Astral Codex Ten

War in Human Civilization

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War in Human Civilization

Article

War in Human Civilization is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 22, 2021 and June 03, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""Read for : a wonderful case study of what a rigorous, multi-disciplinary look at a complex and important phenomenon looks like. This might be my favorite example of a book…""; “The other book I’ve read recently about war and proto-states ( War In Human Civilization )“. It most often appears alongside ACX, African Gray Parrots, ancient Rome.

Metadata

  • Category: Books
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 22, 2021
  • Last seen: June 03, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?
April 22, 2021 · Original source
I was always pretty bored by plants - they don't move, they don't have the Four Fs (Fight, Flight, Feed, and, er, Mate), what could possibly be interesting about them? Well, trees and forests turn out to be amazing interdependent complex systems, so this book not only taught me what there was to love about plants, it also scratched a similar "joy of pure learning" itch to Are We Smart Enough. There's less that's directly applicable to humans, though some of its insights on complex systems might come in handy. Wohlleben maybe gets a bit poetic and reads too much into tree "cognition" at places, but I won't hold it too much against him, because he does a great job of re-awakening the awe and wonder many of us have felt for big, beautiful forests. War in Human Civilization Read for: a wonderful case study of what a rigorous, multi-disciplinary look at a complex and important phenomenon looks like.
Inline links: Four Fs
This might be my favorite example of a book that takes a huge, sprawling topic that requires insights from multiple academic fields and puts it together rigorously. History, archaeology, evolutionary psychology, primatology, climatology, hell, even metallurgy. This book amounts to a comprehensive survey on what we know about human violence since we've been humans (and maybe a little before) through to the modern day. And given the species that we are, a comprehensive treatment of war pretty much amounts to a treatment of all of human history. This is why when I'm feeling snarky, I sometimes call it Sapiens for grownups (not totally fair - Sapiens is also a great example of weaving together findings from many disciplines, but after all the rave reviews, I expected something more earth shattering. Then I realized everyone I had heard from who was blown away by it was a STEM type that probably hasn't spent much time with history, evolutionary psych, and so forth). You will especially enjoy War in Human Civilization if you found the discussions in Are We Smart Enough about chimp politics and strategy interesting.
Your Book Review: The Collapse Of Complex Societies
June 03, 2021 · Original source
I’m not sure why the Mayans didn’t have standing armies and find this quite interesting. Perhaps that was common in sufficiently labor-taxed states where everyone had to spend as much time as possible extracting the next head of maize from the soil? The other book I’ve read recently about war and proto-states (War In Human Civilization) indicates standing armies was a very advantageous thing to have, because the common pre-state alternative was calling forward an assembly to deal with every incursion on an ad hoc basis, and such societies tended to get overwhelmed by a persistent, professional force, even if that persistent force was smaller. (Rome was able to beat back numerically superior invasions from proto-states for similar reasons.)