Easter Island
Control Data Corporation
Scholasticism
Progress, the video
Venice (decline)
Darwin: mental atrophy
Freud's attack on nature
Mayans
Wall Street Blues

Solutions

Friar Roger Bacon
Venice (beginnings)
Afterthought
Creativity
Darwin and poetry
Federal Express
Left brain and right brain
Sustainable development

Insight

Progress or Paradigm?
Cholera in London, 1858
Division of mental labour
Hollywood / Rocket Science
Tikopia
Galileo, wrong??
Damasio's decision

1. They saw it coming - introduction to the book's themes
2. Hostile environments - how humans came to see the world as a hostile place
3. Ingenuity and Inertia - with innovations come obstacles
4. Separated from living things - the concept of man as distinct from the natural world
5. Historical trajectories - evolution of the rise, decline and fall of social entities
6. Reconcilable differences - how the division between humans and nature is harmful, yet reconcilable
7. Forward and backward - insulating humans from their natural environment sows the seeds societal collapse
8. A two-sided story - neurological support for the fact of mental specialization
9. Playing God - the self-referencing realm of science and technology fosters notions of irreproachability
10. Excuses, excuses - rational methods can be put to any use; they are not a guarantee of accuracy
11. A Fork in the road - excessive mental specialization gives rise to the failure of ingenuity
12. Audacious and brilliant intuitions - the most creative scientists have often relied on intuition
13. Nurturing Genius - "The genius creates good ideas because we all create good ideas" - S. Pinker
14. Resilient adaptations - human resilience argues that societal collapse, and the failure of ingenuity can be avoided
15. Afterthought