Download or read book The Evolution of Human Cleverness written by Richard Hallam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolution of Human Cleverness presents a unique introduction to the way human cognitive abilities have evolved. The book comprises a series of mini-essays on distinct topics in which technical terms are simplified, considering how humans made the long journey from our ape-like ancestors to become capable of higher-level reasoning and problem solving. All the topics are cross-linked, allowing the reader to dip in and out, but certain key concepts run through the underlying reasoning. Chiefly, these are adaptation and selection, the distinction between ultimate and proximate causes of behaviour, gene–culture co-evolution, and domain-general versus domain-specific cognitive processes. The book should help the reader draw lessons for the human species as a whole, especially in view of the environmental threats to its own existence. Entries have been carefully crafted to cut through scientific jargon, providing bite-sized and digestible chunks of knowledge, making the topic accessible for students and lay readers alike. The author draws on research from diverse fields including Psychology, Anthropology, Archaeology, Biology, and Neuroscience to provide an unbiased account of the field, making it an ideal text for students of all levels.
Download or read book The Evolution of Intelligence written by Robert J. Sternberg and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike most approaches to intelligence, which rely on psychometric testing for inspiration of confirmation, this bk investigates the nature & developmnt of intelligence from an evolutionary perspective. For cognitive scientists and experimental, cognitiv
Download or read book The Evolution of Thought written by Anne E. Russon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-23 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on the evolution of higher intelligence rarely combines data from fields as diverse as paleontology and psychology. In this volume we seek to do just that, synthesizing the approaches of hominoid cognition, psychology, language studies, ecology, evolution, paleoecology and systematics toward an understanding of great ape intelligence. Leading scholars from all these fields have been asked to evaluate the manner in which each of their topics of research inform our understanding of the evolution of intelligence in great apes and humans. The ideas thus assembled represent a comprehensive survey of the various causes and consequences of cognitive evolution in great apes. The Evolution of Thought will therefore be an essential reference for graduate students and researchers in evolutionary psychology, paleoanthropology and primatology.
Download or read book Dragons of Eden written by Carl Sagan and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1986-12-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday . . . It's a delight.”—The New York Times Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends—and their amazing links to recent discoveries. “How can I persuade every intelligent person to read this important and elegant book? . . . He talks about all kinds of things: the why of the pain of human childbirth . . . the reason for sleeping and dreaming . . . chimpanzees taught to communicate in deaf and dumb language . . . the definition of death . . . cloning . . . computers . . . intelligent life on other planets. . . . Fascinating . . . delightful.”—The Boston Globe “In some lost Eden where dragons ruled, the foundations of our intelligence were laid. . . . Carl Sagan takes us on a guided tour of that lost land. . . . Fascinating . . . entertaining . . . masterful.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Download or read book The Origin of Mind written by David C. Geary and published by Amer Psychological Assn. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Geary also explores a number of issues that are of interest in modern society, including how general intelligence relates to academic achievement, occupational status, and income."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Becoming Human written by Ian Tattersall and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1999 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the evolution of humankind--who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.
Download or read book The Secret of Our Success written by Joseph Henrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by Sackler Colloquium. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
Download or read book Big Brain written by Gary Lynch and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our big brains, our language ability, and our intelligence make us uniquely human. But barely 10,000 years ago (a mere blip in evolutionary time) human-like creatures called "Boskops" flourished in South Africa. They possessed extraordinary features: forebrains roughly 50% larger than ours, and estimated IQs to match--far surpassing our own. Many of these huge fossil skulls have been discovered over the last century, but most of us have never heard of this scientific marvel. Prominent neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger compare the contents of the Boskop brain and our own brains today, and arrive at startling conclusions about our intelligence and creativity. Connecting cutting-edge theories of genetics, evolution, language, memory, learning, and intelligence, Lynch and Granger show the implications of large brains for a broad array of fields, from the current state of the art in Alzheimer's and other brain disorders, to new advances in brain-based robots that see and converse with us, and the means by which neural prosthetics-- replacement parts for the brain--are being designed and tested. The authors demystify the complexities of our brains in this fascinating and accessible book, and give us tantalizing insights into our humanity--its past, and its future.
Download or read book The Thinking Ape written by Richard W. Byrne and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Intelligence" has long been considered to be a feature unique to human beings, giving us the capacity to imagine, to think, to deceive, to make complex connections between cause and effect, to devise elaborate stategies for solving problems. However, like all our other features, intelligenceis a product of evolutionary change. Until recently, it was difficult to obtain evidence of this process from the frail testimony of a few bones and stone tools. It has become clear in the last 15 years that the origins of human intelligence can be investigated by the comparative study ofprimates, our closest non-human relatives, giving strong impetus to the case for an "evolutionary psychology", the scientific study of the mind.
Download or read book Instinctual Intelligence written by Theodore J. Usatynski and published by . This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instinctual Intelligence is the first book that explores the evolution of human instincts. It offers uniquely modern approaches to align the passion and power of our instinctual heritage with the more enlightened possibilities of human life. Get to understand how of our basic instinctual systems- self-protection, social connection, resource gathering, playfulness and sexuality, and survival responses- function in everyday life. Learn how the full expression of instinctual intelligence becomes restricted by the time we reach adulthood. Drawing on leading-edge research in evolutionary neurobiology, clinical psychology, and spiritual development, explore how athletes (Tiger Woods), musicians (Madonna), business leaders (Oprah), and spiritual practitioners (Dalai Lama)- and learn how they achieved mastery in their chosen fields. Each person's instinctual intelligence simultaneously evolves the biological, social, cultural, and spiritual fabric of humanity.
Download or read book Evolution s End written by Joseph C. Pearce and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1993-10-22 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time for the way we think about our families, our schools, and our lives to evolve. This passionate and provocative critique of the way we raise our children and undermine our society's future delineates the ways in which we thart our creative progess, and reveals a new landscape of possibilities for the next step in human evolution. Brilliantly synthesizing twenty years of research into human intelligence, Joseph Chilton Pearce -- author of the bestsellers The Crack in the Cosmic Egg and Magical Child -- show how: • contemporary childbirth and daycare create a dangerous sense of alienation from the surrounding world • TV impedes vital neurological development • synthetic hormones in our foods foster premature sexual development, increasing the likelihood of pregnancy and rape • premature schooling contributes to potentially explosive frustration and rebellion These everyday aspects of modern life have a cumulative effect, contributing to violence, child suicide, and deteriorating family and social structures. Proposing crucial yet simple solutions, Pearce persuasively argues that we have the power to get out of our own way and unleash, instead, our "unlimited", awesome, and unknown" human potential as the culmination of three billion years of evolution.
Download or read book The Evolution of Intelligence written by James H. Fetzer and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Fetzer explores the nature of consciousness and cognition in human beings and other animals. He addresses the inadequacies of the computational conception and expounds on an alternative theory based on the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior. Fetzer offers a new theory of intelligence by which machines can be intelligent without possessing minds.
Download or read book Origins of Intelligence written by Sue Taylor Parker and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the origins of cognitive abilities in primate species. Since Darwin’s time, comparative psychologists have searched for a good way to compare cognition in humans and nonhuman primates. In Origins of Intelligence, Sue Parker and Michael McKinney offer such a framework and make a strong case for using human development theory (both Piagetian and neo-Piagetian) to study the evolution of intelligence across primate species. Their approach is comprehensive, covering a broad range of social, symbolic, physical, and logical domains, which fall under the all-encompassing and much-debated term intelligence. A widely held theory among developmental psychologists and social and biological anthropologists is that cognitive evolution in humans has occurred through juvenilization—the gradual accentuation and lengthening of childhood in the evolutionary process. In this work, however, Parker and McKinney argue instead that new stages were added at the end of cognitive development in our hominid ancestors, coining the term adultification by terminal extension to explain this process. Drawing evidence from scores of studies on monkeys, great apes, and human children, this book provides unique insights into ontogenetic constraints that have interacted with selective forces to shape the evolution of cognitive development in our lineage. “The authors’ elegant theory and comprehensive empirical synthesis of how the development of human intelligence and brain evolved opens up cascading heuristic avenues for creatively answering one of the great questions in the human history of ideas.” —Jonas Langer, Human Development “A handy source of information on comparative cognitive abilities related to life history and brain variables.” —James Anderson, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Download or read book The Hand written by Frank R. Wilson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1999-09-14 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A startling argument . . . provocative . . . absorbing." --The Boston Globe "Ambitious . . . arresting . . . celebrates the importance of hands to our lives today as well as to the history of our species." --The New York Times Book Review The human hand is a miracle of biomechanics, one of the most remarkable adaptations in the history of evolution. The hands of a concert pianist can elicit glorious sound and stir emotion; those of a surgeon can perform the most delicate operations; those of a rock climber allow him to scale a vertical mountain wall. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson makes the striking claim that it is because of the unique structure of the hand and its evolution in cooperation with the brain that Homo sapiens became the most intelligent, preeminent animal on the earth. In this fascinating book, Wilson moves from a discussion of the hand's evolution--and how its intimate communication with the brain affects such areas as neurology, psychology, and linguistics--to provocative new ideas about human creativity and how best to nurture it. Like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, Wilson handles a daunting range of scientific knowledge with a surprising deftness and a profound curiosity about human possibility. Provocative, illuminating, and delightful to read, The Hand encourages us to think in new ways about one of our most taken-for-granted assets. "A mark of the book's excellence [is that] it makes the reader aware of the wonder in trivial, everyday acts, and reveals the complexity behind the simplest manipulation." --The Washington Post
Download or read book Handbook of Intelligence written by Sam Goldstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-08 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous functions, cognitive skills, and behaviors are associated with intelligence, yet decades of research has yielded little consensus on its definition. Emerging from often conflicting studies is the provocative idea that intelligence evolved as an adaptation humans needed to keep up with – and survive in – challenging new environments. The Handbook of Intelligence addresses a broad range of issues relating to our cognitive and linguistic past. It is the first full-length volume to place intelligence in an evolutionary/cultural framework, tracing the development of the human mind, exploring differences between humans and other primates, and addressing human thinking and reasoning about its own intelligence and its uses. The works of pioneering thinkers – from Plato to Darwin, Binet to Piaget, Luria to Weachsler – are referenced to illustrate major events in the evolution of theories of intelligence, leading to the current era of multiple intelligences and special education programs. In addition, it examines evolutionary concepts in areas as diverse as creativity, culture, neurocognition, emotional intelligence, and assessment. Featured topics include: The evolution of the human brain from matter to mind Social competition and the evolution of fluid intelligence Multiple intelligences in the new age of thinking Intelligence as a malleable construct From traditional IQ to second-generation intelligence tests The evolution of intelligence, including implications for educational programming and policy. The Handbook of Intelligence is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and professionals in developmental psychology; assessment, testing and evaluation; language philosophy; personality and social psychology; sociology; and developmental biology.
Download or read book The evolution of human intelligence written by Brunetto Chiarelli and published by Edizioni Altravista. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human body is a biological construction founded on the physical manifestation of the biological being, in which its cultural identity is a variable in continuous transformation subjected to the evolution of the intelligences. This article asks and answers a series of questions: what have been the procedures, the stimuli, and the mechanisms that have lead to the evolution of human intelligence? why has the increase in the quantity of cerebral material advanced, and how many rearrangements have come about in the organisation of the encephalon in the transition from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens? Can we reconstruct them? Is today’s situation stable, or will it be subject to further future differentiations? During his evolutionary process, man becomes revertebrated, he intervenes and changes the environment to his own advantage, but how many times has he redesigned his post-evolutionary strategies and split the species? What weight has education had in the process of coexistence among living systems, and to what extent can the intelligence be motivated by an education and a culture that are equal to their task?
