Stories, dice, and rocks that think : how humans learned to see the future - and shape it
(Book)

Includes annotations and index.

"A message from the author: Our species has long played an existential game of Mad Libs, trying to fill in the blank on what seems like a pretty straightforward sentence: "Humans are the only creatures that ______." But each time a new answer to the question of what makes us unique is offered, it is immediately pounced on by nay-sayers eager to disprove it and to show that there isn't really anything that special about us at all-- that we are just another animal. But common sense tells us that simply isn't true. Our planet is populated by two types of creatures: us and a giant menagerie of beings so unlike us that the tiniest overlap is cause for curious wonder. It's not our bodies that give us preeminence; it's our minds. We are endowed with a temporal mental plasticity that enable our minds to roam freely through time, untethered from the here and now. We can remember what happened yesterday and use it to speculate on what might happen tomorrow; we can recall our childhood and contemplate our old age. No other creature on Earth even knows that there is a future, or a past for that matter; instinctual behavior aside, animals live outside time. There was a time when creatures that looked like us were animals, and they, too, didn't know there was a future or a past. How did we get from there to a point where we could think about the future; influence it; and finally, perhaps master it? Pour yourself a drink, sit back, and get comfortable, because I have quite a story to tell you.--Byron Reese"--page 2 of cover.