Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour

by Kevin N. Laland, Gillian R. Brown

Evolutionary theory is one of the most wide-ranging and inspiring of scientific ideas. It offers a battery of methods that can be used to help us understand human behavior. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of this exercise is at the center of a heated controversy that has raged for over a century.

Many evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists have taken these evolutionary principles and tried using them to explain a wide range of human characteristics, such as homicide, religion and sex differences in behavior. Others, however, are sceptical of these interpretations. Moreover, researchers disagree as to the best ways to use evolution to explore humanity, and a number of schools have emerged.

Sense and Nonsense provides an introduction to the ideas, methods, and findings of five such schools, namely, sociobiology, human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, memetics, and gene-culture co-evolution. Carefully guiding the reader through the mire of confusing terminology, claim and counter-claim, and polemical statements, Laland and Brown provide a balanced, rigorous analysis that scrutinizes both the evolutionary arguments and the allegations of the critics.

This is a book that will be make fascinating reading for popular science readers, undergraduate and postgraduate students (for example, in psychology, anthropology and zoology), and to experts on one approach who would like to know more about the other perspectives. Having completed this book the reader will feel better placed to assess the legitimacy of claims made about human behavior under the name of evolution, and to make judgements as to what is sense and what is nonsense.

Genres: Psychology, Science, Evolution, Nonfiction, Biology, Anthropology, Philosophy

384 pages, Hardcover

First published June 20, 2002

Reviews

[Nebuchadnezzar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evolutionary approaches to human behavior will remain controversial as long as the memories of eugenics and social Darwinism are with us. Indeed, every iteration of the debate seems to lead to what are the equivalent of academic versions of internet flame wars. Charges of "biological determinism," "blank slate," "political correctness," "ethnocentrism" and other such epithets are hurled with abandon. Each side claims the other is attacking a straw man.

Kevin Laland and Gillian Brown turn a keen eye to historical and contemporary debates, attempting to pick apart (what else?) sense from nonsense. Some historical overview of early evolutionary theorists and eugenics serves as an introduction. The rest of the book is dedicated to evaluating the constantly splintering theoretical paradigms used to look at human behavior in light of evolution, including evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, human behavioral ecology, gene-culture co-evolution, and models of cultural evolution. This is a very balanced and level-headed synthesis of the research, with a section dedicated to critiques of each field following the presentation of their major assertions. At certain points, it felt a little bit too balanced, giving some dubious hypotheses a bit more weight than they deserve. However, this is an excellent volume overall, an essential field guide for the student of human behavior and evolution.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

My view: that nature blindly selects genes does not mean humans rationally select behavior: memes and game theory are often hubris or heuristics.

[Kramer Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting and, as far as I can tell, extremely balanced look at various methodological and theoretical views on evolution and human behaviour. It was not overly technical and was highly accessible for a non-specialist.

[Maisy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely redundant. All the necessary info could have been included in half the pages.

[Osore Misanthrope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ову књигу сам консултовао пре четири године када ми је у фокусу била еволуциона етика. Сада сам јој се вратио од корице до корице, као интермецо док сам читао радове и чекао да ми стигне This is Epistemology (јер сам проценио да ми epub формат није најадекватнији за такво штиво). Ничег новог овде за мене нема, али неинициранима може послужити као одличан увод (секундарна употреба – убијање досаде на послу – ваљда је јасна).

Занимљиво је да су Гулд и Луонтин радили у истој згради на Харварду као и Вилсон. Ово није ни први ни последњи случај да прве канцеларијске комшије ратују.

Другу тривију треба читати као епитаф: “[T]he misrepresentation of evolution as progressive was so apparent to Darwin that in his notebooks he reminded himself to ‘never say higher or lower’.”

Издање које сам читао је прво, из 2002. (pdf). Девет година касније изашло је друго издање и жао ми је што сам то заборавио јер имам фиксацију на најновије информације и можда ћу бити толико луд да га поручим јер нема на црно, онлајн.

Нећу писати извод из текста јер сам ову џиновску тематику, између осталог, покрио овде, само ћу истаћи неколико термина које треба имати у (оштром!) виду:
• Бихевиорални еколози: фенотипско коцкање (занемаривање проксималних узрока адаптивног понашања, фокус на његово предвиђање).
• Адаптивно зaостајање (adaptive lag): у новој средини понашање може бити маладативно. Бихевиорални еколози минимализују адаптивно заостајање између плеистоценских и савремених срединских услова, док их еволуциони психолози максимализују.
• Еволуционо стабилна стратегија социобиолога и средина еволуционе прилагодљивости еволуционих психолога.

[Damien · Rating 4 out of 5]

We need more books like this one. The authors adequately presented five evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour. Each presentation was immediately followed by its main criticism. If you are already familiar with some of them, you might feel that more could have been said to build their case; but given the space constraint, I think they did a fairly good job. Evolutionary approaches are booming, and I believe that some of the shortcomings presented in this book have already been addressed satisfactorily elsewhere (more than 10 to 20 years have passed depending on your edition), while others are still relevant and need more work.

I found the final chapter especially insightful as the authors compare the approaches that seem, for the most part, to be nicely complementary. A comparative table (based on Smith 2000) sums up the main elements (e.g., level of explanation, hypothesis testing, definition of human beings, etc.) which are compared in an efficient and lucid way — a great tool to be used with caution as is always the case when we try to establish helpful but nonetheless static boundaries between dynamic disciplines/approaches.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough and measured discussion of the pros and cons of various approaches to evolutionary effects on human behavior. Including discussions of popular critiques of evolutionary approaches which incorrectly paint all such perspectives as racist, sexist etc., while importantly showing that some ideas within the field do stray dangerously close or even into such territory either within the research field itself or popular applications of such research. Most obviously in the rise of Social Darwinism which was at best a bastardization of Darwin's own theorizing on evolution and human behavior.

Further, provides a digestible introduction to the kind of formal modeling used by gene-culture co-evolutionary approaches from which much of social science (my own field included) could greatly benefit.

[Peter Stanbridge]

This is a great book. If you have any suspicion on the coherence of evolutionary psychology/sociology and like subjects then this book sets a great context. It fully understands the nonsense advocated under its banner but then shows how clearly evolutionary concepts must have some explanatory force in understanding ourselves as social human beings.

[Zedder]

So far it's not *quite* as good as I'd hoped, but I'm only still warming up. Embarrassingly, in their lumped-together summary of British empiricism, they refer to John Stuart Mill as an 18th century thinker. Maybe they meant it as an insult?

[Ginger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks this book to support my application for phd in evolutionary social science, still don't know the results, but it's really helpful.

[Jonas Gehrlein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gives a overview on sociobiology and the subfields:
Human Behavioral ecology
Evolutionary Psychology
Cultural Evolution
Gene- Culture coevolution
with strengths and limitations of different fields.

[Ren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for school and while it was relevant to my module, it was not interesting as a popular science book.