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The Evolution of Cognition (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology)

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The pioneers of evolutionary psychology have developed a small set of principles that they defend at all costs (modularity of mind, selfishness of humans, strongly distinct male and female behavior, the derivative character of culture, the irrelevance of game theory and mathematical model building, the nefariousness of behavioral genetics, and so on). I am, frankly, quite sick of the ideological intransigence of the supporters of this little coterie of researchers. It is time to reclaim evolutionary psychology in the large, which is simply the study of the evolution of mind and brain in animals (including humans), applying the usual standards of scientific practice. This edited collection does exactly that.

The volume is weak on organic evolution and neuroscience, a fact which perhaps flows from its focus on "cognition," but in the area of cognition, it is a valuable summary of current views, at least up to 1998 or so. The essays are of uniformly high quality with ample references, and there is considerable inter-chapter reference, so one gets the impression that one is assimilating a whole product, not just a random assortment of topics and authors. The topics include such low-level pheonomena as imprinting, abstraction, and discrimination, as well as much higher level topics, including consciousness and culture. It would be to the reader's advantage to have had a course or two in elementary psychology and perhaps one on animal behavior, because the level of discourse is pretty high (almost no equations, however).