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Author Stewart-Williams, Steve, 1971- author.

Title The ape that understood the universe : how the mind and culture evolve / Steve Stewart-Williams
Published Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2018

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 368 pages)
Contents Foreword: Cognitive Creationism and a realistic vision of human nature -- 1 The alien's challenge -- 2 Darwin comes to mind -- 3 The SeXX/XY animal -- 4 The dating, mating, baby-making animal -- 5 The altruistic animal -- 6 The cultural animal -- Appendix A: How to win an argument with a Blank Slater -- Appendix B: How to win an argument with an anti-memeticist
Summary "The Ape That Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment"--Dust jacket flap
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed September 28, 2018)
Subject Evolutionary psychology.
Human behavior.
Culture.
Interpersonal relations.
Behavior
human behavior.
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- Life Stages -- General.
PSYCHOLOGY -- Developmental -- General.
PSYCHOLOGY -- Developmental -- Lifespan Development.
PSYCHOLOGY -- General.
Culture
Evolutionary psychology
Human behavior
Interpersonal relations
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781108577526
1108577520
9781108348140
1108348149