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In the Light of Evolution Volume IV: The Human Condition (2010) / Chapter Skim
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PART III: CULTURAL EVOLUTION AND THE UNIQUENESS OF BEING HUMAN
Pages 205-210

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 205...
... . still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." ever since that time, philosophers as well as biologists have sought to reconcile these two sides of human nature, at times emphasiz ing our biological similarities and close evolutionary ties to other primate species, and at other times accentuating the features that seem to separate Homo sapiens from the remainder of the biological world.
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From page 206...
... They further argue from paleontological and other evidence that geneculture coevolution has been a dominant process underlying human evolution perhaps ever since the initial divergence of hominins from their last shared ancestor with the great apes. looking forward, richerson and Boyd see great promise for new genomic tools to help clarify geneculture coevolution in several ways: by providing better marker-based assessments of human paleodemography; detecting genomic footprints of selection and thereby revealing exactly where and when selection took place in the human genome; and yielding mechanistic insights into the structures and functions of particular genes that have been under natural or social selection.
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From page 207...
... But even if the evolution of general intelligence and the capacity for language are explicable in terms of the physical and social selective advantages they afforded our ancestors, the question remains as to why our evolved cogni tive capabilities extend also to the kinds of abstract reasoning sometimes displayed in, for example, science, philosophy, law, government, and commerce. in Chapter 13, steven Pinker reviews the history of speculation about the emergence of abstract intelligence, ranging from standard evolutionary scenarios for how physical and social evolution might have favored bigger brains, to supernatural causation (as was invoked by Alfred russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection)
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From page 208...
... operations each having evolved in response to a specific suite of adaptive challenges posed by particular social or physical environments that were encountered routinely by our ancestors? The former hypothesis is some times referred to as the "blank-slate" theory of cognition in traditional psychology whereas the latter hypothesis tends to be favored by many evolutionary psychologists who envision the evolved architecture of the human mind to include multiple cognitive specializations each molded by natural selection to solve a particular adaptive problem.
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From page 209...
... . Ayala's distinction between ethics and moral norms is helpful but it nevertheless leaves open important questions regarding whether and to what extent particular moral norms (as well as a general moral sensibility)
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Key Terms

  • cultural evolution
  • natural selection
  • human capacity
  • biological evolution
  • moral norms

  • human mind
  • social selection
  • homo sapiens
  • abstract intelligence
  • effective communication

  • specialized adaptations
  • information transmission
  • abstract concepts
  • selective advantages
  • organismal level

  • sometimes displayed
  • question remains
  • human society
  • thereby revealing
  • somewhat akin

  • learned information
  • moral sensibilities
  • perform abstract
  • symbolic language
  • standard natural

  • socially learned
  • aging patterns
  • hypothesis tends
  • increasingly complex
  • enabled cultural


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