| So, after reading those threads, my first impression is this is an ideological disagreement, but not that Harari is actually wrong in his analysis. Ok, so I'll start with some observations on the comments themselves, and will continue to explain what really needs to be addressed in order for me to understand things better. The comments seem to dislike that this book is about the whole of humanity, written in a short book, so I would expect a simple counter to this, but I see people not having read the book in full: QUOTE "But again, since I've yet to personally read the book rather than get second-hand info about it" QUOTE "I've tried to read it twice and not got very far." QUOTE "I've seen some water cooler chat about the book, but I don't personally know anyone that has read the book - like myself" Regardless, the first link seems to contain better info on why it's wrong, with specific detailed counters, it's just that those details could still be off, but the premise could still be right... however this "benefit of the doubt", let's call it, is only given to OTHER books just not Sapiens: QUOTE "This is why a book like 1491 has been so much more warmly received. One can undoubtedly find dozens of factual errors within. But instead of mirroring a popular inquiry born out of popular ignorance ("Why were the Americas so decisively conquered?"), it recognizes that ignorance as a problem to be solved." First, "warmly received" is useless here, and second we can start to see the root of the disagreement... it has to do with a specific perspective of the world, and anyone going against that perspective is wrong (but of course, the reasons won't be made clear -- instead attacking mistakes, character, and credentials). The following quote shines a light on this a bit more. QUOTE "Some would argue that language is purely abstract- that the act of calling something a rock is what creates the rock. As much as the 'rock' exists as a physical object with observable properties, there is no natural boundary between 'rock' and 'pebble' and 'sand.' " Ah... isn't this interesting? This is all philosophy, and I would even label Sapiens as philosophy to a great extent. These are all theories that can only be reasoned about, and thus we enter Epistemology and Ontology, and we're in a completely different territory than History. We're trying to understand ourselves in History, this is not an event, or a fact. In conclusion, I would like a hard counter to his simple premise, which is an answer to the question, why are humans so different than the rest of the animal kingdom? (TED talk summarizes it nicely), and also, I would like to point out that the criticisms are not self-aware that they're arguing philosophical matters and instead are pretending they are countering hard historical facts, and dismissing the book on that basis. TL;DR: why are humans so different than animals, and why is that a historical conversation, when it's really philosophy, and ultimately Harari made it simple, so there should be no need to argue around it if he's wrong in his premise. |