The invention of man
Renée Schröder, 2016
The invention of man by Renée Schröder, Residenz-Verlag, 2016. Anyone who wants to learn about genetic research and digitalization, both the important science-based megatrends, should read this book. Renée Schröder has written the science book of the year 2016 in the category of natural science; - easy to read, yet not shallow and particularly meaningful! We have rarely read a book that presents the history of humanity in such a clear and at the same time sophisticated way. It divides the world as intellectual history into three categories:
- Things that exist independently of our thoughts. This is the world of natural science. The real world, the universe.
- Things that exist because we created them. They would not exist if we had not thought them up and created them.
- Things that exist only in our head. They disappear again when the head that thinks them dies and the thoughts have not been written down and spread.
The description of the state of research of 1 & 2 is brilliant and absolutely up to date. In 3 she names all the great myths of human history and especially the great narratives of religions. When she speculates that there can be no God and that the world needs feminism to survive, it is amusing to read and pointed. Thus, she is convinced that evolution has no plan, but that humanity has it in its own hands whether and how it will survive. What she does not ask is whether, without a plan, there cannot nevertheless be a God. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Meister Eckart and especially the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel have already thought about all this. Natural scientists often have a tendency to dogmatism or turned differently, there is missing some humility before the scientific object about which man writes. This part in the book can be read over with confidence. For digitalization, the book has an important conceptual surprise in store: Renée Schröder calls for a second enlightenment and quotes Emanuel Kant: "Enlightenment is the exit of man from his self-inflicted immaturity." Digital and scientific knowledge is multiplying exponentially. People of the 21st century have to keep up, and that means learning, learning, learning. The author provides important impulses on what needs to be learned.
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