Ebook: The Evolution of Mind: Fundamental Questions and Controversies

This book is not easy to review. For one thing, most of the chapters are extremely short and represent disparate perspectives. More problematically, however, the debates contained within this book will seem silly and scholastic to all but the insider. Any neophyte learning about applying the tools of evolutionary theory to human behavior for the first time will probably find this book to be a tremendous bore. Not only that, they will probably think to themselves, "what's all the fuss about?"
Thus, I do not recommend this to a fledgling.

For the more experienced reader, most of the debates will be familiar, and most of the arguments will seem stale. Is the brain massively modular, or can domain specificity account for many human psychological traits? Should we consider humans to be fitness maximizers, or is it best to use the adaptation executor heuristic? Does sexual selection, ecological conditions, or runaway social selection explain our huge brain and unparalleled intelligence?

The book first lays out the three main evolutionary perspectives used to explain human behavior: evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, duel-inheritance theory. Next it identifies fundamental debates between these views and offers short chapters addressing them. Toward the end of the book some fundamental mysteries of human evolution are explored. Most of these chapters are well written, concise, and ecumenical in spirit. A few are overly strident in tone. The chapter on human mating authored by Wendy Wood and Alice Eagly is particularly ill-suited to the spirit of the volume. Clearly, Wood and Eagly reject evolutionary theories of human behavior, even if they insist otherwise, thus it is extremely odd that the editors decided to have them write a chapter on their "biosocial theory" of sex differences. The chapter is sandwiched by two adaptationist accounts of mating and would be best excised.

Overall, this book will give the advanced undergrad a taste of the conflicts within the field as well as a feeling of how vacuous some of the debates are. However, not all of the debate is much ado about nothing. Furthermore, this volume will prod the reader to add rigour to his or her own theoretical preferences. All of the authors seem to agree on this fundamental point. I cannot disagree. The more rigour, the better.

The book concludes with an excellent summation by Jeffrey Simpson and Steven W. Gangestad. The authors take a retrospective look at the chapters and offer some tentative conclusions. Mostly they crystalize the questions and debates that remain so the reader can decide how best to move forward. The editors are to be congratulated on their fairness and balance. They have no obvious bones to pick. I agree with Lee Cronk that this volume is illustrative of the atavastic nature of classical disciplinary tribalism within academia. In the future, such parochial departments will be redrawn. Or, at the least, we should hope and pray that they are. If this book influences a few scholars to become more inclusive and less tribal, it will have served an extremely laudatory purpose.