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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
It felt a bit dehumanizing while reading this. It also can breed cynicism if you’re not careful. I think a healthy balance of science, philosophy, spirituality and the arts will encapsulate ‘why we are the way we are’ much better than evolutionary psychology. There are many insights here on human nature that are thought provoking, but he tends to stretch the truth to have it neatly fit into his Darwinian framework. Criticisms aside, the book itself is impressive and is a seminal work in the controversial field.
3.5/5
3.5/5
Excellently presented, however, not my kinda thing.
Very dense read for the “scientifically uninitiated.” Not embarrassed to admit it took me a while to unpack his arguments and understand the concepts.
Very dense read for the “scientifically uninitiated.” Not embarrassed to admit it took me a while to unpack his arguments and understand the concepts.
I was really surprised by this book. It took me awhile to pick it up because I thought it would be a simple review. It distinguished itself in part by applying evolutionary analysis to the life of Darwin. More than a review, this book really increased my evolutionary view of human interactions and motives. I find the life of Darwin more interesting than I did before as well.
Most schools of evolutionary psychology rub me the wrong way, simply because they find purposes of all kinds of behaviours in humans' ancestral environments and hunter-gatherer societies and apply them to today's society. Or if they don't apply them to today's society and only offer theories as to why some behaviours probably exist, there is no further discussion about what the implications of what they're saying are (i.e. you can't talk about rape being an evolutionary adaptation and leave it at that. You can't talk about it and ignore prevalent patriarchal, misogynistic attitudes).
The author used an interesting method in employing Darwin's own life to demonstrate evolved behaviours through natural selection, but some of the parallels were purely speculative and some didn't make sense.
No doubt our evolutionary history is fascinating as well as important in understanding physiology, etc., but I often miss the point of evolutionary psychology as it is popularly understood. Why acknowledge that we are not dictated by our genes or the "values" of natural selection only to advocate for certain social policies that better reflect what natural selection "set us up" to do? I especially had issue with the author stating that institutionalized monogamy a la Victorian England would promote equality between men and women from an evolutionary standpoint. But, I fail to see the relevance or the reasoning behind continuing to support it in today's society.
I'm tired of typing.
The author used an interesting method in employing Darwin's own life to demonstrate evolved behaviours through natural selection, but some of the parallels were purely speculative and some didn't make sense.
No doubt our evolutionary history is fascinating as well as important in understanding physiology, etc., but I often miss the point of evolutionary psychology as it is popularly understood. Why acknowledge that we are not dictated by our genes or the "values" of natural selection only to advocate for certain social policies that better reflect what natural selection "set us up" to do? I especially had issue with the author stating that institutionalized monogamy a la Victorian England would promote equality between men and women from an evolutionary standpoint. But, I fail to see the relevance or the reasoning behind continuing to support it in today's society.
I'm tired of typing.
A good explanation of how evolution created kinship, sexual mores, and our conscience in general. Using Darwin as the main character in his examples, Wright takes the reader through some of the more obvious ideas on the evolutionary fit of preferring high stature friends and maintaining a good reputation. But he also throws in some less obvious nuggets that to me were the highlights of this book: how it makes perfect evolutionary sense to be self-delusional most of the time, how polygamy is much better for women than men, and how our consciousness/conscience* is really just our public relations manager. It is this last point that I think is his most important as it aligns very well with other current research on consciousness, and how our consciousness/conscience just catches up after we have already taken an action, not necessarily before. In other words, it is mainly a rationalizer after the fact, not a before-the-fact decision maker. A little redundant at the end, otherwise a very good book.
(*Without ever stating it directly, this book shows how "conscious" and "conscience" are part of the same evolutionary moral framework, with conscience a result of conscious, and really the only result.)
(*Without ever stating it directly, this book shows how "conscious" and "conscience" are part of the same evolutionary moral framework, with conscience a result of conscious, and really the only result.)
This book is a fun read, has its relevancy and is highly persuasive. Myself having little knowledge of the subject, Wright does manage to put enough research studies coupled with common sense and a surprisingly effective use of anecdotal proofs from Darwin's own life for me to be swayed away and accept the promises that taking an almost pure darwinistic view on our society has to offer.
The Moral Animal does manage to find a nice balance between research and speculation that keeps the popular reader like me interested all the way through, mainly* by being hands on with enough real life examples to the point of being applicable whether you want to or not. For that I must say is one of the dangers of this book, you will become severely more suspicious of the motives of those around you as well as more cynical about human interaction in general. After this read you will take Darwin's succinct definition "Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die." to near absurd proportions.
(* also wonderful little excerpts like "For the average husband, the fact that his wife inserted a diaphragm before copulating with her tennis instructor will not be a major source of consolation." does put a humoristic touch to a very useful example to make his point.)
The rediscovered passion I’ve worked up for evolutionary psychology during the course of the book does fade a bit towards the end when the author is so full of the soon-to-come panacea effects of the "new paradigm" that it turns into Ayn Rand-ish rants of the near impeccability of the theory. Or perhaps the lessened enthusiasm stems from the fact that the explanations the book gives about morals, altruism and brotherhood are not as convincing as those regarding more carnal endeavours.
The Moral Animal does manage to find a nice balance between research and speculation that keeps the popular reader like me interested all the way through, mainly* by being hands on with enough real life examples to the point of being applicable whether you want to or not. For that I must say is one of the dangers of this book, you will become severely more suspicious of the motives of those around you as well as more cynical about human interaction in general. After this read you will take Darwin's succinct definition "Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die." to near absurd proportions.
(* also wonderful little excerpts like "For the average husband, the fact that his wife inserted a diaphragm before copulating with her tennis instructor will not be a major source of consolation." does put a humoristic touch to a very useful example to make his point.)
The rediscovered passion I’ve worked up for evolutionary psychology during the course of the book does fade a bit towards the end when the author is so full of the soon-to-come panacea effects of the "new paradigm" that it turns into Ayn Rand-ish rants of the near impeccability of the theory. Or perhaps the lessened enthusiasm stems from the fact that the explanations the book gives about morals, altruism and brotherhood are not as convincing as those regarding more carnal endeavours.
I can see how this was groundbreaking for its time. But reading it in 2013, after [b:Sperm Wars|852616|Sperm Wars The Science Of Sex|Robin Baker|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1178910909s/852616.jpg|190619] and [b:Sex at Dawn|7640261|Sex at Dawn The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality|Christopher Ryan|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1291105594s/7640261.jpg|10168576] and [b:Mothers and Others|6251387|Mothers and Others The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding |Sarah Blaffer Hrdy|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347821755s/6251387.jpg|6434265] and epigenetics and everything by [a:Sapolsky|6672587|Robert Sapolsky|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66-251a730d696018971ef4a443cdeaae05.jpg], it's hard not to feel frustrated by everything that’s missing or incomplete or even wrong — but such is Science. We’ve learned much in the last 20 years, and Wright is directly responsible for much of that... so I offer a sincere and humble thank-you. With reservations.
If you’ve been paying attention you already know most of what's in here, and more. So read it as you would [b:The Origin of Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941]: for historical perspective, for the pleasure of flashing back to a time when this knowledge was new.
If you’re new to this material, proceed with caution. Wright fails to draw a clear distinction between pre- and post-agricultural societies, forgetting that the latter is a recent but drastic aberration from our evolutionary roots. This taints some of his assumptions and arguments about family life and morality. Understandably so, but still, there is much newer knowledge out there: you might want to start with newer material such as the ones in the first paragraph.
If you’ve been paying attention you already know most of what's in here, and more. So read it as you would [b:The Origin of Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941]: for historical perspective, for the pleasure of flashing back to a time when this knowledge was new.
If you’re new to this material, proceed with caution. Wright fails to draw a clear distinction between pre- and post-agricultural societies, forgetting that the latter is a recent but drastic aberration from our evolutionary roots. This taints some of his assumptions and arguments about family life and morality. Understandably so, but still, there is much newer knowledge out there: you might want to start with newer material such as the ones in the first paragraph.
One of the 1st I read in evolutionary psychology - than which nothing is more fascinating. I didn't know how to judge it by itself. I'll rate it in hindsight. For me, the researches say of [a:Frans de Waal|112082|Frans de Waal|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1222704792p2/112082.jpg] has made this and a few others obsolete. Give me the straight observation of animals, and then construe that old question of humans and morality.
Two stars if you read the last two chapters. it gets really moralising there, overly so. the first bit is good, a discussion of what evolution has predisposed humans to do, applied to modern life. interesting points, but still punctuated by the author's own morals and beliefs, often posed as fact or theory rather than belief.