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Man, Beast, and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us about Human Nature, by Kenan Malik
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Are humans unique? Can animals think as we do? Will machines ever be conscious? What is free will? For centuries, attempts to answer these questions have been the stuff of theological and philosophical dispute, as well as bar-room debate. Now scientists claim they can solve these riddles of human existence, once and for all. Man, Beast and Zombie is a thrillingly original and accessible book. Huge in its reach and powerful in its grasp, it draws on cutting-edge sciences such as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence to assess what, precisely, they can and cannot explain about human nature. Kenan Malik explains the histories of these sciences and the philosophies that underpin them and analyses the complex relationship between human beings, animals and machines to explore what really makes us human.
- Sales Rank: #8859587 in Books
- Published on: 2002-05-01
- Format: Bargain Price
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 458 pages
Review
Kenan Malik is even-handed between science’s friends and foes, and he steers a course all of his own -- Roy Porter
From the Back Cover
Are humans unique? Can animals think as we do? Will machines ever have consciousness? What is free will? For centuries, attempts to answer these questions have been the stuff of both bar-room debates and intense theological and philosophical dispute. Now scientists claim they can solve these riddles of human existence once and for all. In so doing, they promise to upset many of the accepted ideas about morality and human nature.
Man, Beast, and Zombie is an original and accessible book. Vast in its scope, it draws on cutting-edge sciences such as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence to assess what, precisely, science can and cannot explain about human nature. Kenan Malik explains the histories of these sciences (and the philosophies that underpin them) and analyzes the complex relationship between human beings, animals, and machines to explore what really makes us human.
Malik demonstrates that much current thinking about human nature is flawed: how there is more than one way to design a mind; why the lifestyles of contemporary hunter-gatherers do not illuminate the lives of our prehistoric ancestors; and what intelligent machines really reveal about human consciousness. He shows, too, how the scientific debate about human nature is as influenced by politics as by science.
Man, Beast, and Zombie is both a defense of scientific reason and a challenge to some of today's most cherished scientific theories. It deftly interweaves philosophy, science, and history to answer the most fundamental question of all: what is a human being?
About the Author
Kenan Malik trained as a neurobiologist and was a research psychologist at the Centre for Research into Perception and Cognition at Sussex University. He is now a writer and lecturer. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Independentand the Financial Times. He is the author of the acclaimed study of racism, history and science, The Meaning of Race.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent overview of current theories of human nature
By Shaun Johnston
First-rate guide to the history and current status of human nature. Overall it's depressing, which I took to be accurate reporting.
The first 100 pages are wonderful. Malik's history of human nature up to the mid-20th century I found brilliant, extremely insightful, the best account of that history I could imagine. Just those 100 pages would make this an extremely useful and valuable book. He does go at a fair clip, though, so it might not mean much to someone altogether new to the material. But it's clearly expressed and it makes a masterful refresher to the resources propping up our current notions of human nature.
Great, I thought. I'm in the hands of the perfect guide--well-informed, intelligent, sensitive--to the next 50 years, to which Malik gives the next 200 pages, bringing the story up-to-date.
Those 200 pages were a slog. They seemed rambling and repetitive. The subject matter seemed trivial compared to what had come before. I wondered why he and I were bothering with it. Where was the meat and potatoes?
And that, I think, is the real story of this book. There is no meat and potatoes any more. The tradition's stopped, and Malik's failure to make the story gripping is a due reflection of that---he's reporting fairly. As he describes it, the main intellectual activity over the past 50 years---at least as far as science is concerned--has been coming up with paradoxes and pitting one paradox against another, like boys playing scissors, paper, stone in the schoolyard. "You attack mine, and I'll attack yours, and we both get to publish," something like that. But who else, Malik seems to feel, needs to care? He does due diligence, but his heart's not in. So he regurgitates one minor variant on determinism after another, ranging from beast to zombie and back again, to each of which he makes not very convincing objections. He does, though, explain several times why this all matters, what's at stake when we shrink human nature down to a one-inch square box.
Most disappointing to me were the final two chapters where he gives his own account of the rudiments of human nature. Clearly he's master of the material, both the history and the current theories. But he's unable to break out of the box limiting the theories he criticizes. He says, on the one hand, that human nature can come only from either genes or culture (including socialization) or a combination of both. But then he says humans can "transcend" those, without explaining where that ability comes from. He seems to assume that this is a universally shared belief. Coming from him, I felt I had to assume it is indeed universally assumed.
So, no magic bullet, no penicillin, but a thorough round-up of where we stand today with respect to human nature. Not a pretty picture.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
An interesting, but somewhat challenging read
By bdcrist
When I first decided to do a book review for my biology class, I went to the library and started pulling out books that were on the suggested reading list. What was a first quite a large pile, it got smaller and smaller by the second. I did not judge the books by there cover, but instead by there title. I finally got my pile narrowed down to three books, eventually deciding on "Man, Beast, and Zombie" by Kenan Malik. What I first thought would be a good science fiction read about zombies and there takeover, actually turned out to be a fascinating book about human nature.
The book starts off giving a history of how we have evolved in the way we think about things. Malik focuses in on religious paintings and how they have changed throughout history. He presents The Entombment as an example demonstrating the first attempt at making the figures in the painting seem human, "Bouts' aim is to arouse in his viewers the same emotions of grief and reverence and wonder that are depicted in the painted figures...it is in this very stillness that we see Bout's struggle to depict both Christ and his mourners as real humans" (2). This idea of making the figures seem human is what is now called `Humanism'. Malik then goes on to talk about the effect humanism has had across time and in various cultures. The over arching theme of humanism is "to place human being at the centre of philosophical debate, to glorify human abilities and to view human reason as a tool through which to understand nature" (2). What Malik believes is not that humans are part of a larger destiny that is intertwined with nature, something that many religious thinkers used to believe, but that we are influenced by the things around us and are always changing.
This book is very interesting to read because it makes the reader think about themselves in a way that maybe they normally wouldn't. It is at times very difficult to read and Malik often references things that I think most college students wouldn't be familiar with. Having your laptop on and opened to google is almost essential to reading this book. I came across many words that i didn't know and many historical names/events I had never heard of, google really helped in understanding the text to its fullest. Malik does a wonderful job of balancing the theories of Darwin (191) and modern takes on human nature (274). I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever had an interest in philosophy or the human mind.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Reflections
By XSCHOLAR
This topic was of interest to me because my group's finals project involves studying human conflict. This book greatly influenced the sociological theories we decided to research.
Written by a science journalist, the author investigates key new developments in the fields of genetics, neuroscience, ethology and evolutionary biology that have implications for the human condition and in this context asks, what is it to be human? Kenan Malik, in Man, Beast and Zombie, highlights that while the great majority of theorists today accept that combinations of genetic and environmental factors determine what we are, few agree on the level of determination and on what general conclusions can be drawn about ourselves.
Malik explains the histories and underpinning philosophies of disciplines such as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, and this provides the background for his analysis of modern theories of human nature. Malik also considers Sociobiology, an approach to the study of humanity developed in the 1970s, which attempted to explain modern human behaviour as adaptive.
One main theme, however, is the misuse of science in creating libellous notions of what it is to be human. For this scientists themselves must take some but not all of the blame. Although scientists sometimes contribute to the dehumanised portrait of what it is to be a man, "it is the political retreat from Enlightenment rationalism, from a belief in human agency, from the idea of moral progress, that has opened up the space for a mechanistic view of the world (89)." Much of his book is taken up with this interaction between science, politics and culture. Malik, however, does not fall into the trap of sociologizing all scientific truths
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