"The Ape That Understood the Universe" by Steve Stewart-Williams is a thought-provoking exploration of human nature through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Stewart-Williams delves into how our evolutionary past shapes our behavior, beliefs, and understanding of the universe. The book is engaging and accessible, offering clear explanations of complex concepts and linking them to everyday experiences. With a mix of scientific insights and philosophical reflections, it provides a compelling argument for how deeply our primal instincts influence modern life. Ideal for readers interested in psychology, evolution, and the human condition.

A unique and thought provoking perspective on human behaviour. I found this a fascinating read from the start and didn't want it to end!

I love to mix fiction with some non-fiction of the scientific variety and this book hit just the spot.
It was well written and very educational.
PD: it took me some time to read and digest everything but I totally recommend it

Unfortunately, this title wasn't for me. I am generally quite interested in topics as such but sometimes it is a hit and miss if it will be to my liking and reading ability.
I kindly appreciate the opportunity to review it.

Best,
Scarlett

The evolution of human psychology/behaviour/culture as seen through the eyes of an alien species not familiar with planet earth an the meat bags living here. Truly interesting and written in a rather informal, but not simple, style.

Thought-provoking and unique, this look into human behavior takes the perspective of seeing at our species as if we were a hyperintelligent alien. Stuart-Williams is an associate professor of psychology and has spent years researching evolutionary biology, so he provides an interesting look at how the human mind has evolved over time. This is a wonderful read for anyone who is into psychology, evolution, or just has an interested in the sciences. *Advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The Ape that Understood the Universe is a book combining everything that's good about non-fiction: it is well-researched and well-written, the author shows respect to his audience by neither using too many professional terms nor over-simplifying matters. The occasional spark of wit and humour makes sure that one's attention does not wander away from the reading.

As a biologist by training, I’m fascinated by the questions of how humans became the species they are today. I love the interplay of both biological evolution and cultural advancements discussed in this book.

I really didn’t know what I was getting into with this book. I knew it was about culture and evolution, and specifically on humans evolving to be the only creature on the planet with culture. Didn’t know much more, but I was definitely interested.

What happened from there was a mixture of immensely interesting information and repetition of said information. To be fair, this is non-fiction. Repetitiveness may be intentional to get certain facts through my thick skull.

The overall theme that I found so interesting is how much our current society strives against what our genes have designed us to do. Nearly every behaviour our genes have programmed into us over centuries of survival and replication are the exact things we try to resist on a daily basis. From relationships, to the way we eat, to the way we treat each other. It’s all backwards. But thanks to our culture, the advances we’ve made, we’re still able to make it all work and survive.

There’s some really interesting things in this book, but as I said, it get repetitive and it’s really long. Although the author seems to have a very witty sense of humour, it wasn’t enough to make the pages pass by effortlessly. If I had to reread this one, I might prefer an audiobook version.

My last read/review of the year, and only the 5th non-fiction book, out of 175, but a highly interesting one, although I am finding it harder to gather my thoughts than for a typical thriller. This is a highly readable analysis of human behaviour through the lens of evolutionary psychology, and introducing the less well known concepts of cultural evolution and memetics.

The author, a professor of evolutionary psychology, is an academic who fortunately writes in an engaging and humorous style, similar to what I have read at least of Richard Dawkins and Bill Bryson’s A short history of everything. He kicks off with a report by an imaginary alien from an advanced civilisation who is describing the human ape and its peculiar behaviours to his superiors.

Over six fairly lengthy chapters, he (the author, not the alien, thankfully) analyses some of those behaviours - sexual, romantic, pedagogic, religious... and convincingly (to me at least) explains how evolution has created each one, and then how memes - in the original sense of the term as coined by Dawkins - meaning units of human culture/information/concepts have influenced out development over tens of thousands of years into the wonder (or complete disaster, depending on your point of view) of the human race today.

The real skill here, I thought, was the way he is able to tease out each concept in such a way that immediately after, I was thinking “oh but I already knew that, didn’t I?” I did find he repeated some points and examples so often that it sometimes felt unnecessary, but I have more knowledge of genetics, psychology and biology than the average reader, and I think a lay reader with no scientific knowledge should still be able to easily follow this.

It’s extremely well referenced, although the disadvantage of reading this as an ebook was not being able to check the notes, comments and references as I went along. It seemed a very long book, about 9 hours on my kindle, but the last 90m was taken up with these. I think this would probably be easier to read as a paperback especially if it has some images and photographs.

A warning if you are religious - the author is fairly derogatory about essentially all organised religions, and some parts of the book are similar to The God Delusion, so if that would offend you, you might want to skip chapter six...

My thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. The Ape Who Understood the Universe is available now.

The Ape That Understood the Universe, the second book written by associate professor of psychology Steve Stewart-Williams, takes a look at evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory in an effort to explain how and why humans evolved. Paying particular attention to the way the mind and culture evolve, the author writes a witty and fascinating account of these topics. Written in a casual, conversational style, this allows it to be accessible to those who have no scientific knowledge whatsoever. Make no mistake this is a challenging read; I learned a great deal and found myself totally engrossed from the first page.

However, some parts of the book ramble a bit, and the author hammers home his points over and over again, so it did get a little repetitive at times. That said, I particularly enjoyed the ruminations on the nature vs nurture debate, which were thought-provoking, and Stewart-Williams objectively assesses the current theories. He backs up most of his claims with relevant surveys and research, and arguments that are made are cogent, but there were quite a few assumptions made by the author which was a little disappointing. He does, however, manage to make a complex topic understandable and entertaining which puts this amongst the best non-fiction I have read in quite a while. There is a strong sense that Mr Stewart-Williams knows his onions, and due to my enjoyment, I read this much quicker than most non-fiction I pick up. Well worth your time if it's a subject that interests you.

Many thanks to Cambridge University Press for an ARC.

The catchy title did get my attention and the description sold me on wanting to try the book. The first two chapters were interesting but during the third, the book started drifting and I began to lose interest as the author hammered home his point and droned on and on. A sharper focus and less rambling were needed.

A fascinating book about evolutionary psychology, The Ape that Understood the Universe seeks to strip back a difficult and complex subject to its most basic tenets. The book opens with a conceit, imagining an alien arriving on Earth to study the planet, and its population. To this alien humans are no more special than any other animal, or plant, but when their behaviour is examined, it seems to be both natural and animal like in some ways, and completely unnatural in others. Through the observations of this alien, the author tries to explain how evolution has shaped human psychology just as surely as it has our biology, while also taking into account social and cultural influences. From chapters dealing with mate selection and reproduction, to those dealing with altruism and culture, the reader is taken on an accessible and informative tour of the human mind. Throughout the book the author compares the behaviour of man to that of several other animals, and the similarities are sometimes surprising. I particularly liked that the author was willing to look at opposing viewpoints , and evaluate the impact of social conditioning etc as well as the evolutionary theories. While it may not settle the nature versus nurture debate, the book certainly had some thought provoking points.
The book is well researched but easily accessible to the layman, no specialist knowledge of the topic is assumed or required, the use of simple language and the avoidance of jargon and acronyms make the writing easy to understand and gets the point across clearly. My only slight fault with the book was that I thought the "report" submitted by the "alien" was a little jarring in its attempts to be humorous, it felt out of keeping with the tone of the book as a whole, which did have humorous moments and observations throughout, but none as juvenile as this early passage.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

"This book is about the strangest animal in the world – the animal that’s reading these words and the animal that wrote them: the human animal."

This is how the book starts, strong and to the point – totally loved it!
As evolutionary biology shaped humans physically, this published study emphasises how evolutionary psychology shaped our behaviour.
Even though I really liked it as a whole, because it opened my eyes to lots of interesting things and made me curious to find more about evolution in general and evolutionary psychology in particular, there were several dislikes also (interesting fact: note how the cons are much easier to state than the pros; don't know if it's just in my case, or others have this 'issue', but I find it fascinating):

- There are ideas that tend to repeat multiple times throughout the book; I understand that it’s for sedimentation of information, but it was still annoying
- There are things that aren’t known, so the author assumes something, and also assumes that his opinion is better than others; much of the book is in this note: “Without an evolutionary perspective, this pattern is hard to explain. With it, it’s a piece of cake.”
- “In many species – the vast majority, in fact – the ceiling number of offspring for males is higher than that for females. The most important reason for this is parental investment.” – well, I’d have said that the 9+ months necessary for birth and after-birth, plus not being able to have more pregnancies at once (as man can theoretically have 2-3-n women pregnant at the same time) seems more reason than parental investment lol..
- It seemed to me that the cultural implications are somewhat minimized. Also, I'm sceptical about the idea of meme evolution in the way it was presented or I understood it from this book, as implying that businesses and science and even boats just evolve (a boat that floats propagates itself) all by themselves; imh, they 'evolve' through people, meaning that people judge them worthy or not and decide to propagate them further, or not. Anyway, maybe it was just the language/formulary used, but it bothered me..
- The ending is very abrupt

Fun read about nature vs nurture and memes

Ultimately this book is about nature vs nurture and author Steve Stewart-William comes down clearly on the side of nature. He explains the science (evolutionary psychology) clearly but there is not a lot of hard science in the book. I found that he supports his arguments well, by using examples from multiple cultures or from other members of the animal world. Importantly, he does not excuse bad behavior or make excuses for it because “it’s in the genes”. He also goes into extensive discussions of memes and how they are transmitted. I found the book well-paced and fun to read as Steward-William displays a good sense of humor. I recommend this book for anyone interested in science.

I got a review copy of this back in July from the publisher through <a href="http://www.netgalley.com">NetGalley</a> and unfortunately had a couple of others in front of it with ticking expiration dates, as well as assigned reading for a class and a few other obstacles. I needed to devote some dedicated time to reading this because there is so much here. One other unfortunate complication came up when my ereader glitched and couldn't verify the license...losing all of my notes from the first half of the book. Redownload, back in business, but sans those notes.

Stewart-Williams explores Darwinism, genetics and sex differences, reproduction, altruism, and cultural influences. (He also includes his takes on how to refute Blank Slaters and Anti-Memeticists in two appendices). I grind my teeth over the sections for which I lost my notes (apologies to the publisher/author - I'm sure other reviewers will be able to synopsize), but trust me that there are wealths of information to be had in there on attractions and preferences, practices, selection, offspring and rearing, monogamy, polyandry and polygyny; altruism and selfishness. And memetics.

Stewart-Williams's analyses are cogent, his arguments sound; he pokes logical holes in prevalent (and past) theories. He supports his theses with facts and induction (with deduction thrown in.) He cautions against the "risk of mistaking elements of one's own culture for aspects of human nature,..."

I mark this as five stars because seldom does a book evoke a paradigm shift in me (It happens, just rarely) and this book did. For twenty some years now, I have been resolved to the position that humans evolved to believe in religions - with exception, of course - and the wake-up here was a smack-in-the-face memetic solution that religions (and God) evolved for the human brain. Finally, something that makes sense to me.

Now, as thoroughly researched and eloquently composed as Mr. Stewart-Williams is in this book, he referenced at least one Disney Nature series myth when trying to make a point in his altruism section: "Like suicidal lemmings..."

I would like to read this again, but in physical form. It does not lend well to electronic reading as i couldn't follow cites easily, or "flip" back and forth between sections as I digested the contents.

I will never look at someone with a flower to their nose the same way again...

I am not especially well read in the many evolutionary theories of how we became us, and I think that’s where this book shines. You don’t have to be a cultural or psychological evolutionary post-doctorate to understand the concepts. And Mr. Stewart-Williams wit, humor, and style kept me engaged and entertained. Finishing this book really makes me want to dive much deeper into the topic. I’m glad I was able to review and advanced copy of this, as I know that I will surely be purchasing a hard copy.

Just can’t say it enough, but the wit and style of this ranks it probably in my top 5 non-fiction books.

This book starts with a simple question: what would an alien think of humans?

We feel like we're pretty normal and rational, but Steve Stewart-Williams proves otherwise.
We're a strange primate.

The author delves into many topics, including human sexuality.
As Bill Maher said, "There are no such things as mutual fantasies! Yours bore us; ours offend you."

The author is a big fan of Darwin, evolution, and memes.

Feminist Andrea Dworkin said that a man wants what a woman has: sex. "He can steal it (rape) persuade her to give it away (seduction), rent it (prostitution), lease it over a long-term (marriage in the US), or own it outright (marriage in most societies)."

Beauty is an odd thing, the book observes.
After spending 5 years in Africa, it seems that Africans desire white traits, given all the skin whitening products Sub-Saharans buy and the colored contact lenses.
However, in the 19th century, "Negroes do not like the color of our skin; they look on blue eyes with aversion, and they think our noses too long and our lips too thin." – Winwood Reade, British explorer

This is a great book to give to someone who is politically correct and believes that we're all blank slates.
Reality: human carry a lot of DNA baggage.
The book has an appendix called "How to Win an Argument with a Blank Slater".

He also explains another oddity: why does human altruism exist?

The biggest weakness of this book is that it can be painfully repetitive and verbose, especially if you already buy into his arguments. He drums on them a bit too much or takes too long to get to the point. It's perfect for the skeptic.

#TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverse

In the tradition of Yuval Noah Harari's books comes The Ape that Understood the Universe. In this case, however, the extent of the themes from evolution to culture to how an alien might see us is truly fascinating. I really hope this book gets in as many homes as possible. It truly is an important read.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a science book that purports to look at humans from the perspective of how an alien might see them, but in practice, there is very little of this perspective employed. After an initial flurry, aliens are mentioned only spasmodically.

On the one hand this would seem to offer an interesting PoV, but on the other, this kind of thing been done before, and it seems a stretch to begin with. The arrogance of the pretension that we can honestly and objectively look at ourselves as an alien might see us seems antithetical to a scientific approach. By definition an alien is a being not like us, so to suggest we can honestly put ourselves in their shoes is a stretch at best!

We can't even put ourselves reliably into the shoes of animals most like us on Earth let alone some tentacle-sporting Betelgeusian, so it seems to me that there's an inherent insult in taking such a perspective. Such a PoV almost inevitably makes the alien look like a moron.

I really did not like the Star Trek Original series. Actually, these days I've gone off all Star Trek TV shows. I refuse to watch Discovery for its stupidity and lack of imagination, but TOS was the worst. Admittedly it was a product of its time, and in some ways ground-breaking, but it was nonetheless a poorly-written and simplistic show, and it carried the same pretense this book does: that of an alien observing humans.

The alien was Spock, and in trying to show him coping with human culture, it made him look like a complete idiot who, despite having lived among humans for some considerable time, and being half human himself for his entire life, simply didn't get it. That wouldn't have been so bad, but the fact is that he never got it, and was typically at a complete loss, which is what made him moronic. He wasn't a genius. He wasn't brilliant. He wasn't even logical a good portion of the time.

Star Trek has a habit of doing this. In Next Generation, the resident imbecile was Commander Data. In Voyager there wasn't one single dumb-ass. It oscillated between Neelix, Tuvak, and Seven of Nine. The only show I've seen where the Vulcan wasn't made to look moronic was in Enterprise, which actually made her a complex character with a real life. And we all know what happened to that show! Having realistic characters got it cancelled and kept Star Trek off the air for years! Then they rebooted with Discovery, where everyone's a dumbass. Go figure!

This book treats its aliens in the same way, but since that was a minor part of the book, I let the conceit go, hoping the book would win me over. I'm sorry to report that it didn't. A huge portion in the middle of the book is devoted to sex and reproduction and how animals differ (or don't) when compared with humans. How anyone can make a discussion about sex boring, I do not know, but this author did it with the facility of a guy who was trying to pick up a woman in a bar or some such social setting, and insisted in rambling on about sex and intimacy when the woman wasn't even remotely into him.

That's how this affected me. It went on far too long, it was rambling, it really offered nothing particularly engaging, and as with the rest of the book, for me it brought nothing new, nothing amusing, and not even a new perspective on things. Others may find this more educational and entertaining than I.

I'm not a scientist, but I am very well read across multiple sciences from books and other materials by a variety of authors over many years, and so perhaps I have a leg up on the lay reader, but to me it felt as though you would have to know literally nothing about any of these topics to find much here that was very stirring. In short, you'd have to be the idiot alien!

So, some of the approaches taken here just seemed plain wrong to me. For example, at one point the author informs us that "Evolution ain't about the good of the species." Well you can get into some good semantic arguments here, but from my reading, that assertion is plainly wrong in very general terms, because evolution doesn't work on individual animals! Mutation does work on individuals, but for evolution you need a species over time.

That's how it works, that's the origin of species. Mutations can be good, bad, or indifferent, and not all of them get spread, not even if they're good, but often enough, the good ones - that is the ones that give the organisms in the species some reproductive or survival advantage, will tend to outcompete those without such advantages and there it;s good for the species! The mutation(s) will spread through the species and so the species succeeds where others fail, or it may even become a new species over time.

So is this for the good of the species? Well it's not designed to be for the good of a species. There's no designer. It's simply a filter - rather like a knock-out game. No one designed France to win the last World Cup, but that's how the filters played out. The France 'species' of soccer team proved to be the fittest; better able to compete. No individual won that world cup, but all members of the 'species', fitter than members of competing 'species' in the contest, contributed to the win.

To use the author's example, sharper teeth may be good for a lion, but if the genes that produce them don't spread across the species, then nothing's going to change! Teeth that are too sharp may end up slicing the lion's mouth, allowing infection in, and killing it off before it can reproduce, and that's an end to it, but if the teeth were just perfect and it left offspring that were more successful than their peers in surviving and reproducing, the teeth would spread, over time, through the pride, and so would benefit the species.

The author admits this when he says that evolution works within species - not within individuals, so I really have no idea what he was trying to argue here, and you can argue that's my fault or you can argue that the author did a poor job of getting his point across. The problem is that this was a repeated issue for me in reading this.

This is a long book with 6,904 locations so making it engaging and interesting was important to me, and it simply wasn't. I hate to invest my valuable time in a long book only to find it's not done anything for me or even worse, not so much as done what it claimed it would in the blurb. Of course, blurbs aren't written by the author (unless they self-publish), so the disconnect between what you're told you will get and what you end up getting can be quite jolting and can make or break a book for me.

Talking of book length, I found this formula online which purportedly converts location to page count. If you divide the location number by 16.69 this gives the page number supposedly. By that method, there are over 413 pages in this book. Another online formula suggests dividing by twenty which would mean this one has 345 pages. It's listed online as having 378 pages which suggests the formula ought really to be in between those two, dividing it by 18.26. But maybe there is no accurate formula for every book. What a world we live in, eh? I blame Amazon!

The point though, is that however many pages it had were too many, so this book could have done with a lot of editing and a serious trim to the discussion on sex which rambled on repetitively, circling round and round, until I completely lost interest in reading any more about it or any more of the rest of the book.

I did skim the altruism pages and found it somewhat disturbing that the author has never apparently heard of cases of altruism between different species of animal. It's like he could not see the trees for the florist, so this tended to rob him of whatever point it was he thought he was making about investing in your own genetic lineage. He seemed to be seriously undervaluing nurture and friendship, especially when it came to humans. But as I said, I skimmed it, so maybe I missed something there.

I wish the author all the best in his career, but I cannot in good faith recommend this particular science book, which is unusual for me. I typically enjoy science books and recommend them, but this one simply did not get there. It was more of a spandrel than a genetic improvement in the species of science books, and definitely not at its fittest.