Popular science and media are awash in sweeping claims concerning how
some characteristic human behavior, feeling, or psychological
disposition exists because it aided our evolutionary ancestors in
survival and reproduction. These claims often arise from a discipline
known as Evolutionary Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology claims to
investigate the evolutionary underpinnings of human nature, to explain
why we have the thoughts, feelings, impulses that are characteristic
of human experience. But when we compare these investigations with
evolutionary research on other human traits, or on nonhumans, we see
that Evolutionary Psychology is deeply out of touch with the basic
theoretical and methodological precepts that form the basis of our
knowledge of evolutionary history. By comparing research in
Evolutionary Psychology with traditional forms of evolutionary
research, we can appreciate the wide gap between what Evolutionary
Psychology says about human nature, on the one hand, and what is
traditionally required to support claims about evolutionary history,
on the other. The study of evolution is not the study of the design
and purpose of nature-it is the study of how populations change over
time and it requires the sort of investigation for which human
subjects are generally ill suited. As Chris Haufe shows, Evolutionary
Psychology has constructed a parallel scientific universe - cut off
from genuine scientific knowledge of the evolutionary process - which
seeks to actively promote a predetermined stance on human evolutionary
history regardless of whether that stance is logically consistent with
current scientific fact. Illusory Riches demonstrates that our
scientific knowledge of the human past and of the evolutionary process
permits a far greater range of human potentialities than one might
suspect from the claims of Evolutionary Psychology.
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The False Promise of Evolutionary Psychology
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780197751237
Publisert
2025
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic US
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter