Nonzero: the logic of human destiny
- New York Vintage Books 2001
- xii, 435 p. Includes bibliographical references and index
Table of contents:
Introduction: The Storm Before the Calm
Pt. I. A Brief History of Humankind. 1. The Ladder of Cultural Evolution. 2. The Way We Were. 3. Add Technology and Bake for Five Millennia. 4. The Invisible Brain. 5. War: What Is It Good For? 6. The Inevitability of Agriculture. 7. The Age of Chiefdoms. 8. The Second Information Revolution. 9. Civilization and So On. 10. Our Friends the Barbarians. 11. Dark Ages. 12. The Inscrutable Orient. 13. Modern Times. 14. And Here We Are. 15. New World Order. 16. Degrees of Freedom
Pt. II. A Brief History of Organic Life. 17. The Cosmic Context. 18. The Rise of Biological Non-zero-sumness. 19. Why Life Is So Complex. 20. The Last Adaptation. 21. Non-crazy Questions. 22. You Call This a God?
In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next. In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright’s narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology’s ongoing transformation of the world.