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This section is for individual articles and papers on all aspects of evolutionary psychology and related fields.

Resources in This Category

• "The Mind as the Software of the Brain" by Ned Block

  http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/msb.html
  Cognitive scientists often say that the mind is the software of the brain. This chapter is about what this claim means.

• An Evolutionary Hypothesis For Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

  http://cogprints.org/1147/
  Abed, Riadh T and de Pauw, Karel W (1999) An Evolutionary Hypothesis for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Psychological Immune System?. Behavioural Neurology 11:245-250.

• Ancestors

  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/04/0417_leakeyinterview.html
  Meave Leakey discusses her team's recent skull find suggesting a new human ancestor.

• Animal Soul

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper59.html
  A history of the idea and a critique of reductionism. It appeared in Paul Edwards, ed., 'The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.'

• Association of Ideas

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper58.html
  This essay appeared in Philip P. Wiener, ed., 'Dictionary of the History of Ideas'.

• Baboon Key to Human Stress

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/san_francisco/1173924.stm
  Article describes how the stresses and strains that afflict humans are evident in baboon societies. Also suggests that both species share the long-term health effects.

• Behavior and the General Evolutionary Process

  http://cogprints.org/1051/
  Paper by William Baum.

• Behavioral Inferences from the Skhul/Qafzeh Early Modern Human Hand Remains

  http://www.pnas.org/content/98/6/2979.full
  These results support the inference of significant behavioral differences between Neanderthals and the Skhul/Qafzeh hominids and indicate that a significant shift in human manipulative behaviors was associated with the earliest stages of the emergence of modern humans.

• Bottlenose Dolphins and Theory of Mind

  http://www.pnas.org/content/98/10/5937.abstract
  Bottlenose dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror, an advanced intellectual ability observed previously only in humans and apes.

• Chimps Touched by Television

  http://www.nature.com/news/1998/010419/full/news010419-2.html
  Chimpanzees are moved by fearful or appealing television scenes.

• Darwin and the Genre of Biography

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper48.html
  Published in G. Levine, ed., 'One Culture: Essays in Science and Literature'. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, pp. 203-24.

• Darwin's Darling

  http://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/aug/28/1
  A profile of Helena Cronin.

• Darwin's Metaphor and the Philosophy of Science

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper8.html
  This was first presented to the Piaget Seminar, University of Geneva, about 1986 and published in Science as Culture (no. 16) 3: 375-403, 1993. It draws out the philosophical implications of 'Darwin's Metaphor' (Cambridge, 1985), in particular, the role of metaphorical and teleological language in Darwin.

• Darwin, Marx, Freud and the Foundations of the Human Sciences

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper9.html
  This is a talk on the grand view of the human sciences, presented to CHEIRON, the European Society for the History of the Behavioural Sciences and reprinted in its Newsletter, Spring 1988, pp. 7-12.

• Darwin: Man and Metaphor

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper7.html
  This is the text of a television documentary in the series 'Late Great Victorians', BBC1, 1988. It was also published in Science as Culture no. 5: 71-86, 1989.

• Darwinism and the Division of Labour

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap109.html
  The founding conference of the British Society for the Social Responsibility in Science in November 1970, was on the theme, 'The Social Impact of Modern Biology'. The conference was attended by a number of eminent scientists, e.g., Nobel Laureates James Watson, Jaques Monod, Maurice Wilkins; David Bohm, Jacob Bronowski, R.G. Edwards (of Steptoe and Edwards, the pioneers of 'test-tube babies'), as well as some radicals, Hilary and Steven Rose, John Beckwith. It was, perhaps, the last moment when radicals and posh scientists were relatively united. The talk was published in The Listener, 17 August 1972, pp. 202-5 and in Science as Culture no. 9: 110-24, 1990.

• Darwinism is Social

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper60.html
  This essay appeared on David Kohn, ed., 'The Darwinian Heritage'. Princeton and Nova Pacifica, 1985, pp. 609-638.

• Did the Caveman Teach Us to Queue?

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1184388.stm
  Chris Horrie provides a critique of the discipline in this BBC News article.

• Domestication's Family Tree

  http://www.economist.com/node/587270
  DNA is revealing that taming animals was not a simple process.

• Evolution, Biology and Psychology from a Marxist Point of View

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper46.html
  This article is largely historical, but the issues remain timely.

• Evolutionary Biology and Ideology: Then and Now

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper38.html
  A paper contributed to a conference on 'The Social Impact of Modern Biology'. It appeared in Science Studies 1: 177-296, 1971.

• Fear Makes Worms Turn Friendly

  http://www.nature.com/news/1998/010503/full/news010503-1.html
  A single gene influences the social behaviour of worms.

• Genetics

  http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7293/1005.full
  The British Medical Journal publishes a special edition "putting genetics into perspective".

• Guardian Unlimited - And Darwin created us all

  http://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/feb/06/guardianreview.books7
  As two of the world's great Darwinists prepare to debate whether science is killing the soul, Tim Radford asks if natural selection is the key to life, the universe, and everything.

• Herbert Spencer and Inevitable Progress

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper84.html
  Spencer is so grandiose that it is hard to summarize his ideas, yet he was one of the most influential thinkers in nineteenth-century Britain, and his ideas were an inspiration around the world. His version of evolution was utterly generalised in all the ways Darwin tried to be circumspect. The organic analogies which Spencer developed are the foundation-stones for the widespread idea of functionalism across the biomedical and human sciences, extending to architecture, systems theory, cybernetics and information theory. The essay was reprinted in a collection from the journal: G. Marsden, ed., Victorian Values. Longman, 1990.

• Human Genome

  http://www.nature.com/genomics/human/overview/press-releases.html
  Comprehensive information on the first draft of the human genome from Nature.

• Humans and Other Animals

  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/135/11.0.html
  How much do we share with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field? Article by John Wilson at Christianity Today.

• In Favor of Animal Consciousness

  http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/308650.html
  An excerpt from Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness by Donald R. Griffin, the creator of the field of cognitive ethology.

• Individualism and Evolutionary Psychology

  http://cogprints.org/328/
  Online paper by David Buller.

• Intentionality Detection and Mindreading: Why Does Game Form Matter?

  http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4404.full
  By around the age of 4 years, children can work out what people might know, think or believe based on what they say or do. This is called mindreading, which builds upon the human ability to infer the intentions of others.

• Malthus on Man - In Animals no Moral Restraint

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap107.html
  A paper was presented to a conference on 'Malthus, Medicine and Science' organised by Roy Porter at the Wellcome Institute, London, on 20 March 1998.

• Memory Experts Show Sleeping Rats May Have Visual Dreams

  http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/visual-cortex.html
  Matthew Wilson contends that animals have complex dreams.

• Men fish for compliments

  http://www.nature.com/news/1998/010412/full/news010412-1.html
  The menfolk of the Meriam, a people who live on islands off the northeast tip of Australia, spend their time spear-fishing and turtle-hunting, but are they really fishing for compliments?

• Men Show Feelings In Lower Left Quadrant Of Face

  http://unisci.com/stories/20011/0216014.htm
  When it comes to emotions men and women are equally expressive, but men display most of their joy, disgust or other sentiments in the lower left quadrant of their face. Women, on the other hand, show their emotions across their entire countenance.

• Menarche

  http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7294/1095
  Any decrease in average menarcheal age during the past 20-30 years has been small (almost certainly less than six months), particularly when compared with the reduction of a year or more that occurred in many European countries between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries.

• Mozart 'can cut epilepsy'

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1251839.stm
  Music, particularly Mozart, could have a therapeutic effect on epilepsy, say scientists.

• Neurobiology of Laughter

  http://www.nature.com/nsu/010301/010301-7.html
  Did you hear the one about the prefrontal cortex?

• NYTimes.com: Exuberance is Rational

  http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010211mag-econ.html
  Richard Thaler has led a revolution in the study of economics by understanding the strange ways people behave with their money.

• Origins of the specious

  http://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/nov/30/scienceandnature.science
  Andrew Brown explains why 'Introducing Evolutionary Psychology', the latest in Icon Books' popular series of comic books on important subjects, has been withdrawn from sale while 10,000 stickers are pasted over the face of Steven Rose.

• Perfect Pitch May Help Babies Speak

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/san_francisco/1179664.stm
  US researchers say everyone may be born with perfect pitch to help them learn the skills of language.

• Prediction and Accommodation in Evolutionary Psychology

  http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/papers/Lakatos.htm
  Ketelaar and Ellis have provided a remarkably clear and succinct statement of Lakatosian philosophy of science and have also argued compellingly that evolutionary theory fills the Lakatosian criteria of a progressivity.

• Reproductive Greontology

  http://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/apr/13/uknews
  The relationship between aging and the risk of producing offspring with gene-influenced illnesses.

• Ring-breaker Drives Dove Love

  http://www.nature.com/news/1998/010503/full/news010503-2.html
  Leonida Fusani and colleagues discover the role of aromatase in courtship behaviour.

• Scholarship and the History of the Behavioural Sciences

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper57.html
  A paper that first appeared in History of Science 2: 1-51, 1966.

• Science: Human Genome

  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/291/5507.toc
  The special issue on the first draft of the human genome.

• Social Power and Self Deception

  http://www.a3.com/myself/ravenpap.htm
  Social evolution and social influence: selfishness, deception, self-deception. A scholarly paper by Mario F. Heilmann, University of California at Los Angeles.

• Sociobiology Sanitized: The Evolutionary Psychology and Genic Selectionism Debates

  http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/dusek.html
  Socio-political overview of the circumstances leading to the development of Evolutionary Psychology as distinct from Sociobiology, by Val Dusek. This web page is associated with the Science-as-Culture mailing list and journal.

• Sport and genetics

  http://www.medsci.org/archives/athleticgene.html
  Stephen Jay Gould and Kipchoge Keino on why athletic achievement isn't in the genes.

• Steven Pinker: The Mind Reader

  http://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/nov/06/1
  Article by Ed Douglas on the evolutionary psychologist with a popular touch and a mission to explain how the brain works.

• Stone Age Bosses Aren't all That Bad

  http://www.theguardian.com/money/2001/jan/14/workandcareers.madeleinebunting
  Applied to business, as Nigel Nicholson does in his book Managing the Human Animal, evolutionary psychology suggests that most organizational practice runs directly against the grain of human programming.

• Swanson et al.

  http://www.pnas.org/content/98/5/2509.abstract
  A new study by Willie J. Swanson and colleagues provides evidence of sperm competition and sexual conflict.

• Synaesthesia: A Cognitive Model of Cross Modal Association

  http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/lyons.html
  A paper by Andrew D. Lyons.

• The adaptive nature of the human neurocognitive architecture: An alternative model

  http://www.pnas.org/content/95/19/11290.full
  The model of the human neurocognitive architecture proposed by evolutionary psychologists is based on the presumption that the demands of hunter-gatherer life generated a vast array of cognitive adaptations. Here we present an alternative model.

• The Cognitive Skills of Neanderthals

  http://www.pnas.org/content/97/13/7663.full
  Neanderthals were predators.

• The Darwin Debate

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper83.html
  This essay appeared in Marxism Today 26 (no.4), April 1982, pp. 20-22.

• The Development of Herbert Spencer's Concept of Evolution

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/spencer.html
  A paper delivered to the Eleventh International Congress of the History of Science, Warsaw, August 1965 and published in Actes du Xle Congres International d'Histoire des Sciences Warsaw: Ossolineum, 1967, vol. 2, pp. 273-78.

• The Evolution of Ethics

  http://www.evolutionaryethics.com/
  A theory concerning the integration of ethics and science using cybernetic theory as a logical foundation.

• The Evolutionary Manifesto

  http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com/man.pdf
  This paper by John Stewart uses an evolutionary worldview to derive an ethical system that will require humanity to develop the psychological capacity to transcend the dictates of our biological and cultural past.

• The Functions of the Brain: Gall to Ferrier (1808-1886)

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/func.html
  An online paper on mind, brain, and adaptation in the nineteenth century. It was published in Isis 59: 251-68, 1968.

• The Genetic Archaeology of Race

  http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200104/olson
  The study of human genetic variation has become the most contentious area in modern science. A detailed article by Steve Olson.

• The Human Limits of Nature

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper43.html
  'The Limits of Human Nature' was the title of the London Institute of Contemporary Arts winter lecture series for 1971-72. The distinguished group of contributors, included Alan Ryan, Arthur Koestler, David Bohm, Raymond Williams and John Maynard Smith. This contribution was published in J. Benthall, ed., 'The Limits of Human Nature' (Allen Lane, 1973), pp. 235-74.

• The Meanings of Darwinism: Then and Now?

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap124.html
  Charles Darwin grew up in Shrewsbury, Shropshire and attended Shrewsbury School for seven years. The school held a Millennium Conference on 'Darwinism and Ethics for the Next Millennium' on 16 October 1999. Papers were given by Mary Midgley, Matt Ridley, Colin Tudge and Robert M. Young.

• The Naturalization of Value Systems in the Human Sciences

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper45.html
  This essay first appeared as an Open University Course Unit for 'Science and Belief: from Darwin to Einstein', Block VI: Problems in the Biological and Human Sciences. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1981, pp. 63-110.

• The Sweet Smell of the Immune System

  http://www.nature.com/news/1998/010308/full/news010308-10.html
  Manfred Milinski and Claus Wedekind find evidence for the hypothesis that "perfumes are selected to amplify in some way body odors that reveal a person's immunogenetics".

• To Love, Honour and Deceive

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1296607.stm
  Long-term relationships are fundamentally dishonest. And it's all women's fault, new research suggests.

• What if Human Nature Is Historical

  http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper61.html
  This essay moves from pure ideology about changing human nature to using biofeedback as a transitional topic to spelling out the desiderata for treating human nature as a historical project.

• Why elephants don't forget

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1285532.stm
  A study of African elephants reveals that dominant females build up a social memory as they get older, helping the herd to survive.

• Why we're all getting brighter

  http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/22/anthonybrowne.theobserver
  Dumbing down? Don't believe it. Scientists have proved we are smarter now than ever before, largely because we watch TV, surf the net, and spend hours chatting to friends.

• You've Got a Lot to Answer For, Charlie Darwin

  http://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/jul/13/evolution.psychology
  Is psychology frozen in the Pleistocene era? Hilary and Steven Rose are sure it must have evolved since then.

 

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