Product Description

The imperative to ‘know thyself’ is both fundamental and profoundly elusive – for how can we ever truly comprehend the drama and complexity of the human experience? In Why Us? James Le Fanu offers a fascinating exploration of the power and limits of science to penetrate the deep mysteries of our existence, challenging the certainty that has persisted since Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species that we are no more than the fortuitous consequence of a materialist evolutionary process.

That challenge arises, unexpectedly, from the two major projects that promised to provide definitive proof for this most influential of scientific theories. The first is the astonishing achievement of the Human Genome Project, which, it was anticipated, would identify the genetic basis of those characteristics that distinguish humans from their primate cousins. The second is the phenomenal advance in brain imaging that now permits neuroscientists to observe the brain ‘in action’ and thus account for the remarkable properties of the human mind.

But that is not how it has turned out. It is simply not possible to get from the monotonous sequence of genes along the Double Helix to the near infinite diversity of the living world, nor to translate the electrical firing of the brain into the creativity of the human mind. This is not a matter of not knowing all the facts. Rather, science has inadvertently discovered that its theories are insufficient to conjure the wonder of the human experience from the bare bones of our genes and brains.

We stand on the brink of a tectonic shift in our understanding of ourselves that will witness the eclipse of Darwin’s materialist evolutionary theory and the rediscovery of the central premise of Western philosophy that there is ‘more than we can know’. Lucid, compelling and utterly engaging, Why Us? offers a convincing and provocative vision of the new science of being human.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42151 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Spectator
'Scientifically erudite and beautifully written...a sense of wonder is evident on every page.'

Review
'An extraordinary work of science...quite wonderfully refreshing.'

About the Author
James Le Fanu is an international award winning science writer. He graduated in medicine from Cambridge University and for the last twenty years has written a twice weekly column for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers in London on science, medicine and social policy. His previous books include ‘Eat Your Heart Out: The Fallacy of the Healthy Diet (Macmillan 1986) and ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ (Little, Brown 1999) for which he won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is married to the publisher Juliet Annan and lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Answer to Dawkins
This is probably the most important book I have read in a decade. Le Fanu shows how recent scientific investigations into the genome and into the human brain seriously undermine the certainties of materialist science, and force us to rethink our attitude to long discarded ideas such as the soul. If you want to read a cogent, entertaining, intellectually rigorous answer to Dawkins et al. then this is the book for you.

Why Us
Very thought provoking and an excellant riposte to the present Darwin worship, whilst at the same time remaining firmly rooted in science and its ramifications.

Materialism is not enough
Dr Le Fanu examines how two of science's greatest achievements of recent years - mapping the human genome and imaging the activity of the brain - simultaneously extended our knowledge of the material world and revealed more starkly the scale of mystery about what it is to be human and how very different we are to other animals with which we share so much biological heritage.

While Darwin's theory of natural selection does provide a cogent explanation for small scale evolution it cannot begin to explain major differences between species. The astonishing complexity and inter-dependedness of biological systems defy attempts to make marginal changes - ones which create a functioning animal let alone an evolutionarily successful one.

The biological differences between Neanderthals and the artists who created the cave paintings of southern France are trivial but there is great gulf in terms of their humanity.

Dr Le Fanu has a most engaging turn of phrase which encapsulates both the meaning and the significance of his subject. He is keen to share his sense of awe at the richness of life and the astonishing uniqueness of human beings.