The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of CultureJerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby Although researchers have long been aware that the species-typical architecture of the human mind is the product of our evolutionary history, it has only been in the last three decades that advances in such fields as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and paleoanthropology have made the fact of our evolution illuminating. Converging findings from a variety of disciplines are leading to the emergence of a fundamentally new view of the human mind, and with it a new framework for the behavioral and social sciences. First, with the advent of the cognitive revolution, human nature can finally be defined precisely as the set of universal, species-typical information-processing programs that operate beneath the surface of expressed cultural variability. Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors--problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, cooperation, and sexual infidelity. Consequently, the traditional view of the mind as a general-purpose computer, tabula rasa, or passive recipient of culture is being replaced by the view that the mind resembles an intricate network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture. The Adapted Mind explores this new approach--evolutionary psychology--and its implications for a new view of culture. |
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Highly recommended as an introduction and overview of evolutionary psychology.
Contents
| 3 | |
| 19 | |
On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study | 137 |
COOPERATION | 161 |
Two Nonhuman Primate Models for the Evolution | 229 |
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MATING AND | 245 |
Evaluative | 267 |
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel | 289 |
Human Maternal Vocalizations to Infants as Biologically | 391 |
PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE AS ADAPTATIONS | 445 |
Natural Language and Natural Selection | 451 |
An Adaptation | 495 |
Evolutionary Theory | 533 |
ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS | 551 |
Environmental Preference in a KnowledgeSeeking | 581 |
INTRAPSYCHIC PROCESSES | 599 |
Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens | 327 |
Maternal Psychology | 367 |
NEW THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO CULTURAL | 625 |
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ability adaptive animals appear approach architecture attractiveness behavior benefit biology cause changes characteristics child cognitive color communication complex Cosmides culture detection effect environment evidence evolution evolutionary evolved example exchange existence expected experience explain expressions fact females function human hypothesis important increase individual infant interaction Journal kind language learning less light logical males mate maternal mean mechanisms mental mind Model mothers natural selection objects observations organization parental particular patterns person physical play Pleistocene positive possible predictions preference pregnancy sickness present Press problem produce psychological question reasoning relationships relative reproductive requires responses role rules Science sexual sharing signals situations social contract societies solve specialized species speech Standard structure subjects success suggest theory tion Tooby toxins twin University vocal women York
Popular passages
Page 35 - Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
Page 28 - The determining cause of a social fact should be sought among the social facts preceding it and not among the states of the individual consciousness...
Page 50 - It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so Complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Page 517 - ... it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof that the simple ideas are not always...
Page 124 - This paper was'partially prepared while the authors were Fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. We are grateful for financial support from the John D.
Page 517 - Suppose, therefore, a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest...
Page 182 - In its crackdown against drunk drivers, Massachusetts law enforcement officials are revoking liquor licenses left and right. You are a bouncer in a Boston bar, and you'll lose your job unless you enforce the following law: "If a person is drinking beer, then he must be over 20 years old.
Page 140 - The study of adaptation is not an optional preoccupation with fascinating fragments of natural history; it is the core of biological study.
Page 26 - Undirected by culture patterns — organized systems of significant symbols — man's behavior would be virtually ungovernable, a mere chaos of pointless acts and exploding emotions, his experience virtually shapeless.
Page 102 - If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture |
| Editors | Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby |
| Edition | revised |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 1995 |
| ISBN | 0195356470, 9780195356472 |
| Length | 688 pages |
| Subjects | › › Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition Science / Life Sciences / Evolution Science / Paleontology Social Science / Anthropology / Physical |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |