Story of Our Lives, The: Homo Sapiens' Secrets of Success

We are restless, world-changing organisms. The last two centuries are characterized by the exponential growth of our knowledge and understanding of ourselves, of the world we live in and of the interactions between the two. Part of the living world, we are the only organism that continuously designs, creates and combines a multitude of abilities to harness the rules of nature, manipulating our environment, its resources and even our own bodies to fit them to our ever-changing needs and desires, each generation continuing from the point that the previous one left off. What is it that enables us to be one of the living organisms of this planet, sharing some 99 percent of our DNA as well as some of our basic behaviors with other organisms, yet at the same time so different, unique and powerful?Coalescing understandings driven from a wide array of disciplines such as biology, psychology, anthropology, history and more, the book attempts to answer the above question using a new paradigm: The Gordian knot between five human traits, evolutionary developed and co-amplified as the ultra-complex system called Homo sapiens. These are: imagination, creative making, communication, change and intergeneration transfer. Through innovative definitions of technology, intelligence, education, science and especially the co-dependence between them, the book discusses their combined roles in the development of human societies; deliberates their implications on everyday life; emphasizes the crucial role of science education in the development of a responsible, sustainable society; and offers a fresh look at who we are as the leading species on this planet.