Adapting Minds Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature
| Author/creator | Buller, David J. Author |
| Format | Electronic |
| Publication Info | Cambridge : MIT Press |
| Description | 564 p. 09.000 x 06.000 in. |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from eBooks on EBSCOhost |
| Subjects |
| Summary | Annotation Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominantview in evolutionary psychology holds that it was -- that our psychological adaptations weredesigned tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Inthis provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionarypsychology -- the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in TheEvolution of Desire -- and rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionarytheory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychologyis misguided.Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolveddesign of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring thepsychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters ofAdapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized"discoveries," including "discriminative parental solicitude" (the idea that stepparents abuse theirstepchildren at a higher rate than genetic parents abuse their biological children). Drawing on awide range of empirical research, including his own large-scale study of child abuse, he shows thatnone is actually supported by the evidence.Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to thePleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time andindividual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reachan accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Bullerclaims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human natureitself. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| ISBN | 9780262524605 |
| ISBN | 0262524600 (Perfect) Active Record |
| Standard identifier# | 9780262524605 |
| Stock number | 0262524600 00015994 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Resources | Access Content Online | ✔ Available |