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Our understanding of the human mind has radically changed in recent years--from the unified mind once envisioned by René Descartes over three hundred years ago to a new understanding of mind as a set of specialized cognitive components gradually accumulated in our evolutionary past.
In The Evolution of Mind, outstanding figures on the cutting edge of evolutionary psychology follow clues provided by current neuroscientific evidence to illuminate many puzzling questions of human cognitive evolution. With contributions from psychologists, ethologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, the book offers a broad range of approaches to explore the mysteries of the minds evolution. Written in a highly readable style, The Evolution of Mind will appeal to a broad range of researchers and students and help set the agenda for the field for years to come. Click here to buy from Amazon |
Editorial Reviews
"A superb and stimulating book containing contributions from the top minds in evolutionary cognitive psychology. Chapters are uniformly high level and ground breaking. The book signals a scientific revolution in the Darwinizing of cognitive psychology. A must read for all psychological researchers, as well as those who want or need to keep up with the cutting edge."--David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
"In the last few years evolutionary psychology has become one of the hottest areas of research in the cognitive sciences. The essays that Cummins and Allen have assembled make it very clear why this new interdisciplinary field is so exciting, challenging, and controversial. The book includes cutting edge essays that are absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the mind and how it evolved."--Stephen P. Stich, Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Rutgers University
"With the question of animal minds featured on the cover of Newsweek and columnists from the New York Times going at each other over evolutionary psychology, it should be obvious to everyone that behavioral science is entering a new era. A good slogan for this era may be 'no psychology without biology; no biology (at least for mammals) without psychology.' The work that Cummins and Allen have brought together constitutes not just a manifesto for this new era, but is chockfull of exciting ideas about how we can empirically study the evolution of mind in both humans and other animals."--Dale Jamieson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder
"One of the most significant achievements of evolutionary psychology has been to seriously question the traditional view that we possess a general-purpose intelligence that can analyse any aspect of human experience with equal aplomb. Humanity in the image of a divine being is perhaps the most extreme expression and source of this view. In contrast, an evolutionary perspective reveals human minds, like those of other species, to be imperfect, relatively jerry-built devices that are shaped by natural selection to deal with a specific set of problems in the species' ancestral environment. . . . The Evolution of Mind is . . . a timely collection. The authors of its 10 chapters are drawn from departments of psychology, philosophy, biology and anthropology, and the book covers both human and nonhuman minds."--Nature
"Offering an eclectic interdisciplinary review of thoughts on the evolution of mind, this volume provides ten provocative and well referenced essays from a range of perspectives. Most of the contributors provide discussions of species-comparative data and are sympathetic to some form of Darwinian evolutionary framework. However, although not always explicitly stated, only four of them allude to the importance of ontogenetic development (of individuals) as well as to the phylogenetic evolution of species adapting to the constraints imposed by their respective environments. ... Whatever one's views re evolutionary theories of mind, this volume provides many good questions (if not answers) for future comparative psychologist, naturalist and philosopher alike."-- Metapsychology (Mental Help Net's Bookstore)
"A superb and stimulating book containing contributions from the top minds in evolutionary cognitive psychology. Chapters are uniformly high level and ground breaking. The book signals a scientific revolution in the Darwinizing of cognitive psychology. A must read for all psychological researchers, as well as those who want or need to keep up with the cutting edge."--David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
"In the last few years evolutionary psychology has become one of the hottest areas of research in the cognitive sciences. The essays that Cummins and Allen have assembled make it very clear why this new interdisciplinary field is so exciting, challenging, and controversial. The book includes cutting edge essays that are absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the mind and how it evolved."--Stephen P. Stich, Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Rutgers University
"With the question of animal minds featured on the cover of Newsweek and columnists from the New York Times going at each other over evolutionary psychology, it should be obvious to everyone that behavioral science is entering a new era. A good slogan for this era may be 'no psychology without biology; no biology (at least for mammals) without psychology.' The work that Cummins and Allen have brought together constitutes not just a manifesto for this new era, but is chockfull of exciting ideas about how we can empirically study the evolution of mind in both humans and other animals."--Dale Jamieson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder
"One of the most significant achievements of evolutionary psychology has been to seriously question the traditional view that we possess a general-purpose intelligence that can analyse any aspect of human experience with equal aplomb. Humanity in the image of a divine being is perhaps the most extreme expression and source of this view. In contrast, an evolutionary perspective reveals human minds, like those of other species, to be imperfect, relatively jerry-built devices that are shaped by natural selection to deal with a specific set of problems in the species' ancestral environment. . . . The Evolution of Mind is . . . a timely collection. The authors of its 10 chapters are drawn from departments of psychology, philosophy, biology and anthropology, and the book covers both human and nonhuman minds."--Nature
"Offering an eclectic interdisciplinary review of thoughts on the evolution of mind, this volume provides ten provocative and well referenced essays from a range of perspectives. Most of the contributors provide discussions of species-comparative data and are sympathetic to some form of Darwinian evolutionary framework. However, although not always explicitly stated, only four of them allude to the importance of ontogenetic development (of individuals) as well as to the phylogenetic evolution of species adapting to the constraints imposed by their respective environments. ... Whatever one's views re evolutionary theories of mind, this volume provides many good questions (if not answers) for future comparative psychologist, naturalist and philosopher alike."-- Metapsychology (Mental Help Net's Bookstore)