A Foot in the River

Why Our Lives Change - and the Limits of Evolution

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

$50.95

Hardback

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English

Oxford University Press
20 October 2015

History; Social & cultural history; History of science; Taxonomy & systematics; Zoology & animal sciences

We are a weird species. Like other species, we have a culture. But by comparison with other species, we are strangely unstable: human cultures self-transform, diverge, and multiply with bewildering speed. They vary, radically and rapidly, from time to time and place to place. And the way we live - our manners, morals, habits, experiences, relationships, technology, values - seems to be changing at an ever accelerating pace. The effects can be dislocating, baffling, sometimes terrifying. Why is this?

In A Foot in the River, best-selling historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto sifts through the evidence and offers some radical answers to these very big questions about the human species and its history - and speculates on what these answers might mean for our future. Combining insights from a huge range of disciplines, including history, biology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, sociology, ethology, zoology, primatology, psychology, linguistics, the cognitive sciences, and even business studies, he argues that culture is exempt from evolution. Ultimately, no environmental conditions, no genetic legacy, no predictable patterns, no scientific laws determine our behaviour. We can consequently make and remake our world in the freedom of unconstrained imaginations.

A revolutionary book which challenges scientistic assumptions about culture and how and why cultural change happens, A Foot in the River comes to conclusions which readers may well find by turns both daunting and also potentially hugely liberating.

By: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 223mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 488g
ISBN: 9780198744429
ISBN 10: 0198744420
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 20 October 2015
Audience: College/higher education , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: The Weird Planet ; 1. Challenging Change ; 2. The Frustration of Science ; 3. The Great Re-Convergence ; 4. The Chimpanzees' Tea Party ; 5. The Limits of Evolution ; 6. The Imaginative Animal ; 7. Facing Acceleration ; 8. Towards the Planet of the Apes ; Afterword: In the Vatican Garden ; Notes ; Index

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is the William P. Reynolds Professor of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. His work has been recognized as pioneering across a very wide range of fields, including global history, environmental history, colonial history, maritime history, religious history, art history, the history of ideas, Mediterranean history, Spanish history, American history, the history of cartography, and the history of language. He has published numerous best-selling history books, including Civilizations, Millennium, 1492: The Year Our World Began, and Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration, also published by Oxford University Press, which was awarded the World History Association Prize.

Reviews for A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change - and the Limits of Evolution

A mix of wide and deep learning and rigorous argument, beautifully written ... [a] delightful and indispensable book. John Gray, Literary Review

Winner of Shortlisted for the British Academy's 2017 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.

PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

A Foot in the River

Why Our Lives Change - and the Limits of Evolution

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

$50.95

Hardback

Reviews for A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change - and the Limits of Evolution

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