Darwin's Pharmacy

Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere

By: Richard M. Doyle

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Paperback | 1 October 2011 | Edition Number 22

At a Glance

Paperback
336 Pages

Age
22+

Grade
17+

Dimensions(cm)
21.5 x 19 x 2.5

Paperback

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Are humans unwitting partners in evolution with psychedelic plants? Darwin's Pharmacy shows they are by weaving the evolutionary theory of sexual selection and the study of rhetoric together with the science and literature of psychedelic drugs. Long suppressed as components of the human tool kit, psychedelic plants can be usefully modeled as "eloquence adjuncts" that intensify a crucial component of sexual selection in humans: discourse.

Psychedelic plants seduce us to interact with them, building an ongoing interdependence: rhetoric as evolutionary mechanism. In doing so, they engage our awareness of the noosphere, or thinking stratum of the earth. The realization that the human organism is part of an interconnected ecosystem is an apprehension of immanence that could ultimately benefit the planet and its inhabitants.

To explore the rhetoric of the psychedelic experience and its significance to evolution, Doyle takes his readers on an epic journey through the writings of William Burroughs and Kary Mullis, the work of ethnobotanists and anthropologists, and anonymous trip reports. The results offer surprising insights into evolutionary theory, the war on drugs, the internet, and the nature of human consciousness itself.

Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xof-t2cAob4

Industry Reviews

"Darwin's Pharmacy is a significant achievement, a brilliant, ambitious, original piece of pedagogy. I can't imagine anybody but Doyle who could control and mobilize in the name of a single vision the range and dizzying variety of the material on offer." -Brian Rotman, Ohio State University "Darwin's Pharmacy is a beautiful book-poetry in prose and modern music in print. It is a book for all readers who have ever wondered whether dreams are another form or a different part of wakened consciousness and reality. Doyle dispenses with dualism and parallelism, expanding wonder from dreams to ecodelic states and the possibilities and difficulties of communication about these states via language." -Stanley Shostak, University of Pittsburgh

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