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Author: Magnus Enquist
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691240760
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
A major new theory of why human intelligence has not evolved in other species The Human Evolutionary Transition offers a unified view of the evolution of intelligence, presenting a bold and provocative new account of how animals and humans have followed two powerful yet very different evolutionary paths to intelligence. This incisive book shows how animals rely on robust associative mechanisms that are guided by genetic information, which enable animals to sidestep complex problems in learning and decision making but ultimately limit what they can learn. Humans embody an evolutionary transition to a different kind of intelligence, one that relies on behavioral and mental flexibility. The book argues that flexibility is useless to most animals because they lack sufficient opportunities to learn new behavioral and mental skills. Humans find these opportunities in lengthy childhoods and through culture. Blending the latest findings in fields ranging from psychology to evolutionary anthropology, The Human Evolutionary Transition draws on computational analyses of the problems organisms face, extensive overviews of empirical data on animal and human learning, and mathematical modeling and computer simulations of hypotheses about intelligence. This compelling book demonstrates that animal and human intelligence evolved from similar selection pressures while identifying bottlenecks in evolution that may explain why human-like intelligence is so rare.
Author: Magnus Enquist
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691240760
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book Here
Book Description
A major new theory of why human intelligence has not evolved in other species The Human Evolutionary Transition offers a unified view of the evolution of intelligence, presenting a bold and provocative new account of how animals and humans have followed two powerful yet very different evolutionary paths to intelligence. This incisive book shows how animals rely on robust associative mechanisms that are guided by genetic information, which enable animals to sidestep complex problems in learning and decision making but ultimately limit what they can learn. Humans embody an evolutionary transition to a different kind of intelligence, one that relies on behavioral and mental flexibility. The book argues that flexibility is useless to most animals because they lack sufficient opportunities to learn new behavioral and mental skills. Humans find these opportunities in lengthy childhoods and through culture. Blending the latest findings in fields ranging from psychology to evolutionary anthropology, The Human Evolutionary Transition draws on computational analyses of the problems organisms face, extensive overviews of empirical data on animal and human learning, and mathematical modeling and computer simulations of hypotheses about intelligence. This compelling book demonstrates that animal and human intelligence evolved from similar selection pressures while identifying bottlenecks in evolution that may explain why human-like intelligence is so rare.
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.
Author: John Maynard Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019850294X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
During evolution there have been several major changes in the way genetic information is organized and transmitted from one generation to the next. These transitions include the origin of life itself, the first eukaryotic cells, reproduction by sexual means, the appearance of multicellular plants and animals, the emergence of cooperation and of animal societies. This is the first book to discuss all these major transitions and their implications for our understanding of evolution.Clearly written and illustrated with many original diagrams, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in the fields of evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.
Author: Magnus Enquist
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691240779
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
A major new theory of why human intelligence has not evolved in other species The Human Evolutionary Transition offers a unified view of the evolution of intelligence, presenting a bold and provocative new account of how animals and humans have followed two powerful yet very different evolutionary paths to intelligence. This incisive book shows how animals rely on robust associative mechanisms that are guided by genetic information, which enable animals to sidestep complex problems in learning and decision making but ultimately limit what they can learn. Humans embody an evolutionary transition to a different kind of intelligence, one that relies on behavioral and mental flexibility. The book argues that flexibility is useless to most animals because they lack sufficient opportunities to learn new behavioral and mental skills. Humans find these opportunities in lengthy childhoods and through culture. Blending the latest findings in fields ranging from psychology to evolutionary anthropology, The Human Evolutionary Transition draws on computational analyses of the problems organisms face, extensive overviews of empirical data on animal and human learning, and mathematical modeling and computer simulations of hypotheses about intelligence. This compelling book demonstrates that animal and human intelligence evolved from similar selection pressures while identifying bottlenecks in evolution that may explain why human-like intelligence is so rare.
Author: Harry Smit
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107055199
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Harry Smit examines the elements of current evolutionary theory and how they bear on the evolution of the human mind.
Author: Michael P Muehlenbein
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128026936
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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Book Description
Basics in Human Evolution offers a broad view of evolutionary biology and medicine. The book is written for a non-expert audience, providing accessible and convenient content that will appeal to numerous readers across the interdisciplinary field. From evolutionary theory, to cultural evolution, this book fills gaps in the readers' knowledge from various backgrounds and introduces them to thought leaders in human evolution research. - Offers comprehensive coverage of the wide ranging field of human evolution - Written for a non-expert audience, providing accessible and convenient content that will appeal to numerous readers across the interdisciplinary field - Provides expertise from leading minds in the field - Allows the reader the ability to gain exposure to various topics in one publication
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: Erella Hovers
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387246614
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Modern human origins and the fate of the Neanderthals are arguably the most compelling and contentious arenas in paleoanthropology. The much-discussed split between advocates of a single, early emergence of anatomically modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa and supporters of various regional continuity positions is only part of the picture. Equally if not more important are questions surrounding the origins of modern behavior, and the relationships between anatomical and behavioral changes that occurred during the past 200,000 years. Although modern humans as a species may be defined in terms of their skeletal anatomy, it is their behavior, and the social and cognitive structures that support that behavior, which most clearly distinguish Homo sapiens from earlier forms of humans. This book assembles researchers working in Eurasia and Africa to discuss the archaeological record of the Middle Paleolithic and the Middle Stone Age. This is a time period when Homo sapiens last shared the world with other species, and during which patterns of behavior characteristic of modern humans developed and coalesced. Contributions to this volume query and challenge some current notions about the tempo and mode of cultural evolution, and about the processes that underlie the emergence of modern behavior. The papers focus on several fundamental questions. Do typical elements of "modern human behavior" appear suddenly, or are there earlier archaeological precursors of them? Are the archaeological records of the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age unchanging and monotonous, or are there detectable evolutionary trends within these periods? Coming to diverse conclusions, the papers in this volume open up new avenues to thinking about this crucial interval in human evolutionary history.
Author: Ian Tattersall
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156006538
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Explores the evolution of humankind--who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.
Author: Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780190616786
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"This book covers the psychological aspects of human evolution with a table of contents ranging from prehistoric times to modern days. Dunbar focuses on an aspect of evolution that has typically been overshadowed by the archaeological record: the biological, neurological, and genetic changes that occurred with each "transition" in the evolutionary narrative"--
