Product Description
Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends--and their amazing links to recent discoveries.
"A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday...It's a delight."
THE NEW YORK TIMES

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 65 reviews)

A must read book

Along with the Demon Haunted World, also by Carl Sagan, it tells a story that we all need to know and understand. Take the time to read both.
September 28, 2008

One fo the best, and most important books ever written

I first read this book decades ago when I was teaching Psychology, and I am still recommending it today. It is, in my option, one of the best books ever written, bar none. If someone were to come to me and say they can't afford the time or cost of going to college or grad school, but want to get to the marrow without gnawing on the bone, this is one of the first books I would recommend. It is readable, entertaining, and accessible even for someone who doesn't have a background in the field, and is written at the level of the intelligent layman. While there are a few minor things I would quibble with, the book has held up well in being able to paint the Big Picture, and the rich tapestry of this work is a work of art that will be respected for generations. It will make sense of so many things that the reader will be wildly entertained, and end up with surprisingly sophisticated (and painless) understanding of evolutionary neurophysiology. It will help anyone who wants to better understand how any creature with a brain functions, and how different evolutionary conditions produced the hardware, how it evolved over time, and the principles that will affect the future evolution of all species. This book has my very highest recommendation.
September 14, 2008

Great Book

This is a great book to read. A lot of it is speculation. The decision is left up to the reader. Learned a lot of things about evolution in general. I'd say it's definitely a must read if your a biology fan.
February 18, 2008

The Dragons of Sagan

This is an instructive and entertaining book, but there is an underlying philosophical message that the reader needs to be aware of.

"The Dragons of Eden" is based on a theory that divides the human brain into three concentric layers that have evolved over millions of years, with each successive layer corresponding to a level in our evolutionary history. This may be a useful model, but it also lends itself to being misused as the basis for a narrow view that looks down upon the role of the older parts of the brain and exaggerates the status of the neocortex. Such a misuse is exactly what Sagan is guilty of. Instead of emphasizing the interplay between the three areas of the brain, which allows us to balance reason with emotion and instinct, he takes the model and twists it to suit his overly rational view of human nature.

His is a negative, Freudian view of the unconscious. But whereas Freud stressed the misunderstood importance of these functions, Sagan merely stresses their primitive aspect. For example, he feels that dreams and sleep are a holdover from our evolutionary past. They are a period when the reptilian brain comes alive, takes over, and turns what is by day a well-ordered and rationally supervised operation into a nighttime playground of bizarre symbolism, illogical foolishness, and disguised sexuality. It bothers him that he has such weak linguistic skills in his dreams and that he can't even perform simple arithmetical calculations. He openly confesses his admiration for those unusual individuals who seem to need only two or three hours of sleep a night. In fact, one suspects that Sagan would ideally have humans living totally in the waking world of the neocortex, although it is very unappealing to contemplate a machine-like mind that never turns off and lets the unpredictable and creative unconscious take over, giving it free rein to roam, do the impossible, and experience exhilarating or frightening things.

Sagan idealizes the cerebral cortex as a logical, computer-like operation, and he seems to have an aversion toward the primitive depths of the mind. Who knows what beasts may lurk there? And yet his book itself is proof of how we use rational arguments to justify underlying attitudes and impulses. The impression one gets is that a conflict between cool intellect and emotional passion or obsession is present in Sagan's own complex personality. This was sublimated into a drive to become a proselytizer for science, to the point where popularizing almost turns into evangelicizing, or something even worse. Not content with merely spreading the news of the good works of science, Sagan seems overly preoccupied with stamping out the heresy of "pseudo-science"-- a category that naturally includes such things as astrology.

This self-righteous posture might have been appropriate a century or two ago, as a reaction to the repression that the young field of science had to endure and overcome, but that is well behind us now. The fact is that our romance with science has ended and the marriage has begun. The crusade is long over and the infidels have been converted, but Sagan on his Quixotic quest seems oblivious to this, and so what is left for a knight to do but fight imaginary enemies or dragons. But before we add the name of Sagan to Sigurd and Siegfried, perhaps we should remember than no matter how many times the dragon was slain in the past, it always seemed to emerge somewhere else in another form, as various legends contributed to the gradual evolution of its features and character.

And just as every Eden or idyllic kingdom requires its dragon, so does the rational mind need its irrational unconscious. The more safe, sane, and sterile we make our world, the more we create the need for that which is dangerous, disruptive, and beyond our control. The dragon may be fictitious,but what it symbolizes is something real, something that is a part of human nature. Better to be accepted as such, then denied and made into something external that is fiercely suppressed until the day when, grown immense and unrecognizable, it suddenly rears its head, like the huge mushroom cloud rising above a leveled city.

Entropy and Alchemy: The Problem of Individuality in an Age of Society

November 10, 2007

A Great Book by Carl Sagan

The first time I read Dragons of Eden was about thirty years ago. I enjoyed the book more this time because I have a better understanding of computers and neuroanatomy. This is a great book for a student to learn the evolution of the human brain from it's reptilian origins.
July 21, 2007

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan

Cosmos
by Carl Sagan

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
by Carl Sagan
by Ann Druyan

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan