Foot in the River

We are a weird species. Like other species we have a culture. But by comparison with other species we are strangely unstable: human cultures self-transform diverge and multiply with bewildering speed. They vary radically and rapidly from time to time and place to place. And the way we live--our manners morals habits experiences relationships technology values--seems to be changing at an ever accelerating pace. The effects can be dislocating baffling sometimes terrifying. Why is this? <p/>In <em>A Foot in the River</em> best-selling historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto sifts through the evidence and offers some radical answers to these very big questions about the human species and its history--and speculates on what these answers might mean for our future. Combining insights from a huge range of disciplines including history biology anthropology archaeology philosophy sociology ethology zoology primatology psychology linguistics the cognitive sciences and even business studies he argues that culture is exempt from evolution. Ultimately no environmental conditions no genetic legacy no predictable patterns no scientific laws determine our behaviour. We can consequently make and remake our world in the freedom of unconstrained imaginations. <p/>A revolutionary book which challenges scientistic assumptions about culture and how and why cultural change happens <em>A Foot in the River</em> comes to conclusions which readers may well find by turns both daunting and also potentially hugely liberating.<br>