All content © RJ Robinson 2002-8
by RJ Robinson (2005)
Introduction
What is human nature, and where did it come from? There could scarcely be a bigger or more challenging question for science, nor one which science is so far from answering. Are we unique, or are we just like other organisms, only more so? If we are just like other animals, then why do we ask ourselves such questions when other organisms do not? But if we are special, how is science to avoid appealing to a divine spark, hopeful monsters or some other profoundly irrational solution? Can this question be answered at all?
In this radical new analysis, RJ Robinson, the author of The History of Human Reason, offers a reply that performs the essential but previously unmanageable task of explaining how the normal processes of evolution and development, phylogeny and ontogeny, can produce a qualitatively new kind of creature. Going back to the roots of human nature in intelligence, and drawing out the strategic implications of natural selection itself, the author shows how matter can be injected with a new form of organisation that is as fundamentally new as life itself once was.
At the moment, The Birth of Reason is available only by download.
Science
Etc.
Work in progress