Nonzero

Wright, Robert

"At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded - and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless."--BOOK JACKET. "Ingeniously employing game theory - the logic of "zero-sum" and "non-zero-sum" games - Wright isolates the impetus behind life's basic direction; the impetus that, via biological evolution, created complex, intelligent animals and then, via cultural evolution, pushed the human species toward deeper and vaster social complexity."--BOOK JACKET. "Wright argues that a coolly scientific appraisal of humanity's three-billion-year past can give new spiritual meaning to the present and even offer political guidance for the...

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