Science is not a great way to make money, or these days, even a job. But there are great riches in it, and in this book too. Tim Bradford, 'New Scientist'.

The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology is the definitive, comprehensive, and authoritative text on this burgeoning field. With contributions from over fifty experts in the field, the range and depth of coverage is unequalled. It will be an essential resource for students and researchers in psychology.

When the social sciences parted company from evolutionary biology almost exactly a century ago, they did so at a time when evolutionary biology was still very much in its infancy and many key issues were unresolved. As a result, the social sciences took away with them an understanding of evolution that was in fact based on 18th- rather than 19th-century biology. I argue that contemporary evolutionary thinking has much more to offer the social sciences than most people have assumed. Contemporary (...) evolutionary research on human behaviour focuses on two main issues at the micro-social scale: understanding the trade-offs in individual decision-making and understanding the cognitive constraints that limit flexibility of decisions. I offer examples of both of these approaches. Finally, I consider the broader question of the macro-social scale. (shrink)

For as long as history has been with us, religion has been a feature of human life. There is no known culture for which we have an ethnographic or an archaeological record that does not have some form of religion. Even in the secular societies that have become more common in the past few centuries, there are people who consider themselves religious and aspire to practise the rituals of their religion. These religions vary in form, style and size from small (...) cults numbering a few hundred people centred around a charismatic leader to worldwide organizations numbering tens, or even hundreds, of millions of adherents with representations in every country. Some, like Buddhism, take an individualistic stance (your salvation is entirely in your own hands), some like the older Abrahamic religions view salvation as more of a collective activity through the performance of appropriate rituals, and a few (Judaism is one) have no formal concept of an afterlife. Some like Christianity and Islam believe in a single all- powerful God. (shrink)

Humans have inherited from their remotest mammalian ancestors an integration of the sensory and motor systems that permits the exchange of signals and information, led by an instinctive response to harmonicity. The transition, from capacity for animal communication involving calls, facial expression and gestures, to modern human culture that embraces language, music, and dance, has resulted from anatomical adaptations such as upright posture, a distinct oro-facial and respiratory tract arrangement, and important changes in neural architecture, connectivity and plasticity. A key (...) development on which modern human vocal abilities depend was the achievement of a feedback loop between the perception and production of voiced sound that allows precise matching, imitation, and meaningful variation, of the acoustic properties: fundamental frequency, duration, amplitude, and timbre; all contributing to the capacity to coordinate simultaneous participation. These are the four specific properties that influence our sensations of sound. They play parallel and complementary roles in both language and vocal music, represented in blended synchrony such as unison song and collective speech as well as temporally organised and coordinated sequences such as call-and-response and polyphony. In turn, responding especially to the properties of the Harmonic Series, such features inform the musical employment of tools – musical instruments – that make use of materials available in the local environment (skin, bone, stone, bamboo, wood, etc.) to provide increased range and loudness as well as alternative timbres to those produced by the voice. We propose a framework by which the adaptations essential to such universal behaviours may have arisen, drawing on an extensive and varied literature to explore the potential of this position for illuminating the nature of human musicality and its relationship to language development. (shrink)

One of the more compelling features of Denis Dutton’s The Art Instinct is its theoretical parsimony. Utilizing what essentially amounts to one explanatory principle—that of Darwinian selection—Dutton advances a theory of aesthetics that is at once general enough to account for cross-cultural variations in artistic production and sufficiently nuanced to promote insights into individual artworks. In doing this, Dutton’s work could not offer a greater contrast to some of the more vocal trends in contemporary aesthetic theory, where ponderous theorizing and (...) rebarbative jargons have violently opposed the idea—otherwise so modest—that aesthetic activities might draw on the evolved capacities of the human imagination. On .. (shrink)

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. Based (...) on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

Cooperation for the public good is vulnerable to exploitation by free-riders because it always pays individuals to exploit the social contract for their own benefit. This problem can be resolved if free-riders are punished, but punishment is itself a public good subject to free-riding. The fear of supernatural punishment hypothesis (FSPH) proposes that belief in supernatural punishment might offer a solution to this problem by deflecting the cost of punishment onto supernatural forces and thereby incentivizing cooperation. FSPH is supported empirically (...) by ethnographic data, but this work has so far focused on (1) institutional cooperative traits which may not reflect individual choices on how to behave in everyday social interactions and (2) threat of punishment from all-powerful moralizing high gods rather than other agents capable of supernatural punishment. Here, we consider the FSPH using variables which are linked to individual interaction and expand the number of variables measuring belief in different forms of supernatural punishment. Our findings do not fit these more general FSPH predictions. We suggest there may be something special about the link between moralizing high gods and institutional enforcement of cooperation that is not captured by these other variables. (shrink)

Drama, at least according to the Aristotelian view, is effective inasmuch as it successfully mirrors real aspects of human behavior. This leads to the hypothesis that successful dramas will portray fictional social networks that have the same properties as those typical of human beings across ages and cultures. We outline a methodology for investigating this hypothesis and use it to examine ten of Shakespeare’s plays. The cliques and groups portrayed in the plays correspond closely to those which have been observed (...) in spontaneous human interaction, including in hunter-gatherer societies, and the networks of the plays exhibit “small world” properties of the type which have been observed in many human-made and natural systems. (shrink)

Hormonal changes associated with the human menstrual cycle have been previously found to affect female mate preference, whereby women in the late follicular phase of their cycle (i.e., at higher risk of conception) prefer males displaying putative signals of underlying genetic fitness. Past research also suggests that romantic kissing is utilized in human mating contexts to assess potential mating partners. The current study examined whether women in their late follicular cycle phase place greater value on kissing at times when it (...) might help serve mate assessment functions. Using an international online questionnaire, results showed that women in the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle felt that kissing was more important at initial stages of a relationship than women in the luteal phase of their cycle. Furthermore, it was found that estimated progesterone levels were a significant negative predictor for these ratings. (shrink)

Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, others who have compatible preferences and the shared background knowledge needed to solve interpersonal coordination problems. The present study investigates the nature of such similarity within social networks, asking: What do friends have in common? And what is the relationship between similarity and altruism? The results show that similarity declines with frequency of contact; similarity in general is a significant predictor of altruism and emotional closeness; and, specifically, sharing (...) a sense of humor, hobbies and interests, moral beliefs, and being from the same area are the best predictors. These results shed light on the structure of relationships within networks and provide a possible checklist for predicting attitudes toward strangers, and in-group identification. (shrink)

Why and under what conditions are individuals altruistic to family and friends in their social networks? Evolutionary psychology suggests that such behaviour is primarily the product of adaptations for kin- and reciprocal altruism, dependent on the degree of genetic relatedness and exchange of benefits, respectively. For this reason, individuals are expected to be more altruistic to family members than to friends: whereas family members can be the recipients of kin and reciprocal altruism, friends can be the recipients of reciprocal altruism (...) only. However, there is a question about how the effect of kinship is implemented at the proximate psychological level. One possibility is that kinship contributes to some general measure of relationship quality (such as ‘emotional closeness’), which in turn explains altruism. Another possibility is that the effect of kinship is independent of relationship quality. The present study tests between these two possibilities. Participants (N= 111) completed a self-report questionnaire about their willingness to be altruistic, and their emotional closeness, to 12 family members and friends at different positions in their extended social networks. As expected, altruism was greater for family than friends, and greater for more central layers of the network. Crucially, the results showed that kinship made a significant unique contribution to altruism, even when controlling for the effects of emotional closeness. Thus, participants were more altruistic towards kin than would be expected if altruism was dependent on emotional closeness alone – a phenomenon we label a ‘kinship premium’. These results have implications for the ongoing debate about the extent to which kin relations and friendships are distinct kinds of social relationships, and how to measure the ‘strength of ties’ in social networks. (shrink)

We propose Rhythmic Relating for autism: a system of supports for friends, therapists, parents, and educators; a system which aims to augment bidirectional communication and complement existing therapeutic approaches. We begin by summarizing the developmental significance of social timing and the social-motor-synchrony challenges observed in early autism. Meta-analyses conclude the early primacy of such challenges, yet cite the lack of focused therapies. We identify core relational parameters in support of social-motor-synchrony and systematize these using the communicative musicality constructs: pulse; quality; (...) and narrative. Rhythmic Relating aims to augment the clarity, contiguity, and pulse-beat of spontaneous behavior by recruiting rhythmic supports and relatable vitality; facilitating the predictive flow and just-ahead-in-time planning needed for good-enough social timing. From here, we describe possibilities for playful therapeutic interaction, small-step co-regulation, and layered sensorimotor integration. Lastly, we include several clinical case examples demonstrating the use of Rhythmic Relating within four different therapeutic approaches. These clinical case examples are introduced here and several more are included in the Supplementary Material. A suite of pilot intervention studies is proposed to assess the efficacy of combining Rhythmic Relating with different therapeutic approaches in playful work with individuals with autism. Further experimental hypotheses are outlined, designed to clarify the significance of certain key features of the Rhythmic Relating approach. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz wendet sich Walter Benjamins Aquarell Vorführung des Wunders von Paul Klee zu, also jenem Werk, das bereits 1920 – ein Jahr vor der aquarellierten Ölfarbezeichnung des Angelus novus – in seine Sammlung gelangt. Wesentliches Element des Bildes sind die Liniengefügen, von denen sich die Figuren und der Schauplatz mitsamt schmaler Bühne absetzen. In der damaligen Kunstkritik und Ästhetik werden solche Konstruktionen aus Linien im Sinn eines Architektonischen verstanden, das heißt als ein das Bild konstituierendes Regime. Benjamin beschäftigt sich (...) mit entsprechenden Liniengebilden als Grundproblem der Malerei des Kubismus schon 1917 in Briefen an Gershom Scholem. Die dabei entstandenen Reflexionen bereiten gewissermaßen Benjamins Begegnung mit Klees Vorführung des Wunders und den sich dort zeigenden Liniengebilden vor. Die These lautet, dass Benjamin eine analoge, mittels Linie hergestellte Bildkonstruktion als Architektur begreift. Der Beitrag analysiert Benjamins Überlegungen zum Architektonischen im Verhältnis zur zeitgenössischen Kunstkritik und Ästhetik. (shrink)

Im vierten Brief an Clarke behauptet Leibniz, dass Newtons Vorstellung von der Gravitation okkulte Kräfte in die Physik einführe und so ins Übernatürliche münde. Clarke wies diese Behauptung zurück und stellte in seiner fünften Antwort die gleichsam offizielle, positivistische Haltung Newtons heraus. Gleichwohl glaubten Newton und Clarke wahrscheinlich an eine der ihnen durch Leibniz zugeschriebenen durchaus vergleichbare Theorie: dass nämlich dem sonst mysteriösen Phänomen der Fernwirkung Gottes Allgegenwart zugrunde liege. Erst im Jahre 1717, nach Leibniz' Tod, verwarf Newton diese Position. (...) In meinem Aufsatz versuche ich, die Fäden der Kontroverse zu entwirren, ihre Relevanz für Physik wie Theologie einzuschätzen und zu beurteilen, ob Leibniz, wie Austin Farrer es andeutet, eine Art ,physikalischer Theologie' unterlaufen ist. (shrink)

IstGesinnungsethikesHand, schmutzige manchmal richtig, das moralisch Falsche zu tun? Kann es unter bestimmten Umständen erlaubt oder gar gefordert sein, moralische Normen zu verletzen – etwa zu lügen und zu foltern –, um ein bestimmtes Gut – etwa das Leben Unschuldiger – zu sichern oder katastrophale Konsequenzen – etwa einen Terroranschlag – abzuwenden? Gibt es Situationen, in denen die Akteure nicht anders können, als sich moralisch ‚unerfreulicher‘, bedenklicher oder sogar verbotener Mittel zu bedienen? Heiligt der Zweck also zumindest manchmal die Mittel? (...) Diese Fragen werfen das sogenannte Problem der schmutzigen Hände auf. Von „schmutzigen Händen“ wird dabei im Anschluss an das gleichnamige Theaterstück Jean-Paul Sartres aus dem Jahr 1948 gesprochen, in dem der Pragmatiker Hoederer den Gesinnungsethiker Hugo mit der rhetorischen Frage „Glaubst du, man kann unschuldig herrschen?“ konfrontiert, um deutlich zu machen, dass man in der Politik nichts erreicht, wenn man nicht bereit ist, sich die Hände schmutzig zu machen. (shrink)

Die folgenden miteinander zusammenhängenden Themen werden erörtert : der Essentialismus, die Trans-Welt-Identität, der ontologische Gottesbeweis und der Glaube, Gott könne jede beliebige Welt erschaffen. Plantingas Einschätzung der De-re-Modalität stellt sich als fehlerhaft heraus, wenn seine Überzeugung, Menschen dürften nicht mit ihren Körpern gleichgesetzt werden, auch überzeugender ist. Leibniz würde jedoch mit guten Gründen der Behauptung Plantingas nicht vorbehaltlos zustimmen, daß Menschen ihrem Wesen nach immateriell sind. Plantinga hat Recht, wenn er — z. B. im Gegensatz zu Leibniz — die Auffassung (...) vertritt, daß dasselbe Individuum in mehr als einer möglichen Welt existieren kann und daß — trotz Tooley — die Rede von möglichen Welten kohärent ist. Van Invagen hat gezeigt, daß Plantingas Version des ontologischen Gottesbeweises nicht sicherer ist als die von Leibniz und daß sie verwundbar bleibt durch eine Kritik Jerome Shaffers. Aber Plantinga hat Recht, wenn er Leibniz' Ansicht, Gott könne jede beliebige Welt schaffen, zurückweist und als „Leibniz' Fehler" abstempelt. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

Robin Dunbar planteó la existencia de un rango específico utilizado para cuantificar las personas que podrían formar parte de una comunidad humana, donde todas las personas integradas en esta pudieran conocerse y tener relaciones significativas.En este trabajo se muestra la evolución de un centro educativo de 3 a 18 años que ha aplicado el número de Dunbar en su diseño y se repasará la evolución del número de estudiantes, las oportunidades y ventajas percibidas que ofrece el número (...) de Dunbar en el ámbito educativo, y cómo ha variado la aplicación de dicho número en el tiempo. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to characterize the concept of justice as an indispensable social convention for the emergence of moral duties in the context of groups that surpass the so-called “Dunbar’s number”. The article resumes, on the one hand, David Hume’s theory of justice, as it is discussed in the third section of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and on the other hand it resumes Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis relative to the maximum number of (...) individuals with whom a person may keep stable social relationships that comprise kinship, fellowship, and a sense of shared personal histories. (shrink)

Robin Dunbar's hypothesis that language capacity in response to the demands of maintaining large groups suggests a more specific hypothesis that language arose from a cognitive calculus by which animals could predict their status in complex dominance situations.

Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical (...) licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture. (shrink)

Primary works on Huang-Lao Taoism and Yin-yang philosophy, lost for more than two thousand years, are translated and prefaced with an informative introduction.

This paper starts from the remarkable habit of yoik singing among the Sámi people and the notion of togetherness in ‘singing together’, being confronted with the role of technology in the contemporary manifestations of ‘singing’. An important link appears to exist between several forms of grooming and the social dimensions of language and singing, as previously shown by Robin Dunbar. These types of interaction surpass the physiological, hormonal and psychological roles of grooming in humans, in non-human primates and (...) in other mammals. For they also determine the constraints of group-forming processes in mammals, and social structures in humans too. The characteristic group size of grooming mammals has been reported to determine the necessity of social stratification. Number constraints therefore form a silver lining throughout this paper. The analogy with artificial language models, and modern language models (MLM) in particular, has been chosen following the suggested applicability of AI for the deciphering of the language of Whales (Cetaceans). The polemic discussion between Noam Chomsky’s so-called classical generative linguistics and propagators of the nonlinguistic MLM approach (referring to Steven T. Piantadosi) is found an instructive heuristic for analyzing the future impact of AI on human culture. It is suggested that AI-generated analogues of ‘singing together’ will profoundly interact (or already do so) with social stratification and with the conservation of human values. (shrink)

Group size is a function of relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. Extrapolation from this regression equation yields a predicted group size for modern humans very similar to that of certain hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Groups of similar size are also found in other large-scale forms of contemporary and historical society. Among primates, the cohesion of groups is maintained by social grooming; the time devoted to social grooming is linearly related to group size among the Old World monkeys and (...) apes. To maintain the stability of the large groups characteristic of humans by grooming alone would place intolerable demands on time budgets. It is suggested that (1) the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on the development of a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and that (2) language uniquely fulfills this requirement. Data on the size of conversational and other small interacting groups of humans are in line with the predictions for the relative efficiency of conversation compared to grooming as a bonding process. Analysis of a sample of human conversations shows that about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. It is suggested that language evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioural characteristics of other group members more rapidly than is possible by direct observation alone. (shrink)

The authors argue it is essential to examine the linguistic and communicative practices that are used in the production of introspective data, and thereby make an important contribution to debates about how we may study experience that are relevant to a wide range of disciplines.The book has three objectives. It offers an account of the way in which contemporary researchers are employing introspection methodologies; it argues for the importance of viewing introspective data as discourse, and illustrates this via discussion of (...) research findings in four substantive chapters; and it outlines new directions for research and theorising on introspection and consciousness which will have implications for a range of psychological and social science disciplines.Robin Wooffitt is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of York, and Director of the Anomalous Experiences Research Unit.Nicola Holt is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of West of England at Bristol. (shrink)