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This chapter advocates an evolutionary approach to understanding comparative brain anatomy in primates. It argues that deep understanding of the relationships between brain and behavior requires determining how evolution modifies specific systems of neurons and their interconnections, and not just relating brain size to gross measures of cognition or behavior. Such neuroethological studies will require active management of captive and wild populations of primates needed for detailed comparison.

This chapter develops an evolutionary approach to the process of technological innovation. It shows how a theory of knowledge evolution can be executed in a manner analogous to the Darwinian models of evolution in living systems. The chapter warns that while much can be learned from this analogy, there are important differences.

The development of individual differences has always been a primary focus of psychological research, and it continues to be an intensely debated topic to this day. Three issues in particular stand out in contemporary debate. The first pertains to the sources of individual variation, with the pressing task of understanding the interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Second, there is the issue of early experience (especially within the family) and its role in shaping later development, a role which some question and for which there exists no comprehensive theory capable of accounting for many conflicting findings. Finally comes the issue of continuity versus discontinuity in individual differences across the life span; this subject is rendered difficult by the compartmentalized way in which development is often studied and by the lack of organizing principles for linking diverse behavioral phenomena, manifested at different points in time, into meaningful clusters. This chapter illustrates how an evolutionary approach can advance understanding of all three of these issues, and how a developmental perspective can provide fascinating insights to the study of individual differences.

This chapter contains an account of the development of the author’s understanding of what morality is and where it comes from, and an explanation for why he decided to abandon popular psychological approaches in favor of an evolutionary approach. Although the dominant contemporary psychological approach to morality—cognitive-developmental theory—accounts for aspects of morality that other approaches are unable to explain, it is poorly equipped to account for the ways in which people make moral decisions in their everyday lives. Evolutionary approaches to morality focus on the selection of mental mechanisms that disposed early humans to form groups and to uphold cooperative social orders in order to adapt to their environments.

In the past century, “great debates” among a few grand theories, offensive realism, defensive realism, and neoliberalism/the English school, have shaped, if not defined, the development of international relations (IR) as a science. Yet, how can IR scholars arrive at so vastly different readings into the big picture of international politics, when all along they have been looking at roughly the same human history? This book contends that the key cause behind the irresolution of the “great debates” has been that all of the grand theories have been non-evolutionary, if not anti-evolutionary. Because the international system, as part of human society, has been an evolutionary system from the very beginning even if some properties of international politics (e.g. anarchy) have persisted even today, non-evolutionary theories cannot possibly account for the whole history of international politics. We therefore need a social evolutionary approach toward the history of IR

This chapter examines the implications that the theories proposed by evolutionary psychologists might have for the classification of mental disorders. It begins with a brief overview of the account of the mind advanced by evolutionary psychologists. It then explains why issues of taxonomy are important and why the dominant approach to the classification of mental disorders is radically and alarmingly unsatisfactory. It illustrates some of the virtues of the evolutionary-psychological approach to classification and highlights a fundamental distinction between those disorders that arise from the malfunction of a component of the mind and those that can be traced to the fact that our minds must now function in environments that are very different from the environments in which they evolved. Next, the chapter describes the ways in which module malfunctions might arise and sketches two strategies for incorporating this etiological information in a system for classifying mental disorders. Finally, it explains why an evolutionary approach may lead to a radical revision in the classification of certain conditions. It argues that, from an evolutionary perspective, some of the disorders recognized in standard manuals like DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) may turn out not to be disorders at all. The people who have these conditions do not have problems; they just cause problems.

This chapter summarizes key messages presented in this book. First, one cannot and should not attempt to decouple animal performance from the ecological and evolutionary context in which it resides. Second, emerging portable technologies now enable humans to understand animal performance both in more natural circumstances and in more precise and less intrusive ways than were possible before. Another theme is the rise of evolutionary approaches for understanding both animal performance and the mechanisms that underlie it. In addition, a strong conclusion from this book is that one should not ignore the important contribution of mechanistic studies for understanding both the limits on performance and the mechanisms that generate those limits, particularly as constraints on performance are pervasive. The chapter concludes with an encouraging word for future work.

The study of technology is a field in which generalized evolutionary ideas have been current for many years. However, when we start trying to implement a cultural evolutionary approach more rigorously, it turns out to be more complex than usually supposed. One of the important benefits of taking a cultural evolutionary approach is that it goes beyond relatively simple ideas of competition and technological improvement, and introduces a range of other forces whose impact is not often considered. In the case of technology, the entities that are the subject of variation, inheritance, and selection processes are technological lineages, recipes for techniques, routines, and practices linked by ancestor–descendant relationships. To understand them, we must first address histories of the technologies themselves before we can examine the histories of the human populations through which they are transmitted, which may depend at least partly on the histories of technologies. A number of examples of technological innovation and transmission are examined to illustrate the variety of factors affecting them. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.

This chapter offers a non-mathematical summary of the cultural evolutionary approach to explaining cultural change and the evolution of human behaviour. It reviews the evidence that the size and connectedness of a population determines the complexity of the culture that the population can support. It then looks at the changes in the size and connectedness of populations that occur as societies undergo economic development. These changes are accompanied by a process of cultural change, which is broadly similar in most but not quite all populations (Newson and Richerson, 2009). The chapter then looks more closely at how that pattern of change in religious belief that accompanies this process. This analysis suggests that secularism and fundamentalism play a rather similar role in helping individuals and communities cope with the novel social environment that economic development creates.

This chapter begins by discussing the factors that are prominent in motivating interest in evolutionary approaches to cognition and reviews criticisms against some of the approaches. It is followed by the characterization of how evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena that appeal to innate modules are interpreted. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the relation between natural selection and cognitive development that is responsive to innate modules and compatible with an evolutionary description of specialized and independent cognitive mechanisms in adult organisms.

Cognitive-evolutionary theories of religion have so far paid little attention to the value that religious practices add to life, focusing instead on the verbally expressed content of religious beliefs. Adopting the perspective of ecological psychology, this chapter presents a radically different approach. First, it argues that in the context of everyday life, participation in religious activities is more worthy of explanation, than statements of belief. Second, it proposes that the primary function of religious activity is the discovery and creation of value, and that a basic drive to maximize value has played a leading role in its evolution. It is argued here that the earliest forms of religion were indistinguishable from the earliest art and music: only gradually did religion emerge as a distinct sphere of experience. Finally, it is argued that once religious values have been given their due, we are better prepared to frame questions about cognitive content (e.g. supernatural beings).

During the 20th century, health inequalities among countries have increased. Several factors explain this pattern, such as immunization and massive antibiotherapy, but nutrition, housing and hygiene are key parameters for health improvement. This heterogeneity among countries is well illustrated by malaria, although disappeared from many high-income countries, is still endemic and prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. We question these differences and detail the recommendations proposed by the World Health Organization to tackle malaria. We investigate the optimal combination of actions to deploy in resource-limited countries and the best spatio-temporal window to target. We propose a new framework for health program management based on evolutionary biology approaches to tailor global programs, to improve their local efficiency and avoid resistance. Thus, we explore all components of the ecological niche of the parasite (human, vector and environment) and consider the magnitude of actions to deploy to reach its local.