Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2014. The book surveys the history of humankind from the evolution of archaic human species in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. The account is situated within a framework that intersects the natural sciences with the social sciences.
The book has gathered mixed reviews. While it was positively received by the general public, scholars with relevant subject matter expertise have been very critical of its scientific claims.
Review of 'Summary: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
First feeling: I really enjoyed 99% of this book. The ending, which focuses more on our species' future was less credible, or maybe less well explained.
Second feeling: this ending is meant to make people react. Saying "I don't agree with it" means I don't understand it (yet?)
Third feeling: he's making a lot of future assumptions about things that he says himself may not even come up. Nobody foresaw the internet. So things will very likely end up being quite different from what we expect.
Review of 'Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Endlich fertig! Zwischenzeitlich war ich so am Verzweifeln, dass ich kurz davor war, das Buch abzubrechen.
Den Anfang fand ich noch richtig spannend und aufschlussreich. Mir ist noch nie zuvor der Gedanke gekommen, dass der Homo Sapiens seine anderen "Homo Cousins" ausgerottet haben könnte, wobei das an sich ja eine recht naheliegende Theorie ist.
Dann ging es aber leider stetig bergab und wurde erst wieder im letzten Kapitel wieder spannend.
Oftmals konnte ich mit der Argumentation des Autors nichts anfangen, da sie nicht wirklich schlüssig war und auch schon an der Basis scheiterte. Außerdem war vieles allgemein und ziemlich offensichtlich gehalten. Wenn ich allein an dieses eine lange Kapitel denke, worin er einfach nur beschrieben hat, dass sich die Zukunft nicht vorhersehen lässt... Da krieg ich schon wieder die Krise.
Darüber hinaus driftete es für meinen Geschmack zu häufig ins Philosophische. An sich ja nichts Schlechtes, aber bei diesem Buch …
Endlich fertig! Zwischenzeitlich war ich so am Verzweifeln, dass ich kurz davor war, das Buch abzubrechen.
Den Anfang fand ich noch richtig spannend und aufschlussreich. Mir ist noch nie zuvor der Gedanke gekommen, dass der Homo Sapiens seine anderen "Homo Cousins" ausgerottet haben könnte, wobei das an sich ja eine recht naheliegende Theorie ist.
Dann ging es aber leider stetig bergab und wurde erst wieder im letzten Kapitel wieder spannend.
Oftmals konnte ich mit der Argumentation des Autors nichts anfangen, da sie nicht wirklich schlüssig war und auch schon an der Basis scheiterte. Außerdem war vieles allgemein und ziemlich offensichtlich gehalten. Wenn ich allein an dieses eine lange Kapitel denke, worin er einfach nur beschrieben hat, dass sich die Zukunft nicht vorhersehen lässt... Da krieg ich schon wieder die Krise.
Darüber hinaus driftete es für meinen Geschmack zu häufig ins Philosophische. An sich ja nichts Schlechtes, aber bei diesem Buch hatte ich doch etwas anderes erwatet.
Schlussendlich fand ich den Aufbau bzw. die Gliederung des Buches wenig ansprechend, da ich weder einen thematischen noch chronologischen roten Faden erkennen konnte. Stattdessen springt der Autor von einem Gedanken zum nächsten, was bei mir persönlich nochmal mehr dazu geführt hat, seine Argumentationen anzuzweifeln.
Review of 'Summary: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
An evolutionary perspective with science mixing up with anthropology, politics, culture, religion, biology, economics, history. It's a fascinating read and it made me think about many things and change my world view. It gives us a higher perspective on how we got here and leaves an open question as to why we are here.
Review of 'Summary: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
It is a good overview of world history. I really enjoyed the parts that were new to me. I didn't know the story of the fall of the Aztec Empire. I didn't know that China and India were significantly ahead of Europe economically in 1500 and I didn't know why they failed to jump into the Industrial Revolution. I liked the chapters that explained shifting perspectives.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europeans began to draw world maps with lots of empty spaces – one indication of the development of the scientific mindset, as well as of the European imperial drive. The empty maps were a psychological and ideological breakthrough, a clear admission that Europeans were ignorant of large parts of the world.
Anyone looking at the map and possessing even minimal curiosity is tempted to ask, ‘What’s beyond this point?’ The map gives no answers. It invites the observer …
It is a good overview of world history. I really enjoyed the parts that were new to me. I didn't know the story of the fall of the Aztec Empire. I didn't know that China and India were significantly ahead of Europe economically in 1500 and I didn't know why they failed to jump into the Industrial Revolution. I liked the chapters that explained shifting perspectives.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europeans began to draw world maps with lots of empty spaces – one indication of the development of the scientific mindset, as well as of the European imperial drive. The empty maps were a psychological and ideological breakthrough, a clear admission that Europeans were ignorant of large parts of the world.
Anyone looking at the map and possessing even minimal curiosity is tempted to ask, ‘What’s beyond this point?’ The map gives no answers. It invites the observer to set sail and find out .
But a lot of it was not new to me. I'm interested in these topics! So I've already read much about them on Wikipedia, thought about them, and discussed them with friends and strangers. Many of those friends and strangers had already read Sapiens. So I had already absorbed much of the content.
This seems to be my general problem with non-fiction on topics that I am actively interested in. I've already sought out much of what's in the book and this makes it a bit boring to read. Perhaps I'm drawn to sci-fi and fantasy because they at least guarantee something I haven't seen before.
Only forty years passed between the moment Einstein determined that any kind of mass could be converted into energy – that’s what E = mc² means – and the moment atom bombs obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear power stations mushroomed all over the globe.
Nit: Atom bombs don't convert mass to energy. I expect it will be thousands of years before we can harness E = mc² for energy production. (See "Are Black Hole Starships Possible" for a vision of how this might work.) Of course the statement is easily fixed if we replace Einstein with Marie Curie.
Review of 'Summary: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I'd heard a lot of good about this book, and the start was promising, but then I started to get a little annoyed...
There are natural limitations to a book, and a book like this, taking so broad a subject, must of necessity be superficial and selective, but even so, this one quickly wound up feeling far less a history of humankind, and far more a history of Euro-american humankind. Most annoying conisdering how global a view it started with. And so towards the end I come across bits like this:
"When judging modernity, it is all too tempting to take the viewpoint of a twenty-first century middle-class Westerner. We must not forget the viewpoints of a nineteenth-century Welsh coal miner, Chinese opium addict or Tasmanian Aborigine. Truganini is not less important than Homer Simpson."
And that all sounds very good, and I agree, but I wonder how it is …
I'd heard a lot of good about this book, and the start was promising, but then I started to get a little annoyed...
There are natural limitations to a book, and a book like this, taking so broad a subject, must of necessity be superficial and selective, but even so, this one quickly wound up feeling far less a history of humankind, and far more a history of Euro-american humankind. Most annoying conisdering how global a view it started with. And so towards the end I come across bits like this:
"When judging modernity, it is all too tempting to take the viewpoint of a twenty-first century middle-class Westerner. We must not forget the viewpoints of a nineteenth-century Welsh coal miner, Chinese opium addict or Tasmanian Aborigine. Truganini is not less important than Homer Simpson."
And that all sounds very good, and I agree, but I wonder how it is that Harari managed to not take his own advice...
I am also left with the feeling that Harari overly romanticises the pre-Agricultural hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but also pre-Industrial societies. Certainly the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions were highly disruptive and brought many disadvantages, but sitting here in the comfort of a stable, 21st century democracy, it's hard not to see the advantages those revolutions have brought. Vaccines, for starters.
Then, looking at the future, the rise of information technology, the possibility of artificial intelligence:
"What is a spaceship compared to an eternally young cyborg who does not breed and has no sexuality, who can share thoughts directly with other beings, whose abilities to focus and remember are a thousand times greater than our own, and sho is never angry or sad, but has emotions and desires that we cannot begin to imagine?
Science fiction rarely describes such a future, because an accurate description is by definition incomprehensible."
I recommend Harari try reading Isaac Asimov. "I, Robot" and "Bicentennial Man" do not match the above description (robots vs. cyborgs), but they do imagine a future where AI has developed to the point of taking on a life of its own.
So, "Sapiens" gets off to a promising start, but quickly descends into a glib, superficial, eurocentric disappointment.
Let's give the biggest pat on the back to Western capitalists as the pinnacle of all human efforts for 70,000 years. Certainly, this was our goal all along. From here it pretty much just goes to hell.
I really need to add to Kate's review only this: "... the exception that proves the rule..." is used three times in this text. It's not just a rhetorical nuisance when you're an academic theorizing on broad organizational laws. Exceptions, without exception, disprove rules.
Oh, and Great Britain and Gandhi don't get equal credit for Indian independence. That's straight-up bullshit, right there.
Review of 'Summary: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This history of mankind starts out with a bang, reminding us that the truths we hold self-evident are imagined, and seems like an introduction to cultural anthropology presented as a history with economics and assorted other social science ideas thrown in. It becomes less focused as it progresses and sometimes seems less like the work of an Israeli history professor and more like hot air from the guy next to you at the bar. Harari brings up the old saw that Communism and Capitalism are essentially religions. He mentions the term syncretism to describe how people run their religious ideas together as it pleases them, but he seems to take the Nazi's (another religion) "tenets" at face value as if people always followed them for something besides being coerced or for their own self-interest or for some other reason having nothing to do with some psychopath's tenets. If he mentions …
This history of mankind starts out with a bang, reminding us that the truths we hold self-evident are imagined, and seems like an introduction to cultural anthropology presented as a history with economics and assorted other social science ideas thrown in. It becomes less focused as it progresses and sometimes seems less like the work of an Israeli history professor and more like hot air from the guy next to you at the bar. Harari brings up the old saw that Communism and Capitalism are essentially religions. He mentions the term syncretism to describe how people run their religious ideas together as it pleases them, but he seems to take the Nazi's (another religion) "tenets" at face value as if people always followed them for something besides being coerced or for their own self-interest or for some other reason having nothing to do with some psychopath's tenets. If he mentions evolutionary psychology, it is in passing. Harari spends some time discussing our knowledge of the neurotransmitters associated with happiness, but he says, "In addition, most biologists are not fanatics. They maintain that happiness is determined mainly by biochemistry, but they agree that psychological and sociological factors also have their place." To me, this shows a misunderstanding of the whole business. The neurotransmitters are a gross or high-level mechanism that is correlated with some behavior or feeling. They do not preclude any particular associated sociological factor. I wonder if the biologists that he thinks are fanatics, are the ones who would tell him that eventually (if the grant money holds up) all brain activity will be reduced to its physical mechanisms.
Review of 'Summary: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Extremely delightful read. One of the best books I have read in the recent times. It is very provocative in its arguments. Author intentionally paints the picture in extreme broad strokes, which is making it fun to read. Now it is up to me to read in details about the topics and more books to get more nuances.
