The Dragons of Eden: Speculations
on the Evolution of Human
Intelligence by Carl Sagan
Great Book
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...Its a delight.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Personal Review: The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the
Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan died in 1996, a loss to us all. But his resonances linger.
He might not agree with me on that -- because after all he was a hard-
nosed scientist -- but one of his resonances intersected my thoughts the
other day and wouldn't leave me alone. I reflexively Googled the list of
usual suspects and homed in on his 1977 The Dragons of Eden:
Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence.
Google. It's fascinating how the mind works these days in concert with the
internet's near-instantaneous, finger-tip access to information. What's more
fascinating is that the internet wasn't around -- at least in its public form --
thirty-some years ago when Sagan wrote this book.
Sometimes -- as Santyana observed -- it's useful to look at the past.
Sometimes, it's just fun.
First, the context of the past... When this book was published in 1977, I
was an environmental engineer, working for a nuclear utility, seven years
out of Vietnam and six years out of graduate school. Sagan was a
renowned scientist at the time, a well-known leading-edge thinker and
popularizer of science. I admired not only his ability to distill science to a
level understandable to the layperson, but also his stern advocacy of
scientific method and skeptical inquiry. So I bought the book, read it,
enjoyed it.
Then I put the book in the attic.
Fast-forward to the present... The resonance had to do with computer
games. I was watching my grandson play one. Sagan had talked about
games, I remembered, in the context of their potential for human
development. I had an attic-cleanout going on at the time and -- lo and
behold -- suddenly there's the book in my hand. Another resonance,
maybe. Faded red cover, yellowed pages, a paperback. I found what I was
looking for pretty quickly: toward the end of the book Sagan observes that
Pong and Space War "suggest a gradual elaboration of computer graphics
so that we gain an experiential and intuitive understanding of the laws of
physics". I went back to watch my grandson play -- on a high-def screen,
with enormous processing power in a tiny chip, mind you -- and reflected
that "elaboration" of the graphics over thirty years hasn't been exactly
"gradual". Not sure what game my grandson was playing, or what if any
potential he was developing, but one thing was clear: the kid had a fine
intuitive appreciation of physics. I didn't play; he would've wiped me out in
thirty seconds.
Another resonance as I thumbed through this old book: Sagan talks about
"extrasomatic" (i.e., outside the body) extensions of the human brain. He
has an interesting chart that plots the number of bits of information that can
be stored in the brains of various organisms. Mammals, and modern
humans in particular, have the greatest capacity. But if you were to include

the bits of information available to humans outside their brains -- in
libraries and similar cultural sources -- Sagan points out that human
capacity would be completely off his chart. Which brings us back to Google
(or other search engines or computer databases or even the digital world
in general)... think about it: something you were trying to recall, or maybe
figure out, is now just a mouse-click away. And that capability is
accelerating. Is that edifying? Enlightening? Enabling? Frightening? Or all
of these?
But computer gaming and extrasomatic brain extensions are really just
little off-hand slices of this still-topical book. Sagan talks both broadly and
deeply about the many fascinating aspects of the evolution of human
intelligence. He speaks of the development of the physical brain; for
example the early neocortex and its adaptation to increase survival skills.
But he also covers more subtle non-physical influences on evolving
intelligence, for example cultural feedback paths such as introspection. I
was particularly struck by his observation that "the richest, most intricate
and most profound of these [introspections] were called myths". He goes
on to agree with the Roman historian Salustius' definition of myths as
"things which never happened but always are". Now that's clearly another
resonance, because as a writer (with my daughter) of metaphysical sci-fi,
we're always trying to tap into fundamental myths and recast them in the
trappings of modern science and technology.
So, I really enjoyed looking back, re-reading this book, comparing it to the
present. I was struck again by the approachability of the man's writing, the
depth of his knowledge, his humanity. Some fascinating speculations here,
by a masterful communicator. Thank you, Dr. Sagan.
~Denning
(aka Lee Denning, author of Monkey Trap and Hiding Hand)
Hiding Hand
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