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This pioneering volume offers an expansive introduction to the relatively new field of evolutionary studies in imaginative culture. Contributors from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and the humanities probe the evolved human imagination and its artefacts. The book forcefully demonstrates that imagination is part of human nature. Contributors explore imaginative culture in seven main areas: Imagination: Evolution, Mechanisms and Functions Myth and Religion Aesthetic Theory Music Visual and Plastic Arts Video Games and Films Oral Narratives and Literature Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture widens the scope of evolutionary cultural theory to include much of what “culture” means in common usage. The contributors aim to convince scholars in both the humanities and the evolutionary human sciences that biology and imaginative culture are intimately intertwined. The contributors illuminate this broad theoretical argument with comprehensive insights into religion, ideology, personal identity, and many particular works of art, music, literature, film, and digital media. The chapters “Imagination, the Brain’s Default Mode Network, and Imaginative Verbal Artifacts” and “The Role of Aesthetic Style in Alleviating Anxiety About the Future” are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This new neurocognitive theory documents the unexpected similarities of dreaming to waking thought, demonstrates personal psychological meaning can be found in a majority of dreams reports, has a strong developmental psychology dimension, pinpoints the neural substrate for dreaming, and shows it is very unlikely that dreaming has any adaptive function.
Studying works by Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, A.S. Byatt, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Jackie Kay, this book explores the impact on literature of the gene-centric model of human nature that entered mainstream culture in the wake of the discovery of the structure of DNA.
Imagination allows individuals and groups to think beyond the here-and-now, to envisage alternatives, to create parallel worlds, and to mentally travel through time. Imagination is both extremely personal (for example, people imagine unique futures for themselves) and deeply social, as our imagination is fed with media and other shared representations. As a result, imagination occupies a central position within the life of mind and society. Expanding the boundaries of disciplinary approaches, the Handbook of Imagination and Culture expertly illustrates this core role of imagination in the development of children, adolescents, adults, and older persons today. Bringing together leading scholars in sociocultural psychology and neighboring disciplines from around the world, this edited volume guides readers towards a much deeper understanding of the conditions of imagining, its resources, its constraints, and the consequences it has on different groups of people in different domains of society. Summarily, this Handbook places imagination at the center, and offers readers new ways to examine old questions regarding the possibility of change, development, and innovation in modern society.
Knowledge of wild chimpanzees has expanded dramatically. This volume, edited by Martin Muller, Richard Wrangham, and David Pilbeam, brings together scientists who are leading a revolution to discover and explain human uniqueness, by studying our closest living relatives. Their conclusions may transform our understanding of human evolution.
Law and Evilpresents an alternative evolutionary picture of man, focusing on the origins and nature of human evil, and demonstrating its useful application in legal-philosophical analyses. Using this representation of human nature, Wojciech Zaluski analyses the development of law, which he interprets as moving from evolutionary ethics to genuine ethics, as well as arguing in favour of metaethical realism and ius naturale. Zaluski argues that human nature is undoubtedly ambivalent: human beings have been endowed by natural selection with moral, immoral, and neutral tendencies (the first ambivalence), and the moral tendencies themselves are ambivalent (the second ambivalence), giving rise to an inferior form of ethics called 'evolutionary ethics' Introducing a novel distinction between two types of evil, primary and secondary, this book explores the differences between evolutionary ethics and genuine ethics in order to analyse the history of legal systems and the controversy between natural law and legal positivism. Engaging and thought-provoking, this insightful book will be vital reading for both legal scholars and philosophers, especially those of law and moral philosophy. Evolutionary biologists with an interest in a philosophical interpretation of the results of evolutionary biology will also find this book an important read.
From their location in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, the Weisfelds’ lab has reached out for thirty years to couples in long-term partnerships around the world. In living rooms of Detroit, London, Moscow, Beijing, and beyond, couples of all types and ages have shared their insights into adult romantic relationships. This book, The Psychology of Marriage, is a distillation of these findings, which have appeared in dozens of book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. The book also provides new systematic comparisons that offer insights into the mysteries of marriage and other committed relationships. Scholars, professional counselors, and family therapists will find a helpful framework for thinking about cultural similarities and differences in marital dynamics. Researchers will be introduced to a robust new instrument, the Marriage and Relationship Questionnaire (MARQ), which can be used in heterosexual and same-sex couples in virtually any cultural setting, along with ethical guidelines for conducting this research. Anyone who is interested in why committed relationships work (or do not work) will find the book filled with compelling new insights.
From emails to social media, from instant messaging to political memes, the way we produce and transmit culture is radically changing. Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age examines, for the first time in a cognitive and evolutionary perspective, the impact of online and digital media on how we produce and transmit culture.
Leading scholars take stock of Darwin's ideas about human evolution in the light of modern science In 1871, Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man, a companion to Origin of Species in which he attempted to explain human evolution, a topic he called "the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist." A Most Interesting Problem brings together twelve world-class scholars and science communicators to investigate what Darwin got right—and what he got wrong—about the origin, history, and biological variation of humans. Edited by Jeremy DeSilva and with an introduction by acclaimed Darwin biographer Janet Browne, A Most Interesting Problem draws on the latest discoveries in fields such as genetics, paleontology, bioarchaeology, anthropology, and primatology. This compelling and accessible book tackles the very subjects Darwin explores in Descent, including the evidence for human evolution, our place in the family tree, the origins of civilization, human races, and sex differences. A Most Interesting Problem is a testament to how scientific ideas are tested and how evidence helps to structure our narratives about human origins, showing how some of Darwin's ideas have withstood more than a century of scrutiny while others have not. A Most Interesting Problem features contributions by Janet Browne, Jeremy DeSilva, Holly Dunsworth, Agustín Fuentes, Ann Gibbons, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Brian Hare, John Hawks, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Kristina Killgrove, Alice Roberts, and Michael J. Ryan.