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Research on Altruism and Love is a compendium of annotated bibliographies reviewing literature and research studies on the nature of love. An essay introduces each of the annotated bibliographies.

A variety of literature either directly related to science-and-love issues or supporting literature for those issues is covered in the Religious Love Interfaces with Science section. This annotated bibliography is unique in that it approaches the field from a decidedly religious perspective. It includes classical expositions of love that continue to influence contemporary scholars, including Platos’ work on eros, the work and words of Jesus, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Kierkegaard, and Ghandi, among others. The contemporary discussion includes Anders Nygren’s theological arguments in his classic, Agape and Eros; Pitirim Sorokin; and others. An issue that often emerges in this literature is the question of the nature and definition of love.

A second annotated bibliography features current empirical research in the field of Personality and Altruism, with a focus on social psychology. Among the topics covered are the altruistic personality, altruistic behavior, empathy, helping behavior, social responsibility, and volunteerism. Methodologies are diverse, and studies include experiments, local and national surveys, naturalistic observation, and combinations of these.

The Evolutionary Biology annotated bibliography covers the most significant works on altruism and love in the field of biology and evolutionary psychology.

The fourth and final annotated bibliography in this volume is entitled Sociology of Faith-Based Volunteerism. Here the focus is on literature on the interface of helping behavior and religious organizations, as well as major pieces on voluntary associations. ... Read more

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In a further development of the nature v. nurture debate, this book questions how the human mind influences the content and organization of culture. In the study of mental activity, can the effects of evolution and history be teased apart?

Evolutionary psychologists argue that cultural transmission is constrained by our genetic inheritance. Few social and cultural anthropologists have found this argument relevant to their work and many would doubt its validity. This book uniquely pitches the arguments for innatism against ethnographic perspectives which call into question the theoretical foundations of orthodox evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Ultimately the aim of the debate is to create an original set of mutually compatible theories that will open up new areas for interdisciplinary research. ... Read more

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McKinnon gives us part of the story, but only part
Susan McKinnon is a cultural anthropologist and "neo-liberal genetics" is her disparaging term for Evolutionary Psychology, a doctrine made famous by Steven Pinker, David Buss, Margo Wilson, Martin Daly, John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, and Robert Wright, among other academics in psychology, biology, and anthropology. McKinnon also offers random shots at the broader field of sociobiology, although her objections are unelaborated epithets.If you don't know what Evolutionary Psychology says, this is not the book for you, so I will assume you do.

McKinnon is a fine writer, and her book is concise, accurate, fast-moving, and incisive. McKinnon says exactly what she thinks, without much hedging or qualifying, and supports her views with limpid logic and carefully though-out evidence. This book is perhaps the best brief critique of Evolutionary Psychology that I have seen. The reader interesting in exploring a particular theme more thoroughly than provided by McKinnon's necessarily brief treatment can refer to the literature she cites.

McKinnon makes four basic points. Her first and most central point is that "Evolutionary psychologists build their theories...upon...a conception of human social life that reduces social relations and human behavior to the product of self-interested competition between individuals." (p. 43) How true! Indeed, Evolutionary Psychology arose precisely in a period (1970-1995) in which biological models of social cooperation were first rigorously formulated, based on genetics, population biology, and evolutionary game theory. In this formulation, individuals sacrificed only for kin, the only other form of cooperation considered feasible being "reciprocal altruism," which is the tit-for-tat reciprocal behavior of self-interested agents. McKinnon is thus correct in seeing a deep affinity between the general outlook of Evolutionary Psychology and laissez-faire style economic philosophy, which she, again disparagingly, denotes "neo-liberalism."

By identifying Evolutionary Psychology with neo-liberalism, McKinnon gives the impression that Evolutionary Psychology provides a deep affirmation of right-wing economic and political theory, of the sort "human nature being what it is, free enterprise and minimal state intervention into the economy is the most desirable economic order."She never actually asserts this affinity, and it is in fact quite false. As far as I can tell, there are no socio-political differences between the population of Evolutionary Psychologists and a cross-section of academics in the behavioral sciences. This is an important point, because it implies that the Evolutionary Psychology commitment to a competitive self-regarding model of human social evolution does not harbor some deep socio-political bias, be it of the left or of the right.

In particular, I have never heard an Evolutionary Psychologist defend the traditional gender division of labor. Rather, most Evolutionary Psychologists would say that we may have inherited some psychological predispositions towards a traditional sexual division of labor, but these are by no means strong enough to prevent a truly sexually egalitarian society, if we go about the process intelligently, being aware of our genetic heritage. This sounds about right to me, and is not dependent upon "genetic individualism."

McKinnon is particularly naïve is identifying genetic individualism with modern capitalism. Modern capitalist societies have gone the farthest in contesting racism and sexism, and in promoting democracy and freedom. By contrast, pre-capitalist agricultural societies have fostered uncompromising systems of authoritarian patriarchy. Of course, modern capitalism is not neo-liberal (all modern societies have strongly interventionist states), but my own research indicates that market exchange itself promotes a mentality of toleration and fairness, thus helping to dissolve the ascriptive, authoritarian bonds of traditional precapitalist agrarian orders.

Evolutionary Psychology does have one very important political tenet---a deep antipathy to Utopianism. The theory they espouse is especially antithetical to the notion that the Good Society can be produced by a process of "social engineering" in which Bad Culture is replaced by Good Culture, where the Bad/Good criterion is set by an enlightened elite of social reformers. Biologists in formative period of Evolutionary Psychology considered their models of cooperation arising out of mutual self-interest as the triumph of scientific over the wooly wishful thinking of social reformers who prefer to see potentially limitless altruism and unbounded compassion among the qualities that can be successfully instilled in most members of our species. The Evolutionary Psychologists saw otherwise. Richard Dawkins, author of the famous manifesto "The Selfish Gene," for instance, claimed that "we are survival machines--robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior." Similarly, Evolutionary Psychologist Michael Ghiselin a few years later asserted, "What passes for cooperation [in nature] turns out to be a mixture of opportunism and exploitation. . . Scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed."

It is actually an irony of intellectual history that Evolutionary Psychology accepted this doctrine of what McKinnon calls "genetic individualism" and "neo-liberal genetics" (the title of the book). The key concept of sociobiology, a broader doctrine than Evolutionary Psychology, is in fact much broader, and not at all wedded to the doctrine of genetic individualism. Rather, sociobiology is predicated on the insight that there are many social species and they should be studied using genetics, population biology, and evolutionary theory. Sociobiology was treated with fear and loathing by establishment anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists, not because if its "neo-liberal genetics," but rather because it denied what Leda Cosmides and John Tooby called the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM), which posited that humans are "tabula rasa," implying that human nature does not exist, and humans can be culturally programmed in any way at all.

Social reformers are enamored of the SSSM because it promises that all social ills can cured by installing the appropriate cultural forms and socialization processes. Socialists can teach people to give according to ability and take according to need, feminists can teach people that there are no differences between men and women other than the obvious physiological ones, supporters of capitalism can teach the sanctity of property as well as the propriety of a competitive meritocracy, and liberals can teach pure tolerance. For a chronology of the scorn and hostility heaped upon sociobiology for undermining the SSSM, see the excellent book by Ullica Segerstrale, "Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate," (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Evolutionary psychologists thus inherited a peculiar view of human nature from the dominant biological models of the 1970's, and have stuck to it with cultish fervor, even as it is being abandoned today in the light of a considerable body of empirical evidence incompatible with genetic individualism.

McKinnon's second criticism is that Evolutionary Psychologists identify self-interest with reproductive interest, and hence view all social arrangements as tools utilized by selfish individuals in maximizing their reproductive success. This Evolutionary Psychology position is of course patently absurd in modern society, where the ubiquity of the demographic transition implies that when a certain level of per capital income is a achieved in a society, families begin sharply curtailing their reproductive output. McKinnon shows, by use of fine examples from cultural anthropology that many pre-modern societies also have sophisticated cultural practices that materially weaken the genetic linkages among people in favor of more flexible social linkages. The same could be said, of course, of modern societies such as ours.

McKinnon's third criticism is that Evolutionary Psychology embraces a modular theory of mental processes, and humans possess no "general intelligence," that might be deployed to help us to adjust mentally to modern technological society. The modular theory of the human mind was never very plausible, but every year that goes by gives us additional evidence against this bizarre theory. McKinnon supplies many of the key arguments, although I would also read David C. Geary, "The Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence" (American Psychological Association, 2005).

McKinnon's final criticism is that Evolutionary Psychologists embrace a highly simplistic theory of human culture, according to which culture is an epiphenomenal overlay masking and reflecting the true determinant of human behavior, which is the genetically programmed quest for reproductive success. Evolutionary Psychologists tend to deny this, but their protests are belied by the structure of their theory. For instance, David Buss argues that there are stereotypical behaviors of men and women which are virtually the same in all societies (women want materially successful men and men want young, fertile women). A proponent of the importance of culture would interpret this tendency by asserting that (a) it is not universal, and (b) it is a common-sense behavior in societies where males are dominant possessors. I find Buss's dataimpressive, but I believe that the genetic predispositions underlying these stereotypes are limited to the obvious physiological differences between the sexes (ability to gestate and deliver young, relative upper body strength), and these differences, which are of great historical importance, become of marginal importance in advanced technological societies.

I often wonder why Evolutionary Psychologists embrace this particular quartet of implausible theories. I think that this is explained in part by a certain mental set adopted from the many cultist movements of the highly politicized years 1970-1985 in the United States. Evolutionary Psychology is indeed a cult, in the sense that its practitioners believe that if they abandon any one of its core doctrines, it will fall apart completely. This is not the case.

The weakness of McKinnon's book is that, by demolishing the bizarre doctrines of Evolutionary Psychology, she appears to believe that she has reestablished the SSSM! The Cosmides-Tooby critique remains devastating, and the notion that "culture" is not constrained by "human nature" is just bald-facedly wrong. McKinnon stresses cross-cultural variability, but she never mentions the fact that there are a huge number of human universals exhibited in almost all societies (see the excellent 1991 book by Donald E. Brown, "Human Universals," for an overview). McKinnon appears never to have heard of gene-culture coevolution, although she mentions Clifford Geertz' prescient speculations about the effects of culture on genes. This is a shame, because gene-culture coevolution is the key to understanding just how important human culture has been in creating human nature. For instance, I cannot imagine how one would explain the physiology of speech, the hormonal characteristics of the secondary emotions (especially guilt, shame, and empathy) without a careful analysis of the interrelationship between culture and genes in our evolution as a species.

There is a world of modern sociobiology out there that McKinnon either does not know, or that she knows and chooses to hide from the reader. If she has some problem with this literature, it would be nice if we found out what this problem is. To my mind, cultural anthropology without gene-culture coevolution is like biology without evolution. Nothing in human life makes sense except in the light of gene-culture coevolution.

fantastic, honest and sourced
A short, devastating book that takes on the "conventional wisdom" of evolutionary psychology as presented by Steven Pinker and his acolytes (as well as, increasingly, in the popular press and among the generally educated.) McKinnon is a fantastic writer, very clear, very "honest" (despite being in a discipline often considered part of the humanities, she has a scientist's respect for facts -- and makes a convincing case that, for all their pretentions to scientific rigor, the evolutionary psychologists often don't.)

If you've ever made an argument based on evolutionary psychology, or have found yourself intrigued by the claims made by the field to explain cultural phenomena (gender relations, religious traditions, economic behavior, etc.), you really owe it to yourself to read McKinnon's nuanced and currently unfashionable argument for the autonomy of culture over biology.

I can't recommend this book enough. ... Read more

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In recent years, evolutionary theory has been offering a framework that more and more psychologists are finding increasingly relevant to address one critical question: Why? Why do we behave, develop, and interact the way we do?

 Psychology and Evolution: The Origins of Mind introduces students to the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Bruce Bridgeman applies concepts of evolutionary theory to basic psychological functions to derive new insights into the roots of human behavior and how that behavior may be viewed as adaptation to life’s significant challenges. Examining courtship, reproduction, child rearing, family relations, social interaction, and language development, Bridgeman uses evolutionary theory to help in the search to elucidate the foundations of human perceptions, experiences, and behaviors.

Encouraging thought and discussion, this engaging volume includes:

Psychology and Evolution presents an innovative application of biological ideas and data to establish a comprehensive theory of evolutionary psychology—a theory with the potential to unite all of psychology under a single framework and to explain the basis of human behavior and experience.

Primarily designed as a course textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in the social and behavioral sciences, Psychology and Evolution will also appeal to scholars in the field and educated readers interested in the development of human behavior.

Instructor’s Manual Now Available!

An Instructor’s Manual on CD-ROM is available to professors who adopt Psychology and Evolution for their course. The IM on CD provides instructors with examination questions, additional background material on discussion questions in the text, and other helpful aids. The IM encourages critical thought about the issues raised in each chapter and provides useful recommendations for structuring discussions and promoting further research.

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Excellent introduction for a general reader
Once you've escaped from college, how often do you even LOOK AT another textbook?If you're interested in evolution or recent research in psychology, this one is well worth reading for its reliable broad perspective on the evolutionary psychology and how its ideas can/should be the basis for psychology as a field.Not that the physical evolution of the brain is all we need to consider, but that without that psychology continues to be such a slush of barely related ideas.I'd already read other books about emerging neuroscience, but Bridgeman's helped me better understand how that work is more and more infusing the study of mental and overt behavior.The book isn't overly long on topics, and it isn't encyclopedic and short on depth like most recent introductory textbooks, and it's always readable, often entertaining too.It'll let you know where psychology is ultimately headed.Nutty to Meet You! Dr. Peanut Book #1 ... Read more

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The Ontogeny of Human Bonding Systems takes aninterdisciplinary look at the phenomena of human bonding. The authorsdraw upon behavioral genetics, molecular genetics of behavior,cognitive and affective neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, humanethology, behavioral ecology, and the study of attachment processeswithin developmental psychology. The topics will focus on humanreproduction, and fertility-related behavior in particular, and theevolutionary origins and neural underpinnings of such behavior. This book is for anyone interested in the evolutionary origins, neuralunderpinnings, and psychological structure involved in humanrelationships. ... Read more

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Review from Relationship Research News, Spring 2003
"...My overall assesment of this book is quite positive... I believe Miller and Rodgers' discussion will be of interest to personal relationships scholars from across the epistemological spectrum.One reason is that nearly every type of personal relationship is attended to, in some way, in the OBS; there is insight in Miller and Rodgers' discussion to be found on friendships, marital and sexual relationships, and parent-child pairs.Bonding is at the heart of attachment, relationship development, affection, and other processes that are often the focus of research in the personal relationships field.As such, I expect Miller and Rodgers' book to be a useful contribution to these endeavors." - Kory Floyd, Arizona State University ... Read more

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Current theories of evolution portray men as active individuals forging their way forward through a mix of testosterone fuelled competition, rivalry, and aggression.But what role is left for women within such evolutionary thinking?The role women get is that of the passive, weak, individual left to ride on the coat tails of their male suitors. The default, no testosterone sex interested in just selecting the best male to expand the gene pool .Is it any wonder that feminists are dismissive of such evolutionary approaches? That many have sought to ignore the contribution that evolutionary theory can make to our understanding of women. But have women really just been bit part actors in the whole story of evolution? Have they not played their own role in ensuring their reproductive success? In this highly accessible and thought provoking new book, Anne Campbell challenges this passive role of women in evolutionary theory, and redresses the current bias within evolutionary writing. Guiding us through the basics of evolutionary theory, sheproposes that women have forged their own strategic way forward, acting through their own competition, rivalry, indirect aggression, and unfaithfulness,to shape their own destiny. Throwing down a challenge to feminist theories, Campbell argues that evolutionary theory can indeed teach us plenty about the development of the female mind - we just need to get it right.This is an important book that will force others to re-evaluate their own assumptions about the evolution of the female mind. ... Read more

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A Solid Piece of Work
Anne Campbell looks at why females are too easily presumed to be merely passive receivers of winning males' sperm.

Considering the enormous burden of motherhood and a mothers need for resources for both herself and her limited number of potential offspring it should follow that females will compete with each other for resources and there will be differential reproductive success amongst females.

But it is also essential for females to preserve their own health throughout their reproductive lifetime so open, physical aggression is not normally an option. (It is an option for males who can maximise their number of offspring in a brief spell of copulatory access to a number of females.)

So female competition is indirect and low-level harrassment except when the mother needs to show full aggression to directly protect her offspring.

Campbell discusses hormone studies - particularly serotonin and dopamine - suggesting that different levels of these in the sexes provide a braking system on female emotions and impulsive behaviour but less so on males. Hence greater male impulsivity, risk-taking, violence and even suicide. Only the male had the potential for reproductive gains via this weaker braking system.

Campbell also makes many more points about females and males such as the rarity of male parental care in nature and the possible reasons for monogamy eg the female trades sex for the protection of one male against numerous other males who may also be infanticidal. She also discusses female crime and female friendship.

And regarding modern women she points out that there is nothing new about women working except that women have to leave their children to do so.

This is a solid, wide-ranging book providng sound evolutionary reasons for women's psychology and behaviour. She includes the important points about variation within the sexes and the overlap of the sexes. But by considering the reality of how males and females achieved reproductive success in different ways during evolution she explains much about the differences between the sexes today.

Highly recommended.

Very influential book about womens behaviors
Quite simply, I am impressed with the value and scope of this manuscript.It is the most influential piece of work written about the mind and behavior of women to appear in history (and yes that is a bold statement, read it you won't be disappointed).I say kudos for taking on a topic of such magnitude, and bringing to light the fact that women too have an evolutionary past.This book is loaded with insight about women's behaviors such as social aggression, friendship, love and marriage.And far from offering simple opinions, the ideas and explanations are backed up by a stagering mound of scientific data.Whether you are an academic or the average Jane, this book is bound to be a classic read for anyone interested in the unique behaviors of women. ... Read more

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From Ancient Greece to contemporary times, themes of fate and destiny have served as a central worldview for many. These compelling ideas have guided those in battle, and provided influence and inspirations for politicians, philosophers, and artists. Despite a pervasive concern with fate, we find that an explicit discussion of this construct is absent from psychological theory. Twist of Fate reconciles contemporary psychological research with the ancient and frequently held position of fatalism that was common in that era. The Greek mythological history of the _Moirae_ (the triad of goddesses known as the _Fates_) offers a unique perspective on human beings by illustrating how fate and destiny influence a variety of behaviors such as drug addiction, spirituality, sexual activity, aggression, and other applied psychological topics. ... Read more

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Bound by Fate?
Wow!What a great book!If you have an interest in destiny and psychology, this is a must read book for you!From ancient Greek myths to contemporary neuroscience, the author takes the reader on a journey highlighting the way that fate influences our daily lives.Through the use of wonderful storytelling and superb illustrative examples, one can see how destiny grabs hold and pulls us through life.As the author aptly notes, "A belief in destiny is a central element in the life-world of many contemporary individuals". Yet, we fail to acknowledge the importance of fate to our social and psychological well-being. By applying the theory of fatalism to contemporary psychology, the author demonstrates ways in which we are drawn towards certain behaviors and how, with self-awareness and self-knowledge, we can break our destructive patterns of conduct. This book provides real-world, practical knowledge for individuals seeking to change their lives and goes into great detail as to how fate encourages the alcoholic, the food addict, the aggressive individual, and the criminal to continue along their well-treaded path of self-destruction - and more importantly, how these individuals can change course. For those with greater knowledge of psychology, the author's theory of "The Moirae" will evoke serious contemplation and, more than likely, a heated debate amongst academics - particularly from those who fear the association with pseudoscience. However, the meta-theory proposed, coined the Moirae, has the ability to unite the subfields of psychology in such a way that the neuroscientist, the social psychologist, and the clinician can come together to form a more complete picture of the human condition. This unification of subfields, under this meta-theory, can provide psychologists with a greater understanding of human nature and equip them with better tools to address a multitude of applied issues. Dr. Hastings should be applauded for tackling the subject of fate from a scholarly perspective and in such a persuasive fashion.Simply put, this is a great book!

Destiny:An intellectual idea
A must read for any philosophically oriented psychologist, counselor, or psychiatrist.The author stimulates, and facilitates intellectual thought regarding the concept of destiny and its relationship to human psychology.This theory affords a framework which can guide the clinician into the potential client's worldview lending enhanced insight into such phenomena as addiction, sexual addiction, and aggressive and violent behaviors, as well as redemption. The author advocates the fatalistic paradigm, and encourages enhanced self awareness or the role of fate which leads to personal growth through breaking free of the binding moirae. ... Read more

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Presents original research results on the leading edge of psychology. Each chapter has been carefully selected in an attempt to present substantial advances across a broad spectrum. ... Read more

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The first of a new generation of texts for teaching psych
Is human nature infinitely variable from culture to culture, relatively unconstrained by our biology, or is there a single basic human biological nature that just varies in certain particulars from environment to environment ?We care about this not only from a scientific perspective, but even a political one, since our view of human nature is one of the foundations of political philosophy as well.

The evolutionary psychology (EP) approach is here. Rather than adding yet another field to the growing list of social psychology, personality psychology, biological psychology, depth psychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, gestalt psychology, narrative psychology, transpersonal psychology, and so on endlessly, EP comes with the slogan that it can unify the whole mess.

Simply put, by understanding the process nature uses to design organisms, and applying that to human evolution, we discover what the mind is designed to do and how.It's the scientific equivalent of asking God for our original blueprints.Except that we have to infer the design from very imperfect information.

There have been several other good introductory EP texts, such as the excellent one by David Buss, a specialist in human mating patterns. There is also one by Cosmides and Tooby, authors of a landmark scholarly text in the field which contains a manifesto for distinguishing evolutionary psychology from the social sciences.There is even a reasonably good cartoon version of an overview of the field, by Evans and Zarate.

What is very special about *this* new text by Gaulin and McBurney is that they have NOT just issued another manifesto against social science or another highly focused text on human mating and explanations for altruism.They seem to have actually begun a new era in the field, its implied agenda all along, to provide a unified framework for studying all of psychology, from sensation and perception to cognition, social behavior, and culture.As if all of human behavioral variety can be explained from the start in terms of where we came from.

How does this potentially change psychology in general ?That's the main strength of this book. The authors make very clear that thinking in terms of the history of our species and the history of life in general; rather than isolated findings from loosely related experimental conditions; leads to very different conclusions at times.Like other fields, EP gives us a specific set of tools and protocols for investigating patterns in nature. But unlike other fields, it gives us a pegboard for hanging all those experimental results and investigating their relationship and what it tells us about ourselves and even our relationship to the rest of nature.

The question is of course whether it succeeds.Is evolutionary psychology really to the point yet where it is no longer a protoscience, but a central way to understand human behavior ?There remain some dedicated opponents of the field, like Richard Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, and Steve Rose ("Alas, Poor Darwin.") Their main and strongest objection seems to remain that it is too seductively easy to tell evolutionary stories about human behavior, stories that can't be tested empirically. Do the authors address this sufficiently to offer EP as a "new psychology ?"

Surprisingly, yes, I think they do. Gaulin and McBurney address the real technical issues raised by the youthful status of the field.They don't offer a strongly deterministic account of human beings blindly following the programming of their genes, they clearly communicate a biologically informed perspective on human behavior. Our behavior not only has a very real and explorable relationship to animal behavior, but it has a discernable relationship to evolutionary process.

Most importantly of all, the authors make clear that EP does not have to, and does not, stand on its own from vague untestable evolutionary theories, or "just so stories." It truly does provide a new way of making sense of what we already know from existing psychological experiments, and shedding new light on them with additional testable predictions.

This is not only a milestone text in psychology teaching, but also an exemplary text in general.It is exceptionally clearly written, with crisp prose with outstandingly good organization.

I had one quibble with the text, which is the annoying tradition, seemingly taken from Cosmides and Tooby's maifesto "The Adapted Mind," of spending a lot of time attacking the "standard social science model" of infinitely mutable human nature.The "SSSM" probably seems more a worthy target for its political implications than its role in social science.If human nature is infinitely mutable, it is also infinitely perfectable, and therefore suggests "utopian" goals and certain kinds of solutions to social problems.This is where tempers really flare, and we start getting the usual accusations of people being fascists or marxists or racists or supporters of eugenics or supporters of unrealistic social engineering.I think the tradition of attacking the "SSSM" it just a more veiled way of playing politics the way Wilson, Lewontin, and Gould did in the early days of sociobiology.

Since leading figures in most other fields have also attacked the blank slate view of human nature, this casts such rhetoric as a bit of a strawman rather than really distinguishing EP from realistic portrayals of modern social scientists and anthropologists.I suppose this sort of rhetoric is attributable somewhat to the followers of the field trying to create its niche in academia.But it is a distraction that for me takes away from an otherwise wonderful text. It's time to "just say no" to the silly idea of suppressing evolutionary thinking, the most important principle in life sciences, just to keep extremists happy.It's time to take the implications of a wondrous evolving natural world more seriously and begin a new era of learning about ourselves from those implications.It's time to start teaching psychology as if we took our own biological science seriously, and begin to study human nature in earnest.This is an exceptional first step. ... Read more

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In this book, well-known scholars describe new and exciting approaches to aesthetics, creativity, and psychology of the arts, approaching these topics from a point of view that is biological or related to biology and answering new questions with new methods and theories. All known societies produce and enjoy arts such as literature, music, and visual decoration or depiction. Judging from prehistoric archaeological evidence, this arose very early in human development. Furthermore, Darwin was explicit in attributing aesthetic sensitivity to lower animals. These considerations lead us to wonder whether the arts might not be evolutionarily based. Although such an evolutionary basis is not obvious on the face of it, the idea has recently elicited considerable attention. The book begins with a consideration of ten theories on the evolutionary function of the arts, and this is followed by several chapters that consider the possible evolutionary function of specific arts such as music and literature. The theory of evolution was first drawn up in biology, but evolution is not confined to biology: genuinely evolutionary theories of sociocultural change can be formulated. That they need to be formulated is shown in several chapters that discuss regular trends in literature and scientific writings. Psychologists have recently rediscovered the obvious fact that thought and perception occur in the brain, so cognitive science moves ever closer to neuroscience. Several chapters give overviews of neurocognitive and neural network approaches to creativity and aesthetic appreciation. The book concludes with two exciting chapters describing brain-scan research on what happens in the brain during creativity and presenting a close examination of the relationship between genetically transmitted mental disorder and creativity. ... Read more

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CHAPTER 1. THE HARMAS.

This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh, not so very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an abandoned, barren,

sun-scorched bit of land, favoured by thistles and by Wasps and Bees. Here, without fear of being troubled by the passers-by, I could consult the Ammophila and

the Sphex (two species of Digger-or Hunting-wasps.--Translator's Note.) and engage in that difficult conversation whose questions and answers have

experiment for their language; here, without distant expeditions that take up my time, without tiring rambles that strain my nerves, I could contrive my plans of

attack, lay my ambushes and watch their effects at every hour of the day. Hoc erat in votis. Yes, this was my wish, my dream, always cherished, always

vanishing into the mists of the future.

And it is no easy matter to acquire a laboratory in the open fields, when harassed by a terrible anxiety about one's daily bread. For forty years have I fought, with

steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues of life; and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it has cost me in perseverance and relentless

work I will not try to say. It has come; and, with it--a more serious condition--perhaps a little leisure. I say perhaps, for my leg is still hampered with a few links of

the convict's chain.

The wish is realized. It is a little late, O! my pretty insects! I greatly fear that the peach is offered to me when I am beginning to have no teeth wherewith to eat it.

Download The Wonders Of Instinct Chapters In The Psychology Of Insects Now! ... Read more

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The last twenty years have seen a resurgence of interest in human evolution in many aspects. A distinction can be made between 'narrow' (general acceptance that human evolution occurred, historically) and 'broad' (evolutionary ideas that stretch much further into all aspects of humanity, past and present) human evolution. The broad perspective is beginning to make its presence felt, for example, through the developments in evolutionary genetics, evolutionary psychology and behavioural ecology. There must, therefore, be, among the variety of human adaptations, natures and behaviours, phenomena which are not susceptible to an evolutionary analysis, which are beyond the bounds of evolution. The problem is, though, that we do not really know where that boundary lies. Here, the limits of human evolution are explored, using two approaches - first, finding where humans 'fit' the expectations of evolutionary principles; and second, applying evolutionary methods to particular human contexts, whilst looking for an evolutionary signal. ... Read more

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Spiritual practices, or awakenings, have an impact on brain, mind and personality. These changes are being scientifically predicted and proven. For example, studies show Buddhist priests and Franciscan nuns at the peak of religious feelings show a functional change in the lobes of their brain. Similar processes have been found in people with epilepsy, which Hippocrates called the sacred disease. New research is showing that not only does a person's brain activity change in particular areas while that person is experiencing religious epiphany, but such events can be created for some people, even self-professed atheists, by stimulating various parts of the brain. In this far-reaching and novel set, experts from across the nation and around the world present evolutionary, neuroscientific, and psychological approaches to explaining and exploring religion, including the newest findings and evidence that have spurred the fledgling field of neurotheology.

It is not the goal of neurotheology to prove or disprove the existence of God, but to understand the biology of spiritual experiences. Such experiences seem to exist outside time and space - caused by the brain for some reason losing its perception of a boundary between physical body and outside world - and could help explain other intangible events, such as altered states of consciousness, possessions,alien visitations, near-death experiences and out-of-body events. Understanding them - as well as how and why these abilities evolved in the brain - could also help us understand how religion contributes to survival of the human race. Eminent contributors to this set help us answer questions including: How does religion better our brain function? What is the difference between a religious person and a terrorist who kills in the name of religion? Is there one site or function in the brain necessary for religious experience?

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This digital document is an article from Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, published by Institute for Evolutionary Psychology on August 1, 2001. The length of the article is 4223 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Sex addicts: do they exist?
Author: Russell Eisenman
Publication: Journal of Evolutionary Psychology (Refereed)
Date: August 1, 2001
Publisher: Institute for Evolutionary Psychology
Page: 123(11)

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There is no question more fundamental to human existence than that posed bythe nature-versus-nurture debate. For much of the past century, it was widely believed that therewas no essential human nature and that people could be educated or socialized to thrive in almostany imaginable culture. Today, that orthodoxy is being directly and forcefully challenged by anew science of the mind: evolutionary psychology. Like the theory of evolution itself, theimplications of evolutionary psychology are provocative and unsettling. Rather than viewing thehuman mind as a mysterious black box or a blank slate, evolutionary psychologists see it as aphysical organ that has evolved to process certain types of information in certain ways thatenables us to thrive only in certain types of cultures.

In On Our Minds, Eric M. Gander examines all sides of the public debate betweenevolutionary psychologists and their critics. Paying particularly close attention to the popularscience writings of Steven Pinker, Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Stephen Jay Gould, Gander traces the history of the controversy, succinctly summarizes the claims and theories of theevolutionary psychologists, dissects the various arguments deployed by each side, and considersin detail the far-reaching ramifications—social, cultural, and political—of this debate. Gander'slucid and highly readable account concludes that evolutionary psychology now holds thepotential to answer our oldest and most profound moral and philosophical questions,fundamentally changing our self–perception as a species. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A general review of evolutionnary psychology trends
The book is a critical review of the ideas around evol. psychology.

The first chapters of the book try to convince the reader that the mind is divided into modules, genetically shaped during the human evolution some 100,000 years ago. Then the last chapters discuss some "modules" specifically, such as the "altruism" module and "mate selection module".

But the very first chapters are devoted to the polemics between the pros and cons of sociobiology in general and the heritability of intelligence.

The author has much sympathy for Stephen Pinker and Herrnstein (the author of The Bell Curve) and much less for Stephen J. Gould and his followers ( treating them as "communists"). But very honestly, he displays all sides of the debate whitout derogatory deformations.

Over all, the author has an easy stlye. I found it instructive. ... Read more

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THE human being who thrills to the experience of beauty in nature and in art does not forever rest with that experience unquestioned. The day comes when he yearns to pierce the secret of his emotion, to discover what it is, and why, that has so stung him--to defend and to justify his transport to himself and to others. He seeks a reason for the faith that is in him. And so have arisen the speculative theories of the nature of beauty, on the one hand, and the studies of concrete beauty and our feelings about it, on the other. Speculative theory has taken its own way, however, as a part of philosophy, in relating the Beautiful to the other great concepts of the True and the Good; building up an architectonic of abstract ideas, far from the immediate facts and problems of the enjoyment of beauty. There has grown up, on the other hand, in the last years, a great literature of special studies in the facts of aesthetic production and enjoyment. Experiments with the aesthetic elements; investigations into the physiological psychology of aesthetic reactions; studies in the genesis and development of art forms, have multiplied apace. But these are still mere groups of facts for psychology; they have not been taken up into a single authoritative principle. Psychology cannot do justice to the imperative of beauty, by virtue of which, when we say "this is beautiful," we have a right to imply that the universe must agree with us. A synthesis of these tendencies in the study of beauty is needed, in which the results of modern psychology shall help to make intelligible a philosophical theory of beauty. The chief purpose of this book is to seek to effect such a union.

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An Integrative Approach to Counseling: Bridging Chinese Thought, Evolutionary Theory, and Stress Management offers a global and integrative approach to counseling that incorporates multiple concepts and techniques from both eastern and western perspectives. The book identifies commonalities rather than the differences between them. The book also compares and contrasts the underlying cultural assumptions of western counseling with those of the Chinese perspectives of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, relative to integrating and applying a more global approach to helping individuals functionally adapt to challenges in their environments. The book will be used by faculty and students in those advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology, counseling, or social work that cover such areas as introduction to counseling, counseling skills and techniques, counseling theories, multi-cultural awareness and counseling, and stress management. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Finally !
"I imagine future thinkers in whom European-American indefatigability is combined with the hundredfold inherited contemplativeness of the Asians: such a combination will bring the riddle of the world to a solution. In the meantime the reflective free spirits have their mission: they are to remove all barriers that stand in the way of a coalescence of human beings." (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1876 from the book Nietzsche and Asian Thought by Graham Parkes.) It took over 100 years Friedrich, but the book was worth waiting for!Thank you professor Santee for making the "Bridge" so easy to cross. I felt like I was eavesdropping on a conversation between Eastern and Western thinkers. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more