Human Nature: A Critical Reader

by Laura Betzig

"Human nature" has meant many things to many people. Why do we do what we do? Before 1859, when Darwin published The Origin of Species, the meaning of "human nature" was anybody's guess. This book collects the first, classic tests of Darwinian theory on us -- including studies of traditional societies (from the Kung of Botswana to the Ache of Paraguay), studies of modern societies (from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to southern California), and comparative...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019509865X
• ISBN13: 9780195098655
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Knowledge = power. Darwin's theory is the route to knowledge

This book is a compilation of 18 pioneering articles on Darwinism.Very original is the fact that the different authors are commenting on their research 10 or more years after the publication.One needs a rather profound knowledge of statistics in order to fully understand some, not all, the articles.These researches were not only very original but sometimes also disturbing, like Hrdy's work on infanticide, or Chagnon's research on the Yanomanö tribe, which was used against the tribe by 'financial' interests in the 'development' of their territory.For me, the most important article was the one by Tooby and Cosmides, who brilliantly refuted and even ridiculed the SSS Model of the content-free, independent mind. They proved that the human mind is not a blank which works with general purpose mental processes. On the contrary, the mind contains specialized mechanisms which evolved as adaptations to the social environment (see also, Lumsden and Wilson's 'Promethean Fire').This book is an essential read for all those who are interested in the human nature.