Author: Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108470971
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 575
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Book Description
A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.
Author: Stephen C. Levinson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262122782
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
Twelve original essays examine the symbiotic relation of culture and genome.
Author: Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110865343X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 575
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Book Description
Both natural and cultural selection played an important role in shaping human evolution. Since cultural change can itself be regarded as evolutionary, a process of gene-culture coevolution is operative. The study of human evolution - in past, present and future - is therefore not restricted to biology. An inclusive comprehension of human evolution relies on integrating insights about cultural, economic and technological evolution with relevant elements of evolutionary biology. In addition, proximate causes and effects of cultures need to be added to the picture - issues which are at the forefront of social sciences like anthropology, economics, geography and innovation studies. This book highlights discussions on the many topics to which such generalised evolutionary thought has been applied: the arts, the brain, climate change, cooking, criminality, environmental problems, futurism, gender issues, group processes, humour, industrial dynamics, institutions, languages, medicine, music, psychology, public policy, religion, sex, sociality and sports.
Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674252934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 777
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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal
Author: Peter J. Richerson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226712133
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics. Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature. In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come. “I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature “Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University
Author: N. Tinbergen
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317911539
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Originally published in 1953, this is a classic study in animal behaviour, drawing on the author’s own extraordinary studies of insects, fish, and birds, as well as on the literature. The concept ‘community’ is taken in its widest sense to include all types of association of individuals, not only flocks and herds, but also the family, the pair, and even two animals engaged in combat. The author received the Nobel Prize for his work in this field in 1973.
Author: Jesse J Prinz
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1846145724
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 439
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Book Description
In this provocative, revelatory tour de force, Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story.
Author: Linda Stone
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 1405150890
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesisis a textbook on human evolution that offers students a unique combination of cultural anthropology and genetics. Written by two geneticists---including a world-renowned scientist and founder of the Human Genome Diversity Project---and a socio-cultural anthropologist. Based on recent findings in genetics and anthropology that indicate the analysis of human culture and evolution demands an integration of these fields of study. Focuses on evolution---or, rather, co-evolution---viewed from the standpoint of genes and culture, and their inescapable interactions. Unifies cultural and genetic concepts rather than rehashing nonempirical sociobiological musings. Demonstrates that empirical genetic evidence, based on modern DNA analysis and population studies, provides an excellent foundation for understanding human cultural diversity.
Author: Daniel Lieberman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030774180X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482
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Book Description
A landmark book of popular science that gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years—with charts and line drawings throughout. “Fascinating.... A readable introduction to the whole field and great on the making of our physicality.”—Nature In this book, Daniel E. Lieberman illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering; and how cultural changes like the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have impacted us physically. He shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning a paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment and pursue better lifestyles.
Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178437
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
