm the previous year, and then entered grad school and didn't get around to it until now. It's good, but in some ways it wasn't what I was hoping it would be.
Like the others I’ve read recently, the book is a collection of relatively brief essays relating to Tattersall’s area of expertise: In this case, humanoid evolution and paleo-anthropology. The structure of the book is general-to-specific. He starts with a few essays defending and explaining science itself and the science of evolution to an audience that is likely to have been exposed to spurious arguments against and common misconceptions about both. He then moves more specifically into discussion of primates and the evolution of hominids, and finally to articles on human distinctiveness and how recent genetic studies relate to what we know of primate evolution. The final essay, common in this genre, is a consideration of the future.
So first of all, what’s to like? The excerpt I read that drew me in all those years ago was about the human development of language and symbolic cognition, and this still strikes me as a strong argument. As someone interested in the question of what is unique about human consciousness and how consciousness can be defined and seen to have arisen on Earth, this is a vital discussion to me, with implications that go far beyond the practical applications of science and to our identity and the “meaning of life,” so-called. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much here I hadn’t already seen. It seems to me as though Tattersall teases us by suggesting that scientific understanding of consciousness can ultimately eliminate the falsities of (past) religion, but ultimately can’t deliver and so admits that some aspects of our conscious selves may be beyond scientific analysis.
Another good bit is his consideration of the Neanderthals, who once shared parts of the Earth with our human or proto-human ancestors, but were ultimately destroyed, quite possibly due to deliberate human actions to eliminate competitors. Here too, Tattersall approaches, then backs away from, a brink. The implication of what he is saying is that humanity was born in an act of genocide against a closely related species, paralleling the vast destruction of species by human action which has followed. But, even though he hints at this occasionally, he seems to want to leave his audience the “out” of believing that the competition may have been of a more benign nature and, although he claims to examine the “darker side of our species,” the result is a rather sanitized version of ethnic cleansing through “genetic swamping.”
Apart from this, other flaws in the book include its lack of an index or any kind of citations or references – even so much as a one page list of recommended reading would have enhanced its pedagogical value. It is also quite short, being published in a large, visually-impared-friendly typeface that extended its length to barely over 200 “pages” which contain less than half of the text one expects to see on a page. Much of the material, therefore, consists of interesting but undeveloped ideas that would have benefitted from further analysis. Either Tattersall or his publisher seems to have underestimated the reading audience in presenting this material in so unformed a manner, although there are definitely some provocative ideas here and some excellent arguments to use when the forces of anti-science or simple ignorance misrepresent evolution and genetics.
Like the others I’ve read recently, the book is a collection of relatively brief essays relating to Tattersall’s area of expertise: In this case, humanoid evolution and paleo-anthropology. The structure of the book is general-to-specific. He starts with a few essays defending and explaining science itself and the science of evolution to an audience that is likely to have been exposed to spurious arguments against and common misconceptions about both. He then moves more specifically into discussion of primates and the evolution of hominids, and finally to articles on human distinctiveness and how recent genetic studies relate to what we know of primate evolution. The final essay, common in this genre, is a consideration of the future.
So first of all, what’s to like? The excerpt I read that drew me in all those years ago was about the human development of language and symbolic cognition, and this still strikes me as a strong argument. As someone interested in the question of what is unique about human consciousness and how consciousness can be defined and seen to have arisen on Earth, this is a vital discussion to me, with implications that go far beyond the practical applications of science and to our identity and the “meaning of life,” so-called. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much here I hadn’t already seen. It seems to me as though Tattersall teases us by suggesting that scientific understanding of consciousness can ultimately eliminate the falsities of (past) religion, but ultimately can’t deliver and so admits that some aspects of our conscious selves may be beyond scientific analysis.
Another good bit is his consideration of the Neanderthals, who once shared parts of the Earth with our human or proto-human ancestors, but were ultimately destroyed, quite possibly due to deliberate human actions to eliminate competitors. Here too, Tattersall approaches, then backs away from, a brink. The implication of what he is saying is that humanity was born in an act of genocide against a closely related species, paralleling the vast destruction of species by human action which has followed. But, even though he hints at this occasionally, he seems to want to leave his audience the “out” of believing that the competition may have been of a more benign nature and, although he claims to examine the “darker side of our species,” the result is a rather sanitized version of ethnic cleansing through “genetic swamping.”
Apart from this, other flaws in the book include its lack of an index or any kind of citations or references – even so much as a one page list of recommended reading would have enhanced its pedagogical value. It is also quite short, being published in a large, visually-impared-friendly typeface that extended its length to barely over 200 “pages” which contain less than half of the text one expects to see on a page. Much of the material, therefore, consists of interesting but undeveloped ideas that would have benefitted from further analysis. Either Tattersall or his publisher seems to have underestimated the reading audience in presenting this material in so unformed a manner, although there are definitely some provocative ideas here and some excellent arguments to use when the forces of anti-science or simple ignorance misrepresent evolution and genetics.
March 22, 2014
Ian Tattersall shows a natural ability to convey information in a way that is easy to understand. The best part of the book was the introduction, where the author reminds us the importance of science. He clears the confusion that many people have about scientific research by pointing out that science is all about approximation: getting closer to the truth. Each chapter is written in a coherent and structured way taking us from the beginning of hominid emergence and finishing of at the Cro-Magnons (modern humans).
Throughout the text, however, Tattersall does seem to repeat information. In a way, I do appreciate it since I can definitely see how it would benefit a novice reader or someone who wants to brush up their knowledge re evolution. On the other hand, to an avid reader of the subject, the repititions may become cumbersome.
I look forward to reading other work from the author!
Throughout the text, however, Tattersall does seem to repeat information. In a way, I do appreciate it since I can definitely see how it would benefit a novice reader or someone who wants to brush up their knowledge re evolution. On the other hand, to an avid reader of the subject, the repititions may become cumbersome.
I look forward to reading other work from the author!
February 16, 2008
This book brought up interesting and important topics that are not only important to humans and how they developed, but with developements of our ancestors, monkeys. However, I thought it was an ok book becuase it didn't always keep my attention. I found that there wasn't a hook to draw me into focusing and to keep me reading staright through the book for one sitting. At the same time, it is good to keep in mind that these are a series of scientific/antropoligst essays and not a tv. drama. It is not meant to entertain, it is meant to educate us as well as give us a different persepectives for those who believe in evolution.
March 23, 2012
i found this book very odd, because on the one hand it's very well written and on a subject i'm extremely interested in, but on the other hand i found myself constantly bored, with my mind scattering away from the page. that's not to say that there aren't interesting insights, and some extremely well-worded explanations and turns of phrase -- there are -- but most of the time i just felt bogged down.
January 17, 2009
Great book. Changed my understanding of how evolution happens. New word - exaptation - Basically, the process by which a random mutation (which may hang around unused for 100,000's of years)suddenly becomes "useful". A prime example being our big brains. Which is why I qualified useful with quotes!!! Clearly written, accessible science.
December 8, 2010
After reading Tattersall's short book of essays, I want to read more of him. He makes a good deal of sense in what he says, so much so that a single essay has me rethinking my acceptance of much of what "evolutionary psychology" claims about human behavior.
February 4, 2012
Dr Tattersall writes well, though frequently quite dry, and mixes in a surprising amount of sardonic humor.
May 11, 2014
3.5 stars, rounded to 4.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews