The Shape of Thought How Mental Adaptations Evolve
The Shape of Thought How Mental Adaptations Evolve
- ISBN 13:
9780199348312
- ISBN 10:
0199348316
- Format: Paperback
- Copyright: 01/16/2015
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
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Summary
The book describes how advances in evolutionary developmental biology can be applied to the brain by focusing on the design of the developmental systems that build it. Crucially, developmental systems can be plastic, designed by the process of natural selection to build adaptive phenotypes using the rich information available in our social and physical environments. This approach bridges the long-standing divide between "nativist" approaches to development, based on innateness, and "empiricist" approaches, based on learning. It shows how a view of humans as a flexible, culturally-dependent species is compatible with a complexly specialized brain, and how the nature of our flexibility can be better understood by confronting the evolved design of the organ on which that flexibility depends.