Amazon.com
"Many people have sex in mind a great deal of the time." Authors Malcolm Potts and Roger Short spent more than 15 years trying to understand and explain these passions. While not fully embracing biological determinism--that destiny is simply written in the genes--Potts and Short believe that evolutionary biology can help explain human behavior. In this book they focus on milestones in life's cycle, such as love, marriage, sex, pregnancy, birth, parenting, divorce, and death. Each of these complex behaviors is studied in turn and analyzed for its biological foundations and centuries of cultural modifications. Nearly 100 illustrations lend support to the authors' theories, and dozens of fascinating sidebars go into greater depth about everything from Siamese twins and cloning to wet-nursing and Viagra.
The book is not without its flaws: the authors' belief that most behaviors are biologically based leads them to make sexist conclusions at times--for example, they argue that a woman's interest in sports must primarily stem from a desire to please her man. They also maintain that evolutionary biology can suggest solutions to some of our most difficult problems, without suggesting what these solutions (or, indeed, problems) may be. That said, the authors do an excellent job of teasing out the twisted strands of nature and nurture that make us who we are. Though scholars may find the lack of footnotes frustrating, Ever Since Adam and Eve will pique the interest of educated readers. --C.B. Delaney
Book Description
Eminent scientists Malcolm Potts and Roger Short view the broad panorama of human sexual and reproductive behaviour to reveal an inextricable mixture of nature and nurture - a combination of innate actions which have evolved over the millennia to adapt us to a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, overlain by more recent cultural constraints imposed by civilization. For each of life’s milestones - sexual intercourse, conception, pregnancy, birth, puberty, love, marriage, parenting, menopause and death - they describe the biology behind our actions and consider how pressures imposed by various historical and contemporary cultures have further influenced our behaviour. By looking back at the past they attempt to make sense of the present, to see how and why these cultural modifications arose, how they have contributed to the richness of human sexual behaviour, and what our biological and cultural inheritance can teach us about safeguarding the continuation of our species.
Customer Reviews:
Ever Since Adam and Eve.......2000-03-20
This book is a MUST for anyone who considers themselves an unbiassed thinker. If only there were a text like this when I was in college. It will appeal to anyone interested in anthropology, sociology and/or zoology. You don't have to agree with the arguments of the authors as they are the flavour enhancers of the proverbial "food for thought". The beauty of this book is it's personal affect of invading your waking and sleeping hours with questions. Wonderfully stimulating, the best thing I have read in AGES. What a legacy.
A great Outlook on sexual inhabitions and what drives them!.......1999-08-26
This book was written by my uncle who has always been an inspiration in my life. This book is just another extension of his Greatness! Malcolm Potts takes his work very seriously. I know that this book will and has already made changes in my life as far as human sexuality goes. It will make me take my sexual desires and actions to a new and much safer level.
veryprovacative,justone of thosebooksthathasrealityalloverit.......1999-08-03
the book was very touching.it made feel as if iwas far away from God, and it made me realize how far my relationship with God really was, and i'm just glad that Malcolm Potts and Roger Short brought me back to reality...
Stunning summary of the human condition from then to now.......1999-07-13
Of course there is nothing new under the sun...or is there? Better read this often funny, frequently irreverent book with remarkable sexual pictures and graphics. New syntheses must draw on past information. Like any masterpiece, these authors took lifetimes to acquire and understand the knowledge they now offer us in this complex, yet easy to read scientific recitation of human and other sexual histories. The book tells you about our evolutionary hsitory, that we are indeed descended from earlier animals and even earlier forms of life. They document that the main evolutionary drive for humans and mammals generally has been and is SEX, for the key to our existence is the need to produce the BEST next generation. For many this book will prove an epiphany of understanding, a creation of more reverence for life, but one not based on the mythology of religion, but on the clear facts of science. Don't miss it.
well written cultural anthroplogy.......1999-05-24
Two internationally recognized authors have provided us with a sparkling volume; informative and engaging. Several lay friends have read my copy, and shared it with their families.
Amazon.com
Strikingly different from most business books--it opens and closes with a pair of very powerful black-and-white photo essays, for example--A Simpler Way lays out a fascinating and productive reexamination of the traditional tenets of organizational behavior. Internationally known consultants Margaret J. Wheatley (Leadership and the New Science) and Myron Kellner-Rogers focus on the basic themes of play, organization, self, emergence, and notions of coherence to explore how people really systemize their existence. The authors draw upon science, poetry, philosophy, and other unconventional corporate resources to suggest a completely original method of working together. "There is a simpler way to organize human endeavor," they write. "It requires a new way of being in the world. It requires being in the world without fear. Being in the world with play and creativity. Seeking after what's possible. Being willing to learn and to be surprised."
While A Simpler Way may appear too New Age for some readers, this beautifully produced book hits the mark by bringing together an array of unexpected ideas as the authors look anew at established theories of human behavior to propose a decidedly unique way of promoting organization and achieving success. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
Margaret J. Wheatley and coauthor Myron Kellner-Rogers explore the question: "How could we organize human endeavor if we developed different understandings of how life organizes itself?" They draw on the work of scientists, philosophers, poets, novelists, spiritual teachers, colleagues, audiences, and their own experience in search of new ways of understanding life and how organizing activities occur. A Simpler Way presents a profoundly different world view that can change how we live our lives and how we can create organizations that thrive.
A Simpler Way explores fundamental new beliefs about organizations and life. Like Leadership and the New Science, this new book is rooted in science but breaks new ground by developing insights from literature, spiritual teachings, and direct experience. The authors challenge many assumptions about life, organizations, and change, while providing inspiration and guidance for readers on their own journey to a simpler way to organize their endeavors.
The authors describe a new paradigm of life as self-organizing and coevolving, drawing on sources that support modern science but predate its findings by thousands of years. They examine five major themes-play, organization, self, emergence, and coherence-each grounded in both the science and philosophy of a world that knows how to organize itself. Each theme is explored in depth, and then applied to how we think about human organizations.
Customer Reviews:
Fluffy, repetitious.......2006-08-04
Not bad, but the material could have been covered in a magazine article. A few principles repeated until I felt like I was reading some sort of New Age meditative mantra.
Simply wonderful.......2006-05-02
I could not put it down! Although an easy ready, it presses us to look at things differently, simply AND deeply. This book relates to all aspects of life and how we interact with each other and the world. How often and quickly we delve into issues without considering the impact of changes (or even suggestion of change). This is a "must read" for business leaders, teachers, politicians, churches and other organizations who so often try force square pegs into round holes in the name of progress and growth. I will read this book again, share with others and will read a lot more of Margaret Wheatley!
Simpler way to absorb ideas from Leadership and the New Science.......2005-09-26
Margaret Wheatley is addictive. After reading "Leadership and the New Science" I have bought the rest of her books, and also those that she recommends by contributing a foreword.
This book has a great deal of white space, lots of photos, is double-spaced, but by no means is it simplistic. To play on the title, it is a "simpler way" to absorb the large deep ideas that are documented in "Leadership and the New Science." If her primary writing were a trilogy, this is the entry-level book, "Finding Our Way" is the intermediate volume, and "Leadership" is the graduate course. However, I recommend they be read in reverse order, because the simpler books are more clearly appreciated if one has the deeper background.
What I find most compelling about this book is the manner in which it captures core ideas from a wide variety of works that have been bubbling into human consciousness in the past 20 years. The bibliography is quite good although by no means all-inclusive (missing Kurzweil, E. O. Wilson, and Stephen Wolfham, as well as Tom Atlee and Bill Moyers, among others).
Among the core ideas in this book that are presented with elegance are the absurdity of thinking that life can have a boss--or that rigid ideas and identities will lead to anything other than rigid non-adjustable organizations. The author stresses the value of diversity, passion, connectedness, humanity and humanness, and tieing it all together, the role of information and of ethics as facilitators for "being."
There is a very useful discussion of bacteria and the manner in which human attempts to impose machine and medical solutions are ultimately defeated by bacteria. Although Howard Bloom's "Global Brain" is not in the bibliography, everything the authors discuss here is consistent with his concerns about bacteria winning the inter-species war with humanity.
Taking this a step further, I would contrast this book, and the varied books on collective intelligence, wisdom of the crowd, ecological economics (Herman Daly) and so on, with a book I recently reviewed about the National Security Council, aptly titled "Running the World." The stupidity and arrogance of that title reveals all that we need to know about why U.S. foreign policy is failing, and how desperately we need to take the ideas from this book and apply them to how we manage ourselves and our relationships with other nations, other tribes, other religions, other communities.
penetrating philosophic work.......2005-05-14
In this sharply perceptive and penetrating philosophic work, the authors with unusual sensitivity and insight have been able to express life of human organizations in a beautiful way.
The authors in a poetic way express that life is creative and playful, contrary to Darwinist theory that life occurred out of an error and it is struggle for survival. The mechanistic image of the world doesn't help us any longer. We keep exploring what we can see when we look at life and organizations using different images.
Organizations are living systems. They are like people, intelligent, creative, adaptive, self-organizing and meaning-seeking. The simpler way to organize human endeavor requires a belief that the world is inherently orderly. The world seeks organization. It doesn't need humans to organize it.
The book is based around the following essential ideas: everything is in a constant process of discovery and creating; life uses mess to get to well-ordered solutions, it doesn't seem to share our desires for efficiency or neatness, it uses redundancy, fuzziness, dense webs of relationships, and unending trails and errors to find what works; life is intent on finding what works, not what's "right"; life creates more possibilities as it engages with opportunities; life is attracted to order; life organizes around identity; everything participates in the creation and evolution of its neighbors.
"A simpler way" is to a great extent influenced by Maturana and Varela, Kelly, Prigogine, Jacob, Lewontin, Kauffmann and other great thinkers.
Here is the quote from this book:
"In their work on human cognition, Maturana and Varela explain that, at any moment, what we see is most influenced by who we have decided to be. Our eyes do not simply pick up information from an outside world and relay it to our brains. Information relayed from the outside through the eye accounts for only 20 percent of what we use to create a perception. At least 80 percent of the information that the brain works with is information already in the brain.
We each create our own worlds by what we choose to notice, creating a world of distinctions that makes sense to us. We then "see" the world through this self we have created. Information from the external world is a minor influence. We connect who we are with selected amounts of new information to enact our particular version of reality.
Because information from the outside plays such a small role in our perceptions, Maturana and Varela note something quite important for our activities with one another. We can never direct a living system. We can only disturb it. As external agents we provide only small impulses of information. We can nudge, titillate, or provoke one another into some new ways of seeing. But we can never give anyone an instruction and expect him or her to follow it precisely. We can never assume that anyone else sees the world as we do.
Their work on human cognition underscores the realization that we are all, always, poets, exploring possibilities of meaning in a world which is also all the time exploring possibilities."
I also recommend "Leadership and The New Science" in addition to this book.
Beautiful and Simple Way to introduce the Complex(ity).......2003-06-30
This book is special for two reasons: #1 the book itself is beautiful in graphics, typography and shape, #2 the text pleasantly guides the novice into the realm of the subject of complexity.
This is the book I always advice to those who want to 'get into' the subject.
Book Description
Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.
Customer Reviews:
The Red Queen.......2007-10-16
The book has some interesting ideas, but could probably be summarized in about half the number of pages.
Great Book.......2007-03-27
I can't add very much to the excellent reviews already posted. I'll just say quickly that I enjoyed very much the fresh insight into mating practices among the "lower animals" and among humans. I've read a lot about evolution and biology and so forth, and still found much new material here. I really enjoyed learning about how scientists finally discovered the rampant adultery among birds and how incredible they are at hiding it.
Several reviewers warn about having to "make it through" the first part, and I certainly understand that if your primary interest is in the evolutionary origins of human sexuality. However, I really enjoyed the first part as well, because it provides a broad understanding of sex in evolution and give lots of fun examples about different behaviors and adaptations.
Although I didn't give the book 5 stars (I reserve that for the best of the best), it showed me that Mr. Ridley is a great writer and I'll check out his other books (I think I'll start with Genome).
Worth slogging through Part 1 to get to Part 2.......2007-01-30
Some of the ideas expressed in The Red Queen are brilliant, and their applicability to the nature of human sexuality are quite interesting. However, Ridley's very methodical approach to categorizing and cataloging the varieties during the first 120-150 pages can be painfully slow.
Once Part II kicked in, I was glad I persevered. After the first part apparently sets the stage for some descriptions related to human beings, I found myself unable to put the book down during second half. No need to add on to what has been written by others, but if I had to do it again, I definitely would have skimmed Part 1.
Still worth the effort and quite a conversation piece. In the month since I finished, I find I bring it up in casual conversation regularly, and even during the course of book club conversations about male and female perspectives to similar actions, perceptions, or mating rituals. Definitely recommended!
So interesting..........2006-12-14
I remember flying on an airplane 6 years ago and having the stranger sitting next to me highly recommend this book. It ended up taking me three years before I finally obtained a copy!
This book is phenomenal. Starting from the first organisms on the planet and building up to modern day human beings, this book gives a detailed account of evolution and covers numerous theories, supported in great detail, as to how humans are they way we are.
The only reason this book gets 4 stars from me is because it is written in text book language and it can be hard to follow at some points. But stick with it - the end of the book is where most of the interesting points emerge.
The implications to the future human civilization are staggering.......2006-11-10
Science writer Matt Ridley's book "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" is outstanding. I have read at least 20 other books by various authors on this subject, and yet Ridley's book contains a vast amount of original work and brilliant viewpoints.
His language is accessible, witty, and moving. His explanations and arguments are well researched, and elegantly written.
Ridley takes you on a journey, for those willing, into nature's infinite world of sexual evolution using existing species as examples. You'll end up realizing how constricted our society is in relation to our nature. The book opened my mind to how diverse our society can be, and how we limit and restrict ourselves. I find this book to be one of his best works.
Experts in every field of living systems should read this book, the implications are staggering. Although written entirely from a biological / genetic / nature point of view, anyone could use the material to develop an improved system. For example, improved political systems, draft laws that make sense, market products more successfully, understand the criminal mind-set, raise children better, better discern the cause of war and violence, etc.
In a nut-shell, if you want to understand the infinite possibility of human potential, this book gives you the "theory of operation" and should be considered the bible on how central sexuality is to the nature of humankind and our modern civilization.
Average customer rating:
- Sorting out the Issues
- God sense, not nonsense
- A breath of fresh air
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Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour
Kevin N. Laland , and
Gillian Brown
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Similar Items:
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Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History (Blackwell Brief Histories of Psychology, 2)
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Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human
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Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate
ASIN: 0198508840 |
Book Description
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 behaviour. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of this exercise is at the centre 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 behaviour. 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 behaviour under the name of evolution, and to make judgements as to what is sense and what is nonsense.
Customer Reviews:
Sorting out the Issues.......2005-08-13
Kevin Laland is a prominent researcher in gene-culture coevolution, niche construction (the study of how organisms modify their social and physical environment, and thereby modify their own gene pool) and animal social learning. Gillian Brown is a primatologist who studies parenting behavior. Their book is a study of six strands of evolutionary theory as applied to human behavior: (a) Darwin and his pre-sociobiology followers (including Galton, Spencer, Lorenz, Tinbergen, von Frisch, and Ardrey); (b) the founders of sociobiology, including Dawkins, Trivers, Hamilton, Maynard Smith, and E. O. Wilson; and three offshoots of sociobiology, (c) behavioral ecology (including Hill, Kaplan, Hawkes, and Chagnon); (d) evolutionary psychology (including Cosmides, Tooby, Daly, Margo Wilson, Pinker, Buss); (e) memetics; and (f) gene-culture coevolution (including Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, Boyd and Richerson, and Laland himself).
The title is inspired by the authors' impression that, despite the fact that the academic social sciences have virtually ignored evolutionary approaches, the public finds them very sexy and provocative, to the point where evolutionary research is continually influenced by political and journalistic concerns, and the science tends to be overwhelmed by the junk and the hype. I fully share this impression, and I think they have done a fine job in extracting the "sense" from the "nonsense." They even manage to treat memetics seriously, despite the fact that memetics' attempt to detach culture from reproduction, production, cooperation, conflict, and the other basic activities of social life cannot possibly succeed.
Laland and Brown vigorously defend the early Darwinists and sociobiologists against the many politically motivated attacks against them (they do not deal with religious critiques). While the authors recognize that their ideas have often eclipsed by more contemporary research, they find no major fault in the constitution of these two schools. I think this is a bad mistake. In the century from Darwin to E. O. Wilson, evolutionary researchers managed to isolate themselves from every mainstream social science, including economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and to a lesser extent, anthropology. It is futile to blame this on the mainstream. The fault lies squarely with the evolutionary theorists, who failed to make a convincing case for the position.
This is quite unforgivable, because mainstream social science has made many central contributions that must be integrated into evolutionary theory to provide a solid, scientific body of knowledge concerning human behavior. Laland and Brown give no reason for this isolation of evolutionary theory, except the trivial commonplaces mouthed by virtually everyone in this tradition (traditional social science is ideology, the mainstream is afraid of being tainted with the sins of eugenics and racist genetic determinism, and so on). The major problem facing evolutionary theory today is not to shuck the nonsense, but to account for its failure to become part of the mainstream, I believe, and Laland and Brown do not recognize this.
The very idea of forming schools of thought, such as behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and gene-culture coevolution is an indication of the inability of evolutionary theory to consider itself a science. Scientists seek integration, not fragmentation. Behavioral ecologists, for instance, are anthropologists who study simple societies, while evolutionary psychologists are psychologists who study commonalities in human behavior across all societies. How could they possibly consider themselves "alternative" theories? They very idea is absurd, a capitulation to the natural human tendency to congregate in small groups of "insiders" whose major motivation is to triumph over the many groups of "outsiders" whose strange ways are threatening and unsettling.
This one issue aside, I find Laland and Brown very convincing in adjudicating among the various approaches, and in their plea for tolerance and exchange of information among them. Like the authors, I believe that gene-culture coevolution is the overarching principle that includes the others as subclasses. I also believe that gene-culture coevolution is the most promising basis for the integration of evolutionary with mainstream social science. The authors' only critique of gene-culture coevolution is that it tends to be highly mathematical and does not generate many empirical studies. I do not agree with this critique. Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, as well as Boyd and Richerson, have done admirable empirical work, and with the use of experimental game theory in recent years, we will have much more such research in the near future. The true critique of gene-culture coevolutionary theory, in my view, is its ignorance of and contempt for traditional social science. Unless this is overcome, evolutionary social theory will remain marginalized for the foreseeable future.
Of course, most potential readers of this book will have the same prejudices concerning the traditional disciplines as do the authors, and they should find this book a welcome and incisive corrective to the disarray within evolutionary social theory.
God sense, not nonsense.......2004-02-18
The final chapter of E O Wilson's Sociobiology was a bombshell whose shockwaves reverberate today. Kevin Laland and Gillian Brown set out to sift through the morass of evolutionary approaches to human nature that is has spawned.
This is a useful review of the various schools of research, although I would have liked a firmer conclusion than 'a pluralistic approach is best'. Sometimes the authors could be a little less polite and have a little more bite.
Good stuff overall though, probably most helpful for those new to the area, or for students looking for an introduction. The book is a little light in content, concentrating on methodology, but the emphasis on cultural processes, absent from many evolutionary discussions, is most refreshing.
Do Laland and Brown successfully separate the sense from the nonsense? No. But they do equip the reader with some of the tools to do it for herself.
A breath of fresh air.......2002-07-17
This book is both a great read, and an informative one, for anyone interested in human behavior, evolutionary theory, and the links between the two. The area of potential evolutionary bases to human behavior has traditionally been filled with much controversy, some fighting, scattered irresponsible speculations and pronouncements that at times have produced tragic effects, and quite often, more heat than light. Laland and Brown have produced a book that is truly a breath of fresh air. One of the things I liked most about Sense and Nonsense is that Laland and Brown had actually sat down to talk with--and listen to--many of the leading proponents of different "schools" of thought. They work hard in Sense and Nonsense to give a fair presentation of each different approach, before moving on in each chapter to provide their own analysis of the approach presented from their own perspective as working scientists. In the midst of an area in which some researchers have been prone to simply shout louder--often literally--at those they disagree with, Laland and Brown have truly taken the time to listen, reflect, and form considered and thoughtful judgements. This is a service to all of us: After reading their book, I know that I will always look reflect differently on researchers' claims of evolutionary bases of human behavior, whether that's hearing them at a conference, or reading a journal article, or the latest best-selling book or TV interview. If you want to improve your understanding of evolution and human behavior, get a guided tour through the area and its controversies by two thoughtful experts, and come out with a changed perspective that will likely always stay with you, then read Sense and Nonsense. Great book.
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Sex Differences: Developmental and Evolutionary Strategies
Linda R. Mealey
Manufacturer: Academic Press
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ASIN: 0124874606 |
Book Description
Sex Differences serves as an advanced text for courses in evolutionary and human biology, psychology, and sexuality and gender studies. It also serves as a reference source for academic professionals in these disciplines. The book covers the evolution of sex and sex differences, and sex differences and sexual strategies in non-human and human animals. The final chapter addresses issues of sex and gender in interpersonal relationships, organizations and politics. Diagrams, graphs, charts, and tables illustrate key concepts; cartoons and photos provide visual breaks and an element of humor.
Key Features
* Examines sexual differences from a multi-level comparative approach
* Contains a thorough coverage of literature through 1998 and into 1999
* Illustrates pages with a generous use of cartoons, photos, figures, and diagrams
* Invites bonus learning with special interest boxes interspersed throughout text
* Presents a critical analysis
* Includes a combination of feminist and evolutionary thinking
Customer Reviews:
Clear and Informative.......2001-09-22
This is an excellent, clearly written, well-organized scholarly review of sex differences. The author takes a broad look at the topic, which makes the book useful for a broad range of readers: biologists, psychologists, medical practitioners, ecologists, clinicians,counselors, and the well-informed general reader. The clear writing style and careful review of the literature make this a very accessible and informative book.
Book Description
Demonstrates that the earliest humans evolved not as hunters but as prey species, based on evidence from fossil and living primates
Although "Man the Hunter" is a popular description of our ancestry, the central importance of hunting is firmly fixed only in the archeological record of relatively recent human history. Man the Hunted argues that primates, including the earliest members of the human family, have evolved not as hunters but as the prey of any number of predators, including wild cats and dogs, hyenas, snakes, crocodiles, and even birds of prey. Eyewitness accounts, data collected by the authors, and the published reports of naturalists establish the astonishing extent to which living monkeys, lemurs, apes, and even humans fall victim to a wide variety of predators, some of which even specialize in the consumption of primates. Additionally, the fossil record demonstrates that primates have been prey for millions of years, a fact that necessarily shaped the evolution of our earliest ancestors in body and behavior. Skillfully combining information from a number of lines of evidence, Man the Hunted casts an entirely new light on the natural history of primates and the evolution of fossil and modern humans.
Customer Reviews:
A New Perspective.......2006-07-19
As with any new or unique perspective on the evolution of humanity, "Man the Hunted" has drawn both praise and damnation. Being informed that your ancestors were little more than snacks for large carnivores may bring some human-centric reviewers down a peg or two and also induce some nasty penmanship.
I like my natural history gritty. How about pp 140 " the crowned hawk-eagle not only has the power and the momentum, the surprise and the speed, but those great talons are used with such exactitude that the heart of the prey is the target ... In one juvenile monkey the heart was triple-pierced from a single deathblow; the talon went in one side of the heart, came out the other side, and- achievable only because of the camber of the eagle's talon- curved back and reentered the heart once again."
This is an engaging and highly readable book, and its premise stands the test. Let's face it, the famous "Taung baby" discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart was recently proven to have been the prey of a large eagle; there are the typical "can opener" marks of eagle talons on Taung's skull. The only disagreement I would have with the authors is the extent of meat eating and its time interval in our history. Hart and Sussman maintain that "top predator" status was only recently attained by humans; whereas in my opinion brain expansion = meat. The human fossil record is one of exponential brain expansion, and something must have driven that expansion; meat and society.
The authors themselves are extremely fair in their treatment of others who have been critical of their work, and also point out where their own views diverge on aspects of human evolution. There is no apparent political agenda being pushed and the quotes from Robert Ardrey and E. Tylor are placed in a fair and relevant context. There are dozens of attributions and a full bibliography, in response to another review.
Gross incompetence and dishonesty.......2006-03-06
I see from the reviews here that this book has managed to convince people so far. I hope that if I point out their methods here others will be able to see it for what it really is, a political viewpoint that they have dressed up with flim flam and lies.
In my opinion Sussman and Hart are knowingly dishonest and just make stuff up. There is a chance that they are also amazingly incompetent and lacking in any basic knowledge of the topic, but it can be hard to distinguish this from their transparent attempts to cleverly distort reality and the positions of others. At the very least, their motive to even write this book is based on their failure to understand some very basic things about evolution and genetics, and how nature via nurture results in behavior.
Given that Sussman claims to be a primatologist and that he claims to be working on preservation of endangered species in various parts of the world, we might, for example, expect something a bit beyond the following on the topic of the coevolution of predators and prey, "In other words, if prey evolve a new way to elude predators, predators evolve in the direction of overcoming the new strategy. Any major destabilization in the balance of predators and prey comes
about because the prey have evolved some new way to elude predation; the predator then has to counteradapt or give up eating the newly elusive prey (Tylor, E. Primitive Culture, 1871)." (pg. 40)
No, I did not mistype that, they use a book from 1871! By a man that specialized in the topic of primitive religions and who held profoundly racist views that Africans were in the middle between apes and white men. How can this be the best possible source on the topic of the coevolution of predator and prey? Either they are amazingly ignorant, or they set out to find a source that did not contradict their carefully constructed and entirely wrong notions. They count on the reader never looking up what that little number "18" references. Do any of you think that this racist expert in religions that wrote back in 1871 is likely the last word on the coevolution of prey and predators? So ask yourself then, why would they use him? Because their argument fails if they try to use any modern experts in the topic. Using this source is essentially a lie then.
Throughout they make use of devious methods of argumentation as they seeks to pull whatever comes to hand over the reader's eyes. In discussing hunting they admit that hunting is "common" (pg. 23) behavior in primates. This is a huge problem for someone arguing that human behavior and evolution is unrelated to hunting. But then they launch the effort to whitewash this, skipping right along and changing the subject in a way they hope you do not notice.
Fond of using the work of non-scientists from decades ago as whipping posts, here they choose Robert Ardrey, who with typical journalistic license went overboard on his assertions back thirty some years ago. Even still they twist vigorously at what Ardrey wrote. Where Ardrey says that our ancestors were "continuosly dependant on killing to survive" Sussman claims to refute by arguing against a view that "hunting could have been the main food procurement venture for early hominids." This is not what Ardrey asserted at all. Obviously, a food source need not be the main one for it to be critical for survival. Even five or ten percent of a diet can easily make the difference between health and death over a long period of time. Given seasonal changes in plant derived food sources it is also probable that hunting would be a more critical source periodically than it was on average.
It is a basic assumption of biology and evolutionary theory that animals engage in behaviors which increase their fitness, that these behaviors exist because they increased the numbers of descendants of the individuals that had them relative to those that did not and were therefore passed on, they were selected for. Therefore we work with the assumption that if a behavior is common to a whole order, the primates, as they admit hunting is, then it must be important to survival and fitness. Which should just end the debate unless they have some spectacular evidence somehow that hunting is just a random behavior that happens to be universal in primates and every single human culture. Which would make it the only known example and a huge problem for the theory of evolution to explain. They do not offer any such evidence, instead they boldly assert that they have conclusive proof against the theory of "Man the Hunter," which is that our ancestors two million years ago had teeth that were not the teeth of a carnivore. Of course, no one ever said they were. Not Ardrey or anyone else. But they are clearly that of an omnivore, which includes hunting, and which they neglect to mention. This also has to be seen as simply a lie. An effort to convince you of what is not true and to disguise what is true from your view, and to use the reader's lack of knowledge of the topic to do so.
In fact I doubt the word omnivore is in this book anywhere, they live in a world where species either peacefully chew grass until they are eaten, or they eat only meat all the time.
They also seem to avoid the obvious fact that even herbivores can compete over territory and mating with other herbivores in violent conflicts; perhaps they would see two rams butting heads as peacefull? Yet they are undeniably prey animals and do not hunt. So even if we gave them their founding assertions, what they assert follows from them obviously does not.
It is remarkable too that Sussman has such a unique opinion of what others believe. Perhaps this is not surprising given how behind the times his sources are, but still one is puzzled to read, for example, that "Conventional wisdom would picture predators formulaically thinning the size of their prey populations-mountain lions eating just the right number of deer to keep the deer, in turn, from overpopulating." (pg. 39) Perhaps this was the conventional wisdom back in 1871, but as I am not an expert in the history of science I have no idea.
Any vague knowledge of evolution would tell one that each predator looks out for themselves, there is no consideration of the health of the group they prey on. Ideas similar to this one, that individuals in groups would limit the number of their offspring to the ideal number the environment could support, were conclusively dismissed over forty years ago. That hardly makes them or their cousins, as these look to be,"conventional wisdom." Again, this can only be extreme ignorance of the topic or intentional dishonesty.
This was a funny one though, "Should we then not worry that too many chimpanzees might be obliterated by their natural predators? Absolutely not. Any substantive and long-term drop in numbers of prey will arise from a lack of resources." Huh. So all those flightless birds just happened to lack resources at the same time that cats and rats were introduced to their island homes? I suppose that one can argue these were not their natural predators, but species have invaded new habitats millions of times naturally. One gets a picture from this book of a world where species are in some magical stasis, one
would be very shocked to learn that 99% of all species that have
ever existed are now extinct.
Of course the larger assertions are just hilarious, and their books are cooked until they are pure carbon. The idea is that if we can show that our ancestors several million years ago did not hunt, and that instead they were hunted, then somehow magically it follows that human nature is basically good and peacefull and all evil is caused by evil cultures. Which is a
hilarious leap out into mid air, logically. And it means that they fully subscribe to genetic determinism for this purpose. But then they also want to say that even if we did hunt that would not mean we were by nature killers, since that would be genetic determinism; the same thing that they like so much when they make their first argument but which they are adamantly opposed to if it might result in what their politics disagree with.
In fact on page 211 they blatantly admit that their whole book is pointless ["And furthermore, research seems to indicate that the neurophysiology of aggression between species is quite different from the spontaneous violence linked to intraspecific aggression by humans (that is, murder)."], and then they just keep on going anyway. If there is no link in the human mind between murder and hunting, which of course there is not and the whole argument is just absurdly silly from the start, then how does their assertion that we were not hunters two million years ago have any particular import? The lack of citation here is also a fairly common feature of the book, and one that is highly suspect. Who did the research and how can I find it? Is it from 1871?
And of course the whole idea that a species can be characterized by looking at how it's distant ancestors lived is absurd if one does not also look at how it lives now. Sussman and Hart avoid the knowledge that all human societies ever encountered hunt. How does an anthropologist who is a former editor of a major journal avoid this knowledge? It must be simple dishonesty.
We might just as well have a book titled "Whales, the Land
Dwellers." Sure, their distant ancestors lived on land, but
obviously no whales do now. What they ate or were eaten by seems to be a question that few would care the answer to, and I see no reason for more to care what our very distant ancestors ate or were eaten by.
Sure, evolutionary psychology recognizes that there can be behaviors left over from our ancestors. Perhaps we could speculate, for example, that our fondness for petting animals is left over from our ancient bonding by grooming behavior. But given that it is very very likely our ancestors hunted, since they had the teeth for it, it is common (as the authors admit) in primates, and all human societies ever found hunt then I think we need to just admit that we are evolved as hunters. Then we can also get past all these bizarre negative ideas about it too. It does not mean we are violent or aggressive or demonic or emotionless killers. It means we were hungry.
Let me also mention that evolutionary psychology is well aware that humans have adaptations to avoid predators. That extreme fear of snakes is common in humans is frequently given as an example of evolved behaviors, behaviors that have no environmental cues and therefore can be seen as "hardwired." Infants and captive chimps that never had seen snakes before have exhibited this fear, so it does seem that our brains are born with this information and response. But I fail to see how being eaten by a predator changes the character of a person from violent to peaceful. Hitler was a vegetarian, if he had also been eaten by a bear would that indicate that he was by nature peaceful? That his descendants were peaceful? The logic of their argument simply does not exist.
Ian Tattersall contributes a forward in which he heaps scorn on
evolution (and he teaches courses with evolution in the title),
biology, genetics, the lot, and seems to hint that they should be replaced by some vague notions of "emergent events" and also
the "history" of the species. He states, "Clearly the unprecedented qualities of our species are the result of an emergent event, and there is indeed something truly different about the way we Homo Sapiens behave that seems to distinguish us from even our closest ancestors. And as a result, it is evident that we cannot attribute the ways in which we behave directly to our genes or even, more indirectly, to our history, as a bee or an angel fish might much more plausibly do."
I fail to see how anything in the second sentence follows as a
result of anything in the first, but these people specialize in
grand leaps into the void. I also fail to understand the difference between a species history and it's genetic history, he seems to suggest by this some new means of transmitting inherited traits that is less "direct" than genetic.
There are people who connect various of the following; hunting and murder, murder and war, and hunting and war. Some of these people exist in the area of evolutionary psychology (for example, David Buss) a field the authors oppose. But all of these connections are wrong, and the authors know that, as they say on page 211. The ideas are simply illogical and poorly thought through. It would be possible for a group to hunt and not make war, or make war and not hunt. The fact is that all human groups do make war except for extremely isolated or nomadic ones. The fact is that all human groups hunt. Lacking very strong counter evidence we must start with the assumption that these behaviors have genetic components which contribute to their universality. This does not mean that we cannot choose other behaviors. I am a longtime vegetarian myself. But it does mean that we need to know who we are before we can truly control these choices. We need to stand up and admit that we were born with a predisposition to make war, and then understand what the psychology of that is in our minds so that we can avoid falling into the evolved paterns. Denial will not lead to peace for humans any more than it leads to sobriety for drunks. If you want to see where that path leads, you can start here - http://theroadtopeace.blogspot.com/
I believe it is time to engage in some identity correction. These people are effectively secular creationists. Anti-science and evolution, using many of the same tactics including outright lies, all in support of their decidedly dogmatic beliefs. They are the secular creationists. Denial of the theory of evolution or of human nature will not lead to peace. In fact an unshakeable belief in one's own peacefullnes is a part of what lets us be lead to war so readily, we always think that we are truly acting in self defense. Even the Germans in WWII thought that. It is not determinism to say that we have genes that predispose us to certain behaviors, it is the first step to being able to change those behaviors.
The authors believe that their position must be true because they believe if it is then humans are basically good and peaceful, and they feel themselves to be these. Therefore they try to make this case despite all the evidence and the need to lie to the reader and to themselves. They feel that admitting that humans evolved adaptations for hunting and war would mean that there was no hope. On the contrary. Admitting these truths is our only hope for peace.
pointless exercise.......2006-02-02
After 177 pages of descriptions of predators devouring prey, the author finally reveals that she has no way to connect her thesis (that hominid development was heavily influenced by predation) with what little is actually known about hominids - that they were fully bipedal before there was any great increase in cranial capacity. She refers to our evolution as a "random serendipitous route" and asserts that "we can simply accept that it was a combination of many factors that likely made bipedal locomation advantageous..."
The primary redeeming factor in an otherwise pointless exercise is the chapter "debunking 'man the hunter,'" a long overdue admission by mainstream academics that the savannah theory doesn't square with the fossil record.
Enjoyable, informative view of early man as prey.......2005-12-06
Every few years a new theory of human evolution emerges and its authors gleefully bash all those who came before. This is highly entertaining for the general reader and often very convincing too. In this case physical anthropologist Sussman and his former graduate student, wildlife biologist Hart counter the once vaunted and lately battered "man the hunter" scenario with its opposite: man as prey.
Nobody doubts that early hominids were prey to animals like saber tooth tigers, crocodiles, bears, hyenas and many more. But after reading the first half of "Man the Hunted," you will wonder how those poor hominids ever survived long enough to develop the brains needed to defend themselves and become us. The authors amass lots of fossil data and modern studies of predation to show that primates (including humans) were and still are, prey.
Reading this impressive catalog of dangers, you can't help but think of the defensive abilities other primates have that we lack - chimps are powerfully muscled and agile in trees, monkeys have long useful tails to swing swiftly through forest or jungle, gorillas are large and formidable, and all of them are more threatening as biters.
Hominids, however, with brains not much larger than chimps, had a puny physique (although more powerful than homo sapiens became) no claws or sharp teeth, and they couldn't run very fast on their two legs or swing as easily into the trees. No defenses at all, it appears, except for vigilance and the protection of the group. How did we ever survive?
The authors tackle this question in the second half of the book, approaching evolution from a defensive posture. Bipedalism, for instance. Numerous "models" have been posited to explain why we walk around upright - to free our arms for carrying, to allow scanning of terrain, to make us more energy efficient in terms of foraging for food and heat dissipation, to look larger and more robust to predators and mates. The authors reject all of these as primary causes, but incorporate each as an advantage to a creature already "preadapted," as all primates are, for bipedalism.
First, we came down from the trees, because, living at the edge of the forest, many ground plants were available. Then, "it made life much SAFER to be bipedal." "Bipedalism is only advantageous if you leave the trees and descend to the ground for the majority of your activities, and if you do it BEFORE you have evolved enormous torsos and arms." At this point we could still take refuge in the trees fairly easily, and standing on two feet we could scan more of the area for danger.
In the last chapter they lay out rules for hominid survival which include living in social groups of 25 to 75, using both trees and ground, being able to scatter into smaller groups or come together to mob or intimidate predators, having more than one male in social groups as protection, using males as intimidating-looking (because upright) sentinels, carefully choosing sleeping sights and employing the advantage of intelligence.
"Those were the survival rules and surely our earliest ancestors must have followed them. We can state that with total authority - if they hadn't exhibited the behavior of a hunted species, we wouldn't be here debating our origins."
By this time I was convinced, but I didn't need much convincing. There's a lot of interesting material here - particularly the debunking of the murderous chimp model (which arose out of human interaction on Jane Goodall's Gombe site) a fascinating discussion of fossil teeth and diet, the close examination of the anatomical features of fossils like "Lucy" and others. And, of course, the extensive and detailed descriptions and illustrations of (happily) extinct predators like the bone-crushing dog, which weighed 250 pounds and hunted in packs, the bear-dogs, which could bound like cats and had teeth like wolves and the more familiar hyenas and leopards and lions and tigers.
Their scathing dismissal of "man the hunter" and every scientist who ever touted such a bloodthirsty beast is highly amusing though occasionally shrill and a bit puzzling, since man the mighty hunter has long been cast off his pedestal and forced to share a level playing field with woman the gatherer, for one. Primatologists have long admitted that our ancestors were prey as well and that predation certainly influenced our evolution.
The difference here is the degree of emphasis Hart and Sussman place on predation as an evolutionary catalyst and the extent of their research on predation. Their book is readable and innovative, with provocative arguments on subjects from the role of "original sin" in scientific theory to comparing the ubiquitous presence of dancing as well as violence in all human cultures.
Thoroughly annotated, with a lengthy bibliography and a good index, this is a fine addition to the growing body of well-written and entertaining books on human origins.
--Portsmouth Herald
Interesting, thought provoking, but opportunity missed.......2005-12-02
Were the ancestors of humans ever part of "the circle of life" as described by Mufasa in The Lion King? Do the eagle talon marks on the fossilized skull of the 2 million year old Taung child represent an oddity or hint at the norm? Why did Robert Ardrey push so strongly for a "Man the hunter" explanation of hominid evolution? Are current studies of chimpanzees representative of the way Homo habilis or H. erectus interacted with their environment and their potential predators?
Donna Hart and Robert Sussman tackle these issues in Man The Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution. They are not the first to suggest that early humans sometimes ended in the belly of the beast (remember the opening scene in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey). They are not the first to suggest that humans are still preyed upon by large carnivores (as in David Quammen's Monster of God). They are one of the first to lay out a thoughtful argument for professionals and laypeople alike that humans are what they are because of predation, and not in spite of it.
I agree with Hart and Sussman that early humans were shaped by the coevolutionary dance always occurring between predators and prey, and that, for reasons that are still unclear, this idea of "man the hunted" has lost in both popular and scientific circles to a "man the hunter" model to explain human evolution. They lay out the evidence for 1) early humans as prey in a predator-rich environment (fossil evidence), and 2) modern primates as prey in today's human modified world (who eats living primates).
Hart and Sussman do go off on some tangents that I found puzzling and irritating. They obviously have problems with Richard Dawkin's "selfish gene" theory, and they are not fans of E. O. Wilson's sociobiology synthesis (although it seemed they only read the last chapter in his book). They didn't reference the interesting book by David Baron, The Beast in the Garden, on mountain lion predation on humans. And they missed a wonderful opportunity to focus on the "so what" question. If modern humans truly were shaped by predation, what can this knowledge tell us about ourselves? Randolph Nesse and George C. Williams take this route in their book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine. What can we understand about ourselves in light of the revelation that humans spent most of their existence foraging for food and avoiding becoming food? How does that relate to our interactions with each other, other animals, the wilderness, open space, caves, pet cats and dogs, parasites, and on, and on?
I enjoyed the book. It is readable, interesting, and well referenced. Hart and Sussman have opened a door. They are inviting us in to think about who we really are, and why.
Book Description
Dogs occupy a special position in human society. They were probably the first animal species to become domesticated, but their relationship with humans has always been ambivalent. Dogs form strong attachments to humans, even in the face of rejection and punishment, voluntarily allying themselves to us as faithful companions, uncomplaining child-substitutes, enduring workers, and excellent hunters and guards. Yet they are also reviled as vicious killers, unclean scavengers and outcasts. In this book, the many facets of dog behavior are set in the context of the dog's place in our society. Based on firm scientific research, the book dispells many myths and stereotypes about our canine friends, and it will be the definitive reference work on dog behavior for many years to come. Dog-lovers with an interest in understanding how and why dogs behave as they do will find this fascinating reading.
Customer Reviews:
Expert Treatise Worthy of Review by Experts & Attorneys.......2005-03-17
I particularly recommend this book for it's Chapter 9: Lockwood, Randall, The ethology and epidemiology of canine aggression.
For those experts and attorneys looking for detailed information regarding dangerous dog law and breed specific legislation (BSL), Lockwood's article provides subtle but direct information regarding the unique dangers presented by pit bulls that provide a rational relationship to their regulation or prohibition.
This article has been reviewed and cited by experts in the field of animal behavior as being relevant to this issue, and I found Lockwood's analysis of "fighting dogs" (read 'pit bulls') to be an objective analysis of the problem, one that is not readily acceptable to the "politically correct" members of most organizations opposed to BSL.
For any governmental official, administrator, or attorney, you HAVE to read this article before making a decision on BSL. Don't get blindsided by the irrelevant issues toward propensity to bite/attack, but examine the potential for severe injury or fatal maulings from these dangerous unique behaviors by pit bulls.
I am a municipal government attorney involved in litigation over BSL, so I've worked with copies of the article from the old hardcover publication - now I'm buying my own copy of the paperback version.
Kory Nelson, Esq.
Asst City Attorney
Denver CO
Excellent information painfully presented.......2003-06-23
[...] The information is wonderful, but can be found in more enjoyable books. If, on the other hand, you enjoy reading professional journals, you will feel right at home with the jargon and format, and may find it worthwhile to have leading thoughts on domestication, genetics, and behavior all in one place.
A Serious Must for Serious Dog People.......2003-05-11
First published in 1995, nothing else as comprehensive and as carefully researched on canine behavior and development has been published. For the general reader, the writing style may be a bit dry; however, because each chapter has different authors, the writing style, while basically academic and fact driven, varies.
Any serious dog breeders, trainers, or owners will find themselves returning to certain chapters over and over again. Breeders and even new puppy owners would benefit from the chapter by Serpell and Jagoe on "Early experience and the development of behaviour," which updates the standard beliefs about puppy development resulting from the Bar Harbor experiments of over 50 years ago.
Excellent book!
The Domestic Dog, James Serpell (Ed.).......2002-07-29
For those people hungry for scientific literature on dogs and curious about what other references there are on particular dog topics, this is a must read/must have text; almost every chapter serves as a review of the scientific literature on that topic. Those who don't care for reading anything drier than James Herriot's "All Creatures Great & Small" should avoid it.
The book is probably used as a text for graduate students and upper division majors in ethology, comparative psychology, zoology, etc. It was published in 1995 so most of the information is fairly current. The book is in its 5th printing so some professors must share my judgment of it. Let's hope that by 2005 there's a revised edition including and evaluating recent work.
It has 17 chapters written (or co-written) by 21 specialists in their fields -- British, American, Italian -- (after an introduction) divided into 3 major divisions: I. Domestication & evolution (2 chapters) ; II. Behaviour & behaviour problems (8 ch.s); III. Human-dog interactions (6 ch.s). The chapters provide an excellent summary and the key references to the area discussed. A few chapters have a definite British flavor but American readers will be able to transpose when needed.
Dog breeders (& many owners) may be especially interested in the chapters dealing with what's known about heritability of traits, temperament, etc., as well as the role of early experience on later behaviors, disorders, etc.
A few chapters are filled with research results in tables and graphs. One is dense with specialist jargon. But all are readable if you're interested in learning what the applicable sciences know and do not know about the dog. All chapters have information I found important and to some, I'll refer back to many times.
Academic, researched, impartial book on dogs........1998-05-02
Does it seem that retail book stores stock dog books that appear opinion-based and poorly referenced or researched? The early chapters of The Domestic Dog concerning evolution may be a little bit factual and historically oriented (read: a tad dry) but presents an excellent understanding of how dogs came into contact with humans and the resulting reliance and interations. The book, in part, looks at areas of canus familiarus and human interaction from both a biological, survival necessity to what kind of kennel should be considered based on breed selection. There are many discussions on topics not normally covered in commercial or general appeal dog books that will compliment, inform and provide insight into otherwise unknown or insufficiently covered areas about dogs. Areas of new information include (but is not limited to): pack hierarchy, dog development and growth, dog psychology and others. It is one dog book I can rely on for its research, reference material and impartial analyses into breed types. It has helped me learn more about dogs than previously possible in other purported books based on fact. I do believe that one must be more interested in dogs than just a casual manner (i.e.: one must really want to get into the nuts and bolts) to enjoy and finish this book.
Average customer rating:
- exceptionally simplistic and unoriginal
- Fascinating, bold and clear, the book is a must.
- This book is a clear winner
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The Evolution of Love
Ada Lampert
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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Book Description
Lampert presents the story of love: when, why, and how love became a central experience of humans. Assuming that our world is built of matter, she states that evolution is the change of this matter, according to the supreme criterion of success in offspring reproduction. Love evolved because of its contribution to reproduction. It first appeared in the mothers of mammals, who used the body's proximity as a main adaptation. Human love expands its borders to include the relationships between women and men, friends, and even nonhuman subjects. Lampert describes motherhood as the source of the genetic, hormonal, brain, and behavioral changes that we call love. In the sexual stage, love enters both as a way to select a partner and as a bonding force. Sexuality is built upon ancient layers of early forms of life, before humanity, and includes strong elements of aggression which interrupt our ability to experience a peaceful sexual life. Maternal love and sexual love combine in the evolution of the family. Lampert also examines homosexual love as a way to look at the fascinating process of growing sexual identity and behavior in an individual. Written in a style suited to any educated person, Lampert uses current scientific knowledge on the brain, hormones, the nervous system, ethology, psychology, and even modern physics to make her case. This book will be of interest to students and scholars alike.
Customer Reviews:
exceptionally simplistic and unoriginal.......2004-07-08
This book is a great disappointment -- nothing but warmed over sociobiology with very little to say about the connection of love to other drives and affects; virtually nothing about the neurobiology of love that is not widely known among intelligent lay readers; and very little intelligent even about the subjective experience of different forms of love...The book is only 115 pages -- essentially a long and uninformative magazine article. I feel as the money I spent was taken from me.
Fascinating, bold and clear, the book is a must........1998-10-04
Understanding the evolutionary paradox of extinction versus love, is one of the exciting results follows reading in this bold, clear and entertaining book. Completely innocent of any scientific flamboyance, free from trying to impress us by unnecessary treasures of knowledge, the author presents issues that have been occupied human beings from time immemorial. She uses such a direct, simple tone, that one often forgets how brave she is, and how much freedom of thought, authonomy of mind, were needed for creating, formulating and consolidating her ideas. The basic claim, optimistic although she refrains of any aspiration to foster hopes, is simply that the talents of loving and of being loved, are genetically inherited, not in any creature but in mammals, whose most dramatic contribution to life on earth was the amazing new care for the helpless infant : parenthood. Later on more kinds of love evolved. Witty, humoristic all the way, she shows how evolution shaped our mate selection. There she elaborates also on the incest taboo and adds an extremely interesting note on the Oedipus` complex of Freud. Most illustrative are the chapters discussing the loving brain and its evolutionary shaped repertoire of sexual behaviors, bewildering each of us. The chapter on homosexuality is used to clear how all humans are actually twin-folded and how complicated and vulnerable is the process of establishing sexual, gender identity. Reading this book is a must.
This book is a clear winner.......1998-09-28
I have just read "The Evolution of Love" by Ada Lampert and I am genuinly impressed. She maintains a consistent touch throughout: an attractive lightness of style, a thorough familiarity with the pertinent literature, and a nice penchant for pulling things together theoretically. the latter is probably the book`s greatest strenngth since she theorizes with an intuitive elan one rarely sees in popularized books. she can do so because she is not a reporter visiting someone else`s field, but an ensconced scientist with an original mind. I am going to use this book with my class at the University of Chicago. All in all this book is a clear winner.
Book Description
In the spirit of E. O. Wilson (Sociobiology) and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), this book proves that in attracting, keeping, or discarding our mates, we are closer to our ancestral forebears than many of us think.
Customer Reviews:
Too basic/introductory.......2007-10-12
This book is too shallow and introductory for the well-versed student of evolutionary psychology, and in many ways outdated (written in the early 90s).
If you're already knowledgeable about the basics of mating strategies and their evolutionary origins, you don't need to add this book to your collection, because there's no new interesting insights or challenging questions tackled here.
Trash.......2007-09-25
Yet another piece of faulty popular science. Although the author conducted a survey of amazingly great scope, he at times seems to even deliberaty ignore or contradict his own results. His only interest seems to be to pseudo-scientifically back up gross stereotypes of men and women. Don't waste your time or money!
How the evolution of mating affects your dating.......2006-12-11
Why do women use makeup? Why do men like to buy big cars? Why do people feel jealous? Evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss digs deep into the ancient past of human relationships to answer such questions, and produces intriguing results, disconcerting insights and valuable explanations. Using observations from the animal world and from many studies conducted in various societies, he provides a theoretical framework based on Darwin's theory of natural selection. Give Buss credit for elaborately fitting in almost every conceivable puzzle inherent in human mating relationships - even though this, admittedly, at times requires quite a stretch of his evolutionary theory. We recommend this "drop-dead shocker" (The Washington Post Book World) to anyone who has ever searched for, attracted, kept or separated from a mate - that is, anyone who is strong enough to face the unromantic truth.
Evolution of desire........2006-06-19
The author does a superb job tracking down the evolution of desire via a plethora of studies, including some conducted by the author and his colleagues. Though it's true that evolution has granted us certain "sexual strategies", psychologically we are more complex mentally than hunters and gathers. The book reads exactly as the title suggest. The author never dabbles into behavioral psychology to explain anything left unexplained by evolutionary psychology. You may catch yourself arguing with the book, trying to explain human motives through behavioral psychology. A major pet peeve for me is I often find the author repeating statements, especially in the later chapters.
Provocative..........2006-04-09
I gave this book a 5 rating because it is provocative and challenges a lot of society's assumptions about sexual behavior. While I realize the book has some shortcomings, it does shed a lot of light on human mating strategy.
I thought the author's notion of long term and short term mating strategies in both sexes was fascinating. It makes logical sense and it seemed to make sense with my experience of people in American culture. I also found the examples and references he used to back up his arguments interesting.
While this isn't a perfect book from a research perspective, it is excellent for what it is... a trade paperback written for a general audience. I recommend it to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of human sexual behavior.
Also... a lot of the information in this book is redundant with the content in the same author's book on jealousy. You may want to get one or the other first and get the other one later depending upon how big a fan you are of his approach to these topics.
Book Description
Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong.
The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected.
Hierarchy in the Forest claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism.
Customer Reviews:
infinite care and patience, great insight - a thrilling and wonderful read.......2006-08-05
I like this book a lot.
Christopher Boehm has something interesting and important to say, and he says it with a mass of supporting evidence and persuasive argumentation.
It's not an easy read, because the thinking is deep, but it's full of interest, and he tells good stories.
This is the first time that anybody has made sense, for me, of aspects of human nature which have been puzzling me since I was a child.
If you're interested in human nature read this book - especially if (1) you are intrigued by patterns of human hierarchy and anti-hierarchy; (2)(like me) have realised that these patterns are intensely dynamic (neither "cultural" nor simply "instinctive behaviours); and (3) (also like me) have failed to make sense for yourself of what IS going on.
This is a highly distinguished book. It's hard to imagine how anybody could organise such a range of knowledge into such a gripping and persuasive account.
A startling look at human altruism and how we obtained it.......2000-08-08
This book is easy to read, revolutionary in its interpretation of the evolution of human egalitarianism and altruism, and in addition a warning about our current state of liberal democracy -- though the author does not see the danger.
The book traces out how the development of language and the use of tools and weapons, allowed our ancestors, the hunter-gatherers to overthrow the hierarchy we find in other primates. That is, males hate to be dominated, and if they can they will form coalitions and enforce egalitarianism. So for tens of thousands of years, virtually all human bands used weapons to kill upstarts who might try to dominate the group, and gossip maintained a keen eye on everyone's contribution to the group. Free-riders were suppressed, eliminated or expelled, and after time they were kept to a minimum genetically.
In addition, altruism within the group was selected for through group evolutionary strategies. That is, with this new arrangement of group cohesion and forced adherence to the group's particular ethos or moral code, the groups who had higher levels of ethnocentrism, patriotism, or altruism towards members of the group -- including willing to die for the group when battled broke out between groups -- predicted that group evolutionary strategies selected for these very traits. That is, altruism was a product of between-group warfare and competition for resources.
When humans began to form civilizations however, and with the accumulation of wealth in the form of food through the growing of crops and the domestication of animals, dominance once again took over. Through religion, actuarial practices, and coercive leadership, humans once again yielded to the authority of a central figure.
So far so good. But Boehm believes that with our present Western democracies, that all is well again. This is surprising, because by the very mechanism he so elegantly elucidates in the book, by all reasonable measures, we are now in an ecological situation where racial strife, a return of free-riders, and an end to altruism will set in. By our very form of government there is no need to abide by rules as we know them, and the people who have the genes for selfishness or the free-riders will again multiply. That is, human behavior is never fixed but is always changing. Evolutionary stable states can only exist when the environment does not change -- but it has. From welfare to shirking military duty, the new free-rider will again out-produce the once altruistic motivated solid citizen. Free-riders can hide within modern democracies, and they are not bound by the old moral codes. We are surely entering a dysgenic trend in these traits, if not in intelligence itself. So I see little optimism that what was once a wonderful mechanism for human advancement against dominance will not now slide back towards more aggressive and a selfish human nature. Fortunately, with a better understanding of the human genome, and a renewed interest in neo-eugenics, we may be able to salvage our evolved egalitarian traits once again.
Evolution of Human Egalitarianism.......2000-04-22
From the time I picked up this book until finishing it within 36 hours, I was captured by this excellent work on human politics from an evolutionary perspective. Boehm shows close scholarship in his summaries of hunter-gatherer and other society's ethnographic evidence bearing on politics. He also contrasts this human focus with our closest relatives, the apes, and chimps in particular. Readers may find of interest the struggle, rather than ease, with which egalitarianism appears among simple societies. The book also raises questions about the origin of human egalitarianism that will stimulate readers and research for years to come.
Books:
- Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, Second Edition
- Fair and Tender Ladies (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
- Field Guide to Wild Flowers of Southern Europe (Field Guide)
- Fire: Friend or Foe
- Fish! Sticks: A Remarkable Way to Adapt to Changing Times and Keep Your Work Fresh
- For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend
- Free Your Breath, Free Your Life: How Conscious Breathing Can Relieve Stress, Increase Vitality, and Help You Live More Fully
- Fresh-Water Invertebrates of the United States: Protozoa to Mollusca, 3rd Edition
- From Death to Birth: Understanding Karma and Reincarnation
- Galapagos: Discovery on Darwin's Island
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