ABSTRACT
Gossipy stardust, with tools Some years ago, the space probe Voyager 1 sent a picture of Earth back to Mission Control. Taken from the edge of our solar system, it showed our planet as a pale blue dot in a nebular mist. On that tiny blue dot lost in the inky blackness of space, at the moment in time when Voyager’s camera shutter recorded the image, several billion human beings went about their business, as did uncounted billions of ants, flies, nematodes, mice, plankton and jellyfish. In the context of billions of years of universal time, mankind seems like a meaningless anomaly. Nevertheless, we’re part of the universe – arguably the most interesting part, at least in our particular corner of the Milky Way galaxy. Our connectedness to the rest of the universe can be recognised in the fact that our bodies consist of components similar to those that constitute celestial bodies. We are, in the end, stardust. Our connectedness to each other can be recognised in a multitude of ways – not only in the similarity of our body chemistry and our genes, but also in our need for company, for communication and for making deals with each other. As a social species, experience and evolutionary pressures long ago taught us that we cannot long survive as isolated individuals, whereas we can do almost anything if we band together in highly structured groups that divide up specialist tasks and collaborate on projects – whether the project is to hunt down a few zebras in the East African savannah and turn them into meat, leather and clothing, or to build a space probe capable of sending pictures back from the edge of the solar system. Experience has shown us the extraordinary powers we can gain by making tools and mastering their coordinated use. Other species on our planet also form into teams, gangs, bands or groups, and they too communicate – horses, dolphins, baboons, starlings and meerkats are examples. Some other species, like chimpanzees and ravens, are capable of using primitive tools, such as sticks to poke at things. What’s unusual about human beings is our unparalleled sophistication in all three of these domains: social communication, tool-making and group organisation. Taken together, these abilities have turned us, over the past 100,000 years, into a new kind of animal never before seen on this planet. We’ve
become, in effect, a magician species, capable of the most extraordinary tricks. ‘Economics’ is the study of some of the systems we’ve developed to help coordinate our efforts and make deals with each other as we set about performing our extended magic show.
