Evolutionary theory is one of the most wide-ranging and inspiring of
scientific ideas. It offers a battery of methods that can be used to
interpret human behaviour. But the legitimacy of this exercise is at the
centre of a heated controversy that has raged for over a century. Many
evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists are
optimistic that evolutionary principles can be applied to human
behaviour, and have offered evolutionary explanations for a wide range
of human characteristics, such as homicide, religion and sex differences
in behaviour. Others are sceptical of these interpretations. Moreover,
researchers disagree as to the best ways to use evolution to explore
humanity, and a number of schools have emerged.
Sense and Nonsense provides an introduction to the ideas, methods and
findings of five such schools, namely, sociobiology, human behavioural
ecology, evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution, and gene-culture
co-evolution. In this revised and updated edition of their successful
monograph, Laland and Brown provide a balanced, rigorous analysis that
scrutinizes both the evolutionary arguments and the allegations of the
critics, carefully guiding the reader through the mire of confusing
terminology, claim and counter-claim, and polemical statements. This
readable and informative introductory book will be of use to
undergraduate and postgraduate students (for example, in psychology,
anthropology and zoology), to experts on one approach who would like to
know more about the other perspectives, and to lay-persons interested in
evolutionary explanations of human behaviour. Having completed this
book, the reader should feel better placed to assess the legitimacy of
claims made about human
behaviour under the name of evolution, and to make judgements as to what
is sense and what is nonsense.