Evolution And The Human Mind

Author : Peter Carruthers
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521789080
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Evolution and the Human Mind written by Peter Carruthers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays offers an interdisciplinary examination of the evolution of the human mind.

Author : Mark Schaller
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 1136950494
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind written by Mark Schaller and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2011-03-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : David C. Geary
Publisher : Amer Psychological Assn
ISBN 13 : 9781591471813
Total Pages : 459 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origin of Mind written by David C. Geary and published by Amer Psychological Assn. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Geary also explores a number of issues that are of interest in modern society, including how general intelligence relates to academic achievement, occupational status, and income."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Denise D. Cummins
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195110531
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Evolution of Mind written by Denise D. Cummins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 mind's evolution - from investigating the biological functions of human cognition to drawing comparisons between human and animal cognitive abilities.

Author : Gary Marcus
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780547238241
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.4X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kluge written by Gary Marcus and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York University psychologist argues that the mind is a "kluge"-a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption-as he ponders the accidents of evolution that caused this structure and what we can do about it.

Author : John S. Allen
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674053494
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lives of the Brain written by John S. Allen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though we have other distinguishing characteristics (walking on two legs, for instance, and relative hairlessness), the brain and the behavior it produces are what truly set us apart from the other apes and primates. And how this three-pound organ composed of water, fat, and protein turned a mammal species into the dominant animal on earth today is the story John S. Allen seeks to tell. Adopting what he calls a “bottom-up” approach to the evolution of human behavior, Allen considers the brain as a biological organ; a collection of genes, cells, and tissues that grows, eats, and ages, and is subject to the direct effects of natural selection and the phylogenetic constraints of its ancestry. An exploration of the evolution of this critical organ based on recent work in paleoanthropology, brain anatomy and neuroimaging, molecular genetics, life history theory, and related fields, his book shows us the brain as a product of the contexts in which it evolved: phylogenetic, somatic, genetic, ecological, demographic, and ultimately, cultural-linguistic. Throughout, Allen focuses on the foundations of brain evolution rather than the evolution of behavior or cognition. This perspective demonstrates how, just as some aspects of our behavior emerge in unexpected ways from the development of certain cognitive capacities, a more nuanced understanding of behavioral evolution might develop from a clearer picture of brain evolution.

Author : Ogi Ogas
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1324006587
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos written by Ogi Ogas and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two neuroscientists reveal why consciousness exists and how it works by examining eighteen increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind—and beyond. Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind—to think? Science has offered few answers to these existential questions until now. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos. The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergence of the universe’s simplest possible mind. From there, the book explores the nanoscopic archaeon, whose thinking machinery consists of a handful of molecules, then advances through amoebas, worms, frogs, birds, monkeys, and humans, explaining what each “new” mind could do that previous minds could not. Though they admire the triumph of human consciousness, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam argue that humans are hardly the most sophisticated minds on the planet. The same physical principles that produce human self-awareness are leading cities and nation-states to develop “superminds,” and perhaps planting the seeds for even higher forms of consciousness. Written in lively, accessible language accompanied by vivid illustrations, Journey of the Mind is a mind-bending work of popular science, the first general book to share the cutting-edge mathematical basis for consciousness, language, and the self. It shows how a “unified theory of the mind” can explain the mind’s greatest mysteries—and offer clues about the ultimate fate of all minds in the universe.

Author : Robin Dunbar
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
ISBN 13 : 0500772142
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind written by Robin Dunbar and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A closer look at genealogy, incorporating how biological, anthropological, and technical factors can influence human lives We are at a pivotal moment in understanding our remote ancestry and its implications for how we live today. The barriers to what we can know about our distant relatives have been falling as a result of scientific advance, such as decoding the genomes of humans and Neanderthals, and bringing together different perspectives to answer common questions. These collaborations have brought new knowledge and suggested fresh concepts to examine. The results have shaken the old certainties. The results are profound; not just for the study of the past but for appreciating why we conduct our social lives in ways, and at scales, that are familiar to all of us. But such basic familiarity raises a dilemma. When surrounded by the myriad technical and cultural innovations that support our global, urbanized lifestyles we can lose sight of the small social worlds we actually inhabit and that can be traced deep into our ancestry. So why do we need art, religion, music, kinship, myths, and all the other facets of our over-active imaginations if the reality of our effective social worlds is set by a limit of some one hundred and fifty partners (Dunbar’s number) made of family, friends, and useful acquaintances? How could such a social community lead to a city the size of London or a country as large as China? Do we really carry our hominin past into our human present? It is these small worlds, and the link they allow to the study of the past that forms the central point in this book.

Author : John F. Hoffecker
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023151848X
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Landscape of the Mind written by John F. Hoffecker and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Landscape of the Mind, John F. Hoffecker explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. He suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a "neocortical Internet," or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, Hoffecker contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. He equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. Hoffecker connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central authority that could thwart innovation. Hoffecker concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.

Author :
Publisher : Academic Press
ISBN 13 : 0444643184
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Evolution of the Human Brain: From Matter to Mind written by and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2019-11-06 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution of the Human Brain: From Matter to Mind, Volume 250 in the Progress in Brain Research, series documents the latest developments and insights about the origin and evolution of the human brain and mind. Specific sections in this new release include Evolution and development of the human cerebral cortex, Functional connectivity of the human cerebral cortex, Lateralization of the human cerebral cortex, Life history strategies and the human cerebral cortex, Evolution of the modern human brain, On the nature and evolution of the human mind, Origin and evolution of human cognition, Origin and evolution of human consciousness, and more. Presents insights on molecular and cellular mechanisms of human brain evolution Provides a better understanding of the origin and evolution of the human mind Includes information of the neural organization and functional connectivity of the cerebral cortex