Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari, 2015 HarperCollins 464 pp. ISBN-13: 097 Summary One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? One hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was just one of a number of different human species, all competing for supremacy. Just as today we see different species of bears or pigs, there were different species of humans. In Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari provides sources for some of the information cited. He is committed to adding to this list on an ongoing basis, to cover as much of the book as possible. An up to date set of references can be found on this page.
Sapiens A Brief History Of Humankind Summary
*Sapiens Book Sparknotes
*Sapiens Book Summary
*Sapiens 1 Page Summary Of The Hunger Games
*Sapiens 1 Page Summary Of RulesSummary
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Hebrew: קיצור תולדות האנושות , Ḳitsur toldot ha-enoshut) 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. Peugot, the automobile company, is an example of a myth.Set up in 1896 as a small family business, it is now one of Europe’s oldest (and largest) carmakers. Most of its 200,000 employees are strangers; yet they cooperated to make more than 1.5 million cars, earning revenues of about 55 billion euros in 2008.
Chapter 5, the beginning of Part Two, describes the Agricultural Revolution. Approximately 10,000 years ago, sapiens began manipulating plants and animals on a large scale. Through the process of domestication, they gradually selected species that were ideal for cultivation and further refined them through selective breeding. This process occurred independently in several locations on Earth. The resulting crops and livestock still serve as the primary source of sapien diet. While agriculture created a far more abundant food source, Harari argues that it was ultimately detrimental to those who practiced it. By reducing their varied diet to a few staple crops, sapiens became less healthy and more susceptible to natural events like floods and droughts. They spent more of their time working than foragers did and contracted more diseases because of the larger population groups agriculture could support. Additionally, the practice encouraged violent fights over territory...
In “Sapiens” author Yuval Noah Harari reviews our history as Homo Sapiens, from the plains of East Africa passing through modernity, and speculating about the future.
Contents
*Sapiens Summary
*We managed to colonize the world thanks to our cognitive abilities
*The agricultural revolution allowed for complex societies and lead to population explosion
*The scientific revolution provided the basis of our current runaway progress
About The Author: Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is mots famous for the popular book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”Where We First Started
Humans appeared around 2.5 millions ago in East Africa, evolving from a genus of great apes known as Australopithecus.
These early humans were homo rudolfensis and homo erectus. From East Africa the first hominids spread out and evolved into homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Asia.Homo Sapiens: How We Won The Evolutionary Race
Homo Sapiens, such as us, only evolved around 300.000 years ago.
Apparently, there was notihng too special about homo sapiens. And yet, they came to dominate the world. What happened?
There are two theories:Sapiens Book Sparknotes
*Homo sapiens interbred with homo neanderthalensis
*Homo sapiens supplanted the other hominids (either by taking their food sources or straight killing them)
Probably both are correct. There has been some interbreeding (between 1 and 4% of European’s DNA is neanderthalensis DNA) and probably killed quite a few of those other hominids (including, I’d add, a few of other sapiens intra-killing as well).The Sapiens Advantage
What is it that gave Homo Sapiens the advantage over other hominids?Our advantage is our superior brain power.
Around 70.000 years ago the sapiens brain underwent what Yuval Noah Harari calls the cognitive revolution. In a relatively short time span, the Homo Sapiens was now able to leverage the increased brainpower to:
*Form larger and more sophisticated groups
*Invent more effective hunting tools
Sapiens Study Guide
*Develop more effective hunting techniques
*Establish the first trading networks
All those changes meant that the Homo Sapiens could find food, more easily, in more difficult times and more challenging environments. That allowed to spread out everywhere. For example, Homo Sapiens were able to hunt mammoths and use their skin for shoes and warm clothing. And with those, they could cross the icy Siberian passage to colonize America.Homo Sapiens And Their Blood Trail
Wherever the Homo Sapiens went, it hunted the local game to extinction.
In Australia only until 50.000 years ago lived a multitude of mammals, some of which huge potentially dangerous. But within a couple of thousand of years from the arrival of Homo Sapiens, they all but disappeared.
My Note:It’s actually debated whether humans were the only responsible for the extinction of all the big Australian mammals.Also read “The Third Chimpanzee“.The Language Advantage
One of the biggest advantages of the Homo Sapiens over all other hominids and species is language. Language allowed to cooperate flexibly and in large number.
Language is the glue that keeps society together. From the smallest tribes to our current global world our ability to community allows for the most diverse people and cultures to share innovation.The Agricultural Revolution
Around 12.000 years ago Homo Sapiens learned to grow crops.
That meant we didn’t need anymore to rely on hunting and gathering, but we could settle down somewhere specific and produce our own food.
And Homo Sapiens loved agriculture. Within “just” 10.000 years, almost all humankind had adopted agriculture.The Downsides of the Agricultural Revolution
Yuval Noah says that in the beginning agriculture didn’t make sense.
It would require the whole day of work for a limited amount of crops, which weren’t even very digestible or nutrient.
However, he says, its adoption came over several generations and it also provided one big advantage: quantity. We could cram a high amount of plants into a relatively small piece of land, and that allowed for the Sapiens’ population to explode.Bartering and Money
With the agricultural revolution not everyone was forced to hunt and gather at all times, and some people could focus instead of making tools, or weaving clothes.
In the beginning they probably exchanged the first tools for food, but the complexities of growing trade and specialization rendered bartering very inefficient.
The author says that’s why around 3.000 years ago we invented writing and money. That happened in Mesopotamia, with the Sumerians.Kings Invented Religion to Legitimize Power
To keep economies and societies running smooth and to keep fraud in check, kings began to write down laws. Common laws across society allowed people to trade and act according to known customs and rules.
The author says that religion started as a way for the kings to legitimize their power. As the ancient empires grew and more of them sprouted around the world, so religion became more accepted.
My Note: I don’t agree with the idea that religion was promoted thanks to kings who wanted to legitimize their power. Not because it also didn’t serve that purpose as well, but because it’s a very simplistic explanation. Religion instead simply “comes natural” to humans. It was there before kings, and it’s still here today when there are no kings. Also read “The God Delusion“.The Scientific Revolution Empowered Humankind
The author says that for a long time humanity didn’t evolve because it believe that they had no control over their lives. It was all up to God. But that changed with the scientific revolution in the 16th century, towards the end of the Renaissance.
My Note: I believe this is really just a wrong read not only of what events mean, but a wrong read of history.The Romans didn’t wait around in fear of God but acted upon their environment. You don’t need to take my word, just read Marcus Aurelius masterpiece Meditations.Money and Capitalism
Today we live in a highly globalized world, we believe less in religions and we all believe in capitalism and showing off our material wealth. There are many critics of globalization but, the author says, it allowed for a very peaceful time for us.
My Note:I think this is another simplistic explanation.Nuclear devices and the ability for asssured mutual destruction are what prevented major world wars among Western nations.Otherwise, there are still as many wars around the world.
*Unscientific: Opinions Sold As Facts (Which Is Immoral)Sapiens Book Summary
The author is not out to provide a neutral history of key events backed by facts, but he is sharing his opinions.
That would be totally cool if he had admitted it. Had he done so, “Sapiens” would have been a wonderful book.
![Homo sapiens summary Homo sapiens summary](/uploads/1/1/8/2/118219050/987538276.jpg)
But the game changes when the author pretends he is providing facts instead of his own opinions and conjectures. To me, that’s the ultimate sin of intellectual dishonesty and the ultimate form of manipulation.Sapiens 1 Page Summary Of The Hunger Games
*Ideology-Driven
Harari comes across as a left-wing critical of the capitalist system. That’s cool, I’m also critical of nations, nationalism and, partially, of marketing-driven consumerism.
Harari might have been a capitalist critical of Marxism, and that would have also been OK.
But the point is that whatever Harari’s personal politics are, it shouldn’t have tainted all his work. IF he wanted to provide a neutral account of events, at least. He doesn’t even try and, again, he presents his own opinions facts.
And the fact that Zuckerberg and Bill Gates both loved this book says a lot about capitalists’ manipulations.
*Naive, Rose-Tinted “Back Then It Was Better” Approach
Sapiens had a bit of that “back then was better” flair that I just can’t stand.
I don’t know how can people say that hunter gatherers were happier than agricultural people, or that the agricultural revolution “wasn’t that good”.
Maybe it wasn’t but… Based on what exactly? Exactly, the author’s opinion, again.
Of course, the fact that agriculture spread to all humans at lightening speed might suggest to any honest historian that maybe it wasn’t that bad?
That, or humans were all stupid back then. The author and some other ivory tower intellectuals secretly thinks so, maybe.
*Some Historical Imperfection
I have read a few histories of the world tomes (yeah, geeky guy, I know), and I found some inconsistencies between them and Sapiens.
I’m sure the author knows more about history than I do, but, somehow, what I had previously read made more sense to me.
*Very Western-Centric
This history of the world seems to be very Western-centric. Many cultures were never very religious to begin with. And many cultures are as religious now as they were in the previous millennia (if not more).Sapiens 1 Page Summary Of Rules
*Politically biased
I personally found Sapiens to have a bit of that “anti-white”, “anti-capitalism” bias.
Could Be Entertaining It was an entertaining read for me up until we were in the pre-historian period. Then I started seeing a few mistakes and a few “opinions for facts” and I personally didn’t enjoy it as much anymore. However, if you can look past it, it might still be good for you.
Can Add Knowledge Sapiens can make you more aware and knowledgeable about our history.
Great Analysis on Scientific RevolutionWhy did Europe end up conquering the world?
Yuval provides a different perspective than the environment-centric answer of Jared Diamond in “Guns, Germs, And Steel“.
And I fully agree with him here. It was indeed the scientific revolution that threw the basis for the western civilization to dominate the world and impose its culture.
And the scientific revolution made it possible for the world to experience such the unprecedented progress we are enjoying today.
If you’re looking for a balanced and more fact-based history of humans, I would not recommend “Sapiens” because it’s very thick with the author’s own opinions and assumptions.
That would be OK, IF the author admitted there is much of his own interpretation. However, much like “Guns, Germs, and Steel“, the author pretends to be a neutral observers and masquerades his own opinion as facts. As it stands, I found “Sapiens” intellectually dishonest.
Read more summaries or get the book on Amazon
I much enjoyed Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind. It is a brilliant, thought-provoking odyssey through human history with its huge confident brush strokes painting enormous scenarios across time. It is massively engaging and continuously interesting. The book covers a mind-boggling 13.5 billion years of pre-history and history.
From the outset, Harari seeks to establish the multifold forces that made Homo (‘man’) into Homosapiens (‘wise man’) – exploring the impact of a large brain, tool use, complex social structures and more. He brings the picture up to date by drawing conclusions from mapping the Neanderthal genome, which he thinks indicates that Sapiens did not merge with Neanderthals but pretty much wiped them out. ‘Tolerance’ he says, ‘is not a Sapiens trademark’ (p19), setting the scene for the sort of animal he will depict us to be.
Fascinating but flawed
Harari’s pictures of the earliest men and then the foragers and agrarians are fascinating; but he breathlessly rushes on to take us past the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago, to the arrival of religion, the scientific revolution, industrialisation, the advent of artificial intelligence and the possible end of humankind. His contention is that Homo sapiens, originally an insignificant animal foraging in Africa has become ‘the terror of the ecosystem’ (p465). There is truth in this, of course, but his picture is very particular. He is best, in my view, on the modern world and his far-sighted analysis of what we are doing to ourselves struck many chords with me.
Harari is a better social scientist than philosopher, logician or historian
Nevertheless, in my opinion the book is also deeply flawed in places and Harari is a much better social scientist than he is philosopher, logician or historian. His critique of modern social ills is very refreshing and objective, his piecing together of the shards of pre-history imaginative and appear to the non-specialist convincing, but his understanding of some historical periods and documents is much less impressive – demonstrably so, in my view.
Misunderstanding the medieval world
Harari is not good on the medieval world, or at least the medieval church. He suggests that ‘premodern’ religion asserted that everything important to know about the world ‘was already known’ (p279) so there was no curiosity or expansion of learning. When does he think this view ceased? He makes it much too late. He gives the (imagined) example of a thirteenth-century peasant asking a priest about spiders and being rebuffed because such knowledge was not in the Bible. It’s hard to know where to begin in saying how wrong a concept this is.
Sapiens Chapters
For example, in the thirteenth century the friars, so often depicted as lazy and corrupt, were central to the learning of the universities. Moreover they were, at that time, able to teach independently of diktats from the Church. As a result, there was an exchange of scholarship between national boundaries and demanding standards were set. The Church also set up schools throughout much of Europe, so as more people became literate there was a corresponding increase in debate among the laity as well as among clerics. Huge library collections were amassed by monks who studied both religious and classical texts. Their scriptoria effectively became the research institutes of their day. One surviving example of this is the fascinating library of the Benedictines at San Marco in Florence. Commissioned in 1437, it became the first public library in Europe. This was a huge conceptual breakthrough in the dissemination of knowledge: the ordinary citizens of that great city now had access to the profoundest ideas from the classical period onwards.
And there is Thomas Aquinas. Usually considered to be the most brilliant mind of the thirteenth century, he wrote on ethics, natural law, political theory, Aristotle – the list goes on. Harari forgets to mention him – today, as all know, designated a saint in the Roman Catholic church.
Harari tends to draw too firm a dividing line between the medieval and modern eras
In fact, it was the Church – through Peter Abelard in the twelfth century– that initiated the idea that a single authority was not sufficient for the establishment of knowledge, but that disputation was required to train the mind as well as the lecture for information. This was a breakthrough in thinking that set the pattern of university life for the centuries ahead.
Or what about John of Salisbury (twelfth-century bishop), the greatest social thinker since Augustine, who bequeathed to us the function of the rule of law and the concept that even the monarch is subject to law and may be removed by the people if he breaks it. Following Cicero he rejected dogmatic claims to certainty and asserted instead that ‘probable truth’ was the best we could aim for, which had to be constantly re-evaluated and revised. Harari is wrong therefore, to state that Vespucci (1504) was the first to say ‘we don’t know’ (p321).
So, historically Harari tends to draw too firm a dividing line between the medieval and modern eras (p285). He is good on the more modern period but the divide is manifest enough without overstating the case as he does.
Short-sighted reductionism
His passage about human rights not existing in nature is exactly right, but his treatment of the US Declaration of Independence is surely completely mistaken (p123). To ‘translate’ it as he does into a statement about evolution is like ‘translating’ a rainbow into a mere geometric arc, or better, ‘translating’ a landscape into a map. Of course, neither process is a translation for to do so is an impossibility. They are what they are. The one is an inspiration, the other an analysis. It is not a matter of one being untrue, the other true – for both landscapes and maps are capable of conveying truths of different kinds.
The Declaration is an aspirational statement about the rights that ought to be accorded to each individual under the rule of law in a post-Enlightenment nation predicated upon Christian principles. Harari’s ‘translation’ is a statement about what our era (currently) believes in a post-Darwinian culture about humanity’s evolutionary drives and our ‘selfish’ genes. ‘Biology’ may tell us those things but human experience and history tell a different story: there is altruism as well as egoism; there is love as well as fear and hatred; there is morality as well as amorality. The sword is not the only way in which events and epochs have been made. Indeed, to make biology/biochemistry the final irreducible way of perceiving human behaviour, as Harari seems to do, seems tragically short-sighted.
Religious illiteracy
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I’m not surprised that the book is a bestseller in a (by and large) religiously illiterate society; and though it has a lot of merit in other areas, its critique of Judaism and Christianity is not historically respectable. A mere six lines of conjecture (p242) on the emergence of monotheism from polytheism – stated as fact – is indefensible. It lacks objectivity. The great world-transforming Abrahamic religion emerging from the deserts in the early Bronze Age period (as it evidently did) with an utterly new understanding of the sole Creator God is such an enormous change. It simply can’t be ignored in this way if the educated reader is to be convinced by his reconstructions.
Harari is demonstrably very shaky in his representation of what Christians believe
Harari is also demonstrably very shaky in his representation of what Christians believe. For example, his contention that belief in the Devil makes Christianity dualistic (equal independent good and evil gods) is simply untenable. One of the very earliest biblical texts (Book of Job) shows God allowing Satan to attack Job but irresistibly restricting his methods (Job 1:12). Later, Jesus banishes Satan from individuals (Mark 1:25 et al.) and the final book of the Bible shows God destroying Satan (Revelation 20:10). Not much dualism there! It’s all, of course, a profound mystery – but it’s quite certainly not caused by dualism according to the Bible. Harari either does not know his Bible or is choosing to misrepresent it. He also doesn’t know his Thomas Hardy who believed (some of the time!) precisely what Harari says ‘nobody in history’ believed, namely that God is evil – as evidenced in a novel like Tess of the d’Urbervilles or his poem The Convergence of the Twain.
Fumbling the problem of evil
We see another instance of Harari’s lack of objectivity in the way he deals with the problem of evil (p246). He states the well-worn idea that if we posit free will as the solution, that raises the further question: if God ‘knew in advance’ (Harari’s words) that the evil would be done why did he create the doer?
I would expect a scholar to present both sides of the argument, not a populist one-sided account as Harari does
But to be objective the author would need to raise the counter-question that if there is no free will, how can there be love and how can there be truth? Automatons without free will are coerced and love cannot exist between them – by definition. Again, if everything is predetermined then so is the opinion I have just expressed. In that case it has no validity as a measure of truth – it was predetermined either by chance forces at the Big Bang or by e.g. what I ate for breakfast which dictated my mood. These are age-old problems without easy solutions but I would expect a scholar to present both sides of the argument, not a populist one-sided account as Harari does.
Moreover, in Christian theology God created both time and space, but exists outside them. So the Christian God does not know anything ‘in advance’ which is a term applicable only to those who live inside the time–space continuum i.e. humanity. The Christian philosopher Boethius saw this first in the sixth century; theologians know it – but apparently Harari doesn’t, and he should.
Ignoring the resurrection
In common with so many, Harari is unable to explain why Christianity ‘took over the mighty Roman Empire' (p243) but calls it ‘one of history’s strangest twists’. So it is, but one explanation that should be considered is the resurrection of Christ which of course would fully account for it – if people would give the idea moment’s thought. But to the best of my knowledge there is no mention of it (even as an influential belief) anywhere in the book.
Harari is unable to explain why Christianity ‘took over the mighty Roman Empire'
The standard reason given for such an absence is that ‘such things don’t happen in history: dead men don’t rise.’ But that, I fear, is logically a hopeless answer. The speaker believes it didn’t happen because they have already presupposed that God is not there to do it. Drop the presupposition, and suddenly the whole situation changes: in the light of that thought it now becomes perfectly feasible that this ‘strange twist’ was part of the divine purpose. And the funny thing is that unlike other religions, this is precisely where Christianity is most insistent on its historicity. Peter, Paul, the early church in general were convinced that Jesus was alive and they knew as well as we do that dead men are dead – and they knew better than us that us that crucified men are especially dead! The very first Christian sermons (about AD 33) were about the facts of their experience – the resurrection of Jesus – not about morals or religion or the future.
A one-sided view of the Church
Harari is right to highlight the appalling record of human warfare and there is no point trying to excuse the Church from its part in this. I have written at length about this elsewhere, as have far more able people. But do we really think that because everyone in Europe was labelled Catholic or Protestant (‘cuius regio, eius religio’) that the wars they fought were about religion?
If the Church is cited as a negative influence, why, in a scholarly book, is its positive influence not also cited?
As the Cambridge Modern History points out about the appalling Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 (which event Harari cites on p241) – the Paris mob would as soon kill Catholics as Protestants – and did. It was the result of political intrigue, sexual jealousy, human barbarism and feud. Oxford Professor Keith Ward points out ‘religious wars are a tiny minority of human conflicts’ in his book Is Religion Dangerous? If the Church is being cited as a negative influence, why, in a scholarly book, is its undeniably unrivalled positive influence over the last 300 years (not to mention all the previous years) not also cited? It’s simply not good history to ignore the good educational and social impact of the Church. Both sides need to feature.[1]
Philosophical fault-lines
I wonder too about Harari’s seeming complacency on occasion, for instance about where economic progress has brought us to. Is it acceptable for him to write (on p296): ‘When calamity strikes an entire region, worldwide relief efforts are usually successful in preventing the worst. People still suffer from numerous depredations, humiliations and poverty-related illnesses but in most countries nobody is starving to death’? Tell that to the people of Haiti seven years after the earthquake with two and a half million still, according to the UN, needing humanitarian aid. Or the people of South Sudan dying of thirst and starvation as they try to reach refugee camps. There are sixty million refugees living in appalling poverty and distress at this moment. In the light of those facts, I think Harari’s comment is rather unsatisfactory.
But there is a larger philosophical fault-line running through the whole book which constantly threatens to break its conclusions in pieces. His whole contention is predicated on the idea that humankind is merely the product of accidental evolutionary forces and this means he is blind to seeing any real intentionality in history. It has direction certainly, but he believes it is the direction of an iceberg, not a ship.
Many of his opening remarks are just unwarranted assumptions
This would be all right if he were straightforward in stating that all his arguments are predicated on the assumption that, as Bertrand Russell said, ‘Man is…but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms’ and utterly without significance. But instead, he does what a philosopher would call ‘begging the question’. That is, he assumes from the start what his contention requires him to prove – namely that mankind is on its own and without any sort of divine direction. Harari ought to have stated his assumed position at the start, but signally failed to do so. The result is that many of his opening remarks are just unwarranted assumptions based on that grandest of all assumptions: that humanity is cut adrift on a lonely planet, itself adrift in a drifting galaxy in a dying universe. Evidence please! – that humanity is ‘nothing but’ a biological entity and that human consciousness is not a pale (and fundamentally damaged) reflection of the divine mind.
The fact that (he says) Sapiens has been around for a long time, emerged by conquest of the Neanderthals and has a bloody and violent history has no logical connection to whether or not God made him (‘her’ for Harari) into a being capable of knowing right from wrong, perceiving God in the world and developing into Michelangelo, Mozart and Mother Teresa as well as into Nero and Hitler. To insist that such sublime or devilish beings are ‘no more than’ glorified apes is to ignore the elephant in the room: the small differences in our genetic codes are the very differences that may reasonably point to divine intervention – because the result is so shockingly disproportionate between ourselves and our nearest relatives. I’ve watched chimpanzees and the great apes; I love to do so (and especially adore gorillas!) but…so near, yet so so far.
Arguable assumptions
Here are a few short-hand examples of the author’s many assumptions to check out in context:
- ‘accidental genetic mutations…it was pure chance’ (p23)
- ‘no justice outside the common imagination of human beings’ (p31)
- ‘things that really exist’ (p35)
This last is such a huge leap of unwarranted faith. His concept of what ‘really exists’ seems to be ‘anything material’ but, in his opinion, nothing beyond this does ‘exist’ (his word). Actually, humans are mostly sure that immaterial things certainly exist: love, jealousy, rage, poverty, wealth, for starters. Dark matter also may make up most of the universe – it exists, we are told, but we can’t measure it.
His rendition of how biologists see the human condition is as one-sided as his treatment of earlier topics.
Harari’s final chapters are quite brilliant in their range and depth and hugely interesting about the possible future with the advent of AI – with or without Sapiens. His rendition, however, of how biologists see the human condition is as one-sided as his treatment of earlier topics. To say that our ‘subjective well-being is not determined by external parameters’ (p432) but by ‘serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin’ is to take the behaviourist view to the exclusion of all other biochemical/psychiatric science. Recent studies have concluded that human behaviour and well-being are the result not just of the amount of serotonin etc that we have in our bodies, but that our response to external events actually alters the amount of serotonin, dopamine etc which our bodies produce. It is two-way traffic. Our choices therefore are central. The way we behave actually affects our body chemistry, as well as vice versa. Harari is averse to using the word ‘mind’ and prefers ‘brain’ but the jury is out about whethe/how these two co-exist. There is one glance at this idea on page 458: without dismissing it he allows it precisely four lines, which for such a major ‘game-changer’ to the whole argument is a deeply worrying omission.
I liked his bold discussion about the questions of human happiness that historians and others are not asking, but was surprised by his two pages on ‘The Meaning of Life’ which I thought slightly disingenuous. ‘From a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning…Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan.’ (p438, my italics). The first sentence is fine – of course, that is true! How could it be otherwise? Science deals with how things happen, not why in terms of meaning or metaphysics. To look for metaphysical answers in the physical sciences is ridiculous – they can’t be found there. It’s like looking for a sandpit in a swimming pool. Distinguished scientists like Sir Martin Rees and John Polkinghorne, at the very forefront of their profession, understand this and have written about the separation of the two ‘magisteria’. Science is about physical facts not meaning; we look to philosophy, history, religion and ethics for that. Harari’s second sentence is a non-sequitur – an inference that does not follow from the premise. God’s ‘cosmic plan’ may well be to use the universe he has set up to create beings both on earth and beyond (in time and eternity) which are glorious beyond our wildest dreams. I rather think he has already – when I consider what Sapiens has achieved.
A curiously encouraging end
I found the very last page of the book curiously encouraging:
We are more powerful than ever before…Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. (p466)
Exactly! Time then for a change. Better to live in a world where we are accountable – to a just and loving God.
Harari is a brilliant writer, but one with a very decided agenda. He is excellent within his field but spreads his net too wide till some of the mesh breaks – allowing all sorts of confusing foreign bodies to pass in and out – and muddies the water. His failure to think clearly and objectively in areas outside his field will leave educated Christians unimpressed.
References
[1] See my book The Evil That Men Do. (Sacristy Press, 2016)