Beyond Biology:
Human evolution and the emergence of a cultural being
by Matthew B. Hallinan
Published January 2021
ISBN: 978-0-97-71655-2-0
$17.95; Trade paperback; 220 pages; 6×9
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We are not just another kind of animal, we are a different kind of life-form. We have evolved beyond the framework of biology. Getting human evolution right is not simply an academic exercise. To be able to make our peace with nature we must come to understand what we are and how we fit into the natural world.
It’s been over 160 years since Darwin published his masterpiece on evolution, enabling us to understand how all the different life forms, including us, could have emerged through an entirely natural process. Since then, fossil discoveries and advances in DNA technology have established a clear connection between humans and a particular family of great apes.
We know that we evolved, but we don’t yet understand how we evolved to become a creature so different from every other animal.
In Beyond Biology, author Matthew Hallinan argues that we are an intelligent life-form that has not yet figured out what it is and how it fits into the development of the natural world — the product of a process that has been blind to its impact on the workings of our planet. As a result, humanity is at war with the natural world. He believes we need a new narrative — one that can help us to change the way we think about both nature and ourselves.
Beyond Biology presents an original hypothesis about human evolution; one that the author hopes can better equip us to meet the difficult challenges we face.
about the author
Matthew B. Hallinan received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. In Beyond Biology, he brings together his years of study and independent research to answer a question that has long fascinated him: How could humans have gone through the same kind of evolutionary process as every other animal and yet have come out so different? This question has been central to Hallinan’s intellectual life. His passion for the subject is not driven simply by curiosity, but rather by a sense that time is growing short for us to come to terms with our place in the natural world.