Evolution Culture And The Human Mind

Author : Mark Schaller,Ara Norenzayan,Steven J. Heine,Toshio Yamagishi,Tatsuya Kameda
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2011-03-17
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781136950490

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Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind by Mark Schaller,Ara Norenzayan,Steven J. Heine,Toshio Yamagishi,Tatsuya Kameda Pdf

An enormous amount of scientific research compels two fundamental conclusions about the human mind: The mind is the product of evolution; and the mind is shaped by culture. These two perspectives on the human mind are not incompatible, but, until recently, their compatibility has resisted rigorous scholarly inquiry. Evolutionary psychology documents many ways in which genetic adaptations govern the operations of the human mind. But evolutionary inquiries only occasionally grapple seriously with questions about human culture and cross-cultural differences. By contrast, cultural psychology documents many ways in which thought and behavior are shaped by different cultural experiences. But cultural inquires rarely consider evolutionary processes. Even after decades of intensive research, these two perspectives on human psychology have remained largely divorced from each other. But that is now changing - and that is what this book is about. Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind is the first scholarly book to integrate evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human psychology. The contributors include world-renowned evolutionary, cultural, social, and cognitive psychologists. These chapters reveal many novel insights linking human evolution to both human cognition and human culture – including the evolutionary origins of cross-cultural differences. The result is a stimulating introduction to an emerging integrative perspective on human nature.

Author : Mark Schaller
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2024-06-21
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0805859128

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Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind by Mark Schaller Pdf

Author : Peter Carruthers,Andrew Chamberlain
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2000-11-02
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0521789087

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Evolution and the Human Mind by Peter Carruthers,Andrew Chamberlain Pdf

This volume of essays offers an interdisciplinary examination of the evolution of the human mind.

Author : Gary Hatfield,Holly Pittman
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 498 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2013-05-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781934536605

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Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture by Gary Hatfield,Holly Pittman Pdf

Descartes boldly claimed: "I think, therefore I am." But one might well ask: Why do we think? How? When and why did our human ancestors develop language and culture? In other words, what makes the human mind human? Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture offers a comprehensive and scientific investigation of these perennial questions. Fourteen essays bring together the work of archaeologists, cultural and physical anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, geneticists, a neuroscientist, and an environmental scientist to explore the evolution of the human mind, the brain, and the human capacity for culture. The volume represents and critically engages major theoretical approaches, including Donald's stage theory, Mithen's cathedral model, Tomasello's joint intentionality, and Boyd and Richerson's modeling of the evolution of culture in relation to climate change. No recent publication combines this breadth of evidential and theoretical perspective. The essays range in topic from the macroscopic (the evolution of social cooperation) to the microscopic (examining genetic data to infer evolutions in brain structure and function), and from the ancient (paleoanthropological reconstructions of hominin cognitive abilities) to the modern (including modern hominin's similarities to our primate cousins). Considered together, these essays constitute a fascinating, detailed look at what makes us human. PMIRC, volume 5

Author : Kevin N. Laland
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-09-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780691184470

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Darwin's Unfinished Symphony by Kevin N. Laland Pdf

Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for culture, from the arts and language to science and technology. But how did the human mind—and the uniquely human ability to devise and transmit culture—evolve from its roots in animal behavior? Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony presents a captivating new theory of human cognitive evolution. This compelling and accessible book reveals how culture is not just the magnificent end product of an evolutionary process that produced a species unlike all others—it is also the key driving force behind that process. Kevin Laland tells the story of the painstaking fieldwork, the key experiments, the false leads, and the stunning scientific breakthroughs that led to this new understanding of how culture transformed human evolution. It is the story of how Darwin’s intellectual descendants picked up where he left off and took up the challenge of providing a scientific account of the evolution of the human mind.

Author : Merlin Donald
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1993-03-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674253704

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Origins of the Modern Mind by Merlin Donald Pdf

This bold and brilliant book asks the ultimate question of the life sciences: How did the human mind acquire its incomparable power? In seeking the answer, Merlin Donald traces the evolution of human culture and cognition from primitive apes to artificial intelligence, presenting an enterprising and original theory of how the human mind evolved from its presymbolic form.

Author : Gary Hatfield,Holly Pittman
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013-04-19
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781934536490

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Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture by Gary Hatfield,Holly Pittman Pdf

Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture draws together studies in archaeology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, genetics, neuroscience, and environmental science to investigate the evolution of the human mind, the brain, and the human capacity for culture.

Author : Joseph Henrich
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2017-10-17
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780691178431

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The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich Pdf

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 : Bradley Franks
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2011-04-05
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780230343832

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Culture and Cognition by Bradley Franks Pdf

Human culture depends on human minds for its creation, meaning and exchange. But minds also depend on culture for their contents and processes. Past resolutions to this circularity problem have tended to give too much weight to one side and too little weight to the other. In this groundbreaking and timely work, Bradley Franks demonstrates how a more plausible resolution to the circularity problem emerges from reframing mind and culture and their relations in evolutionary terms. He proposes an alternative evolutionary approach that draws on views of mind as embodied and situated. By grounding social construction in evolution, evolution of mind is intrinsically connected to culture – resolving the circularity problem. In developing his theory, Franks provides a balanced critical assessment of modularity-based and social constructionist approaches to understanding mind and culture.

Author : Charles J Lumsden,Edward O Wilson
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2005-08-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789814480697

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Genes, Mind, and Culture by Charles J Lumsden,Edward O Wilson Pdf

Long considered one of the most provocative and demanding major works on human sociobiology, Genes, Mind, and Culture introduces the concept of gene-culture coevolution. It has been out of print for several years, and in this volume Lumsden and Wilson provide a much needed facsimile edition of their original work, together with a major review of progress in the discipline during the ensuing quarter century. They argue compellingly that human nature is neither arbitrary nor predetermined, and identify mechanisms that energize the upward translation from genes to culture. The authors also assess the properties of genetic evolution of mind within emergent cultural patterns. Lumsden and Wilson explore the rich and sophisticated data of developmental psychology and cognitive science in a fashion that, for the first time, aligns these disciplines with human sociobiology. The authors also draw on population genetics, cultural anthropology, and mathematical physics to set human sociobiology on a predictive base, and so trace the main steps that lead from the genes through human consciousness to culture. Contents:The Next Synthesis: 25 Years of Genes, Mind, and CultureThe Primary Epigenetic RulesThe Secondary Epigenetic RulesGene-Culture TranslationThe Gene-Culture Adaptive LandscapeThe Coevolutionary CircuitThe Biogeography of the MindGene-Culture Coevolution and Social Theory Readership: For the biological and social scientists, as well as applied mathematicians, philosophers, and historians of science, the book will indeed interest and be accessible to researchers, academics and lecturers. Keywords:Genes;Genome;Mind;Culture;Sociobiology;Meme;Consilience;Holism;Consciousness;Development;Epigenesis;Epigenetic;Emergence;Social Physics;Evolution;Darwin;Nonlinear Dynamics;Complexity;ChaosKey Features:Presents a richly multidisciplinary subject matter that appeal to academic readers in the biological, social, and mathematical sciences, as well as in philosophy and the history of scienceEach chapter is organized in a way that non-mathematical readers can assess the key arguments and results while reserving the mathematical sections for future studyExtensive use of diagrams and graphics supplement each chapter's text and mathematical developmentsA Glossary section makes the book's technical vocabulary instantly accessible at any point in the text

Author : Stephen C. Levinson,Pierre Jaisson (ed)
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780262122788

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Evolution and Culture by Stephen C. Levinson,Pierre Jaisson (ed) Pdf

Twelve original essays examine the symbiotic relation of culture and genome.

Author : Cecilia Heyes
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-04-16
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780674985131

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Cognitive Gadgets by Cecilia Heyes Pdf

How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts. Unlike other living animal species, we are born with complicated mechanisms for reasoning about causation, reading the minds of others, copying behaviors, and using language. Cecilia Heyes agrees that adult humans have impressive pieces of cognitive equipment. In her framing, however, these cognitive gadgets are not instincts programmed in the genes but are constructed in the course of childhood through social interaction. Cognitive gadgets are products of cultural evolution, rather than genetic evolution. At birth, the minds of human babies are only subtly different from the minds of newborn chimpanzees. We are friendlier, our attention is drawn to different things, and we have a capacity to learn and remember that outstrips the abilities of newborn chimpanzees. Yet when these subtle differences are exposed to culture-soaked human environments, they have enormous effects. They enable us to upload distinctively human ways of thinking from the social world around us. As Cognitive Gadgets makes clear, from birth our malleable human minds can learn through culture not only what to think but how to think it.

Author : Mark Pagel
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2012-02-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780393063158

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Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel Pdf

“Does an excellent job of using evolutionary biology to discuss the origins of religion, music, art, and . . . morality.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

Author : Mark Schaller,Ara Norenzayan,Steven J. Heine,Toshio Yamagishi,Tatsuya Kameda
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2011-03-17
Category : FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
ISBN : 9781136950506

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Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind by Mark Schaller,Ara Norenzayan,Steven J. Heine,Toshio Yamagishi,Tatsuya Kameda Pdf

Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind is the first scholarly book to integrate evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human psychology. The contributors include world-renowned evolutionary, cultural, social, and cognitive psychologists. These chapt.

Author : Thomas Edward McNamara
Publisher : University Press of America
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 076182765X

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Evolution, Culture, and Consciousness by Thomas Edward McNamara Pdf

Thomas McNamara, in Evolution, Culture, and Consciousness, presents the first comprehensive theory of human perception and consciousness based on the generally accepted principles of evolutionary psychology. This theory, building on the best evolutionary research, explains that just a few simple neurological changes in the primate brain account for human speech, self-consciousness and the creation of meaning out of experience. All primates can learn, but our species evolved a new instinct for learning, which makes childhood learning just as powerful as the other biological instincts found in all other primates. McNamara shows that children are genetically programmed to learn not just what to think, but how to think, shaping the preconscious process for creating meaning out of experience. However, because our environment has changed radically since our origin, this archaic form of consciousness has become a major block to human development and success. After explaining how we have all been programmed to preconsciously create meaning out of experience, McNamara shows how we can create a new and more successful way of thinking and feeling, resulting in a happier, more productive, stress free life.