Albert Camus, Evolution Fundamentals, Caffeinated Minds

Three Point Thursday

Happy Three Point Thursday.

This week’s edition takes a look at an all-time deep thinker, an excerpt from an excellent science book, and a reflection on one of civilization’s most important intellectual and cultural movements.

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1. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The wisdom of the great books is a source of profound meaning in my life, and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is near the top of that list. There are few books that capture the human condition so well. It provides a sort of antidote to the sheer absurdity of existence. “The only way to deal with an unfree world,” he writes, “is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” I cannot recommend this classic enough.

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2. What is evolution?

“The basic claims of evolutionary theory are simple to state and as well established as anything else in science. Species are not static; they change and evolve over time. Every species we share the planet with today evolved from an earlier species, which itself evolved from an earlier species, and so on and so on, back into the mists of time. As we trace back the genealogies of existing species, they soon begin to converge like the branches of a tree, traced from tip to trunk. Chimpanzees and bonobos share a common ancestor around a million years ago. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and human beings share a common ancestor around seven million years ago. And we're only just scratching the surface! Any two species share a common ancestor if you trace it back far enough: humans and tigers, tigers and goldfish, goldfish and toadstools. Ultimately, all life on Earth traces back to a simple, self-replicating molecule that appeared on the planet around four billion years ago.”

— Steve Stuart-Williams, The Ape That Understood The Universe

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3. Coffee shops are like gyms for your mind.

I love imagining what it was like when Enlightenment-era writers and philosophers met up in cafés across Europe to discuss new ideas, political developments, and scientific discoveries. This time, after all, was the beginning of people making unprecedented levels of scientific, technological, and moral progress. And, as author Tom Standage points out in his book, A History of the World in 6 Glasses, caffeine helped fuel it. “Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain,” writes the historian Jules Michelet, “which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flash of truth.”

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