SENSE AND NONSENSE: EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Book ID/图书代码： 10080105B00175

English Summary/英文概要： 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.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 进化论是对人类影响最大的科学思想之一，许多生物学家，人类学家和心理学家用它来解释人类的行为，如自杀，宗教，性差别等。但是，也有不少人并不同意这种观点。作者在书中介绍了社会生理学，人类行为生态学，进化心理学和基因-文化共同进化说等学派的理论和方法，同时也介绍了反对者的观点。对于爱好科学的大众读者，大学生，研究生，想了解其他观点的专家，本书都值得一读。

Awards/获奖情况：

About the Author/作者介绍： Kevin N Laland, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, UK, and Gillian R Brown, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, UK

Format:HARDCOVER

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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