Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

At the same time, a huge gulf is opening between the tenets of liberal humanism and the latest findings of the life sciences, a gulf we cannot ignore much longer. Our liberal political and judicial systems are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority. This is a reincarnation of the traditional Christian belief in a free and eternal soul that resides within each individual. Yet over the last 200 years, the life sciences have thoroughly undermined this belief. Scientists studying the inner workings of the human organism have found no soul there. They increasingly argue that human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than by free will – the same forces that determine the behaviour of chimpanzees, wolves, and ants. Our judicial and political systems largely try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries under the carpet. But in all frankness, how long can we maintain the wall separating the department of biology from the departments of law and political science?

This point of view is really limited by the assumption that beliefs which cannot be proven or explained by life sciences does not exist or are wrong. But humanity does not have an infinite knowledge. Some things that we can't explain scientifically now might be explained in the future by life sciences, and some other maybe never be. To put the things back in perspective, we are just one species living on a piece of dust moved by cosmic forces, who can barely explain why are we are here, what we are, what is consciousness and why is love so important to us to name a few. As life science fails miserably to answer these questions, why should we assume that our current scientific and rational knowledge is sufficient to explain the world around us? Basing our beliefs on rational thinking only gives us a perspective of life as limited than in the time when humanity thought that the world was flat and that the sun and all the planets were revolving around Earth. At that time too, these beliefs were based on the current scientific knowledge. It is probably the first time in the History of mankind that scientific and rational knowledge is growing at such an amazing pace. If furthermore, we assume that universal knowledge is unlimited, our understanding of life and the world around us will always be. In an attempt to extend our current state of knowledge, why not use other tools available to us to understand better the things that we can't explain scientifically yet? We can try to think more outside of the box of rationality, for instance, by using non-rational tools available to us like creativity, intuition, and also by getting inspiration from ancient texts, or by self-experimental knowledge and practices like introspection & meditation that have been used and trusted by humanity by thousands of years. Humanity might still be at an early stage of understanding, like a kid who is discovering the word and who thinks he knows everything, but in reality, knows really little.