Can anyone recommend a good book on evolutionary psychology?

[DMACM]

I just finished reading The Moral Animal by Robert Wright and I really enjoyed it. That book is on evolutionary psychology but focused mainly on how the moral sense evolved in humans and its genetic basis. Can anyone recommend any interesting books on evolutionary psychology?

[Nielsio]

If you're interested in morality, check out:
http://www.freedomainradio.com/index.../listen_in.htm

Richard Dawkins deals with evolutionary morality somewhat in his latest 2-part tv documentary 'Root of all evil'.

[pokerstudAA]

I took an Evolutionary Psych class in college from David Buss. He was well respected and had some groundbreaking ideas on the subject. Some of his books listed on AMazon are textbooks but some of the others are more mainstream bestseller type reading.....

This was the class text:
Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind by David M. Buss


I remember this one as being particularly good: The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
by David M. Buss (Paperback - July 2003)


DAVID BUSS

[chrisnice]

Sociobiology by EO Wilson....the one that started it all.

[pilliwinks]

"Alas, poor Darwin : arguments against evolutionary psychology"

edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose

Essential prior reading before entering this murky populist world.

[siegfriedandroy]

learn how to think 'outside the box'. hopefully u understand more about poker than u do about 'evol psych'...most of what u will learn in college is bu*lshit...maybe im jaded but at least im not jaded b/c of what ive read here on these forums...most are so gone it is inexplicable...i love usc law g'night

[theBruiser500]

get Riddley, all his books are good.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
"Alas, poor Darwin : arguments against evolutionary psychology"

edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose

Essential prior reading before entering this murky populist world.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's essential only from a secondary level. If you want to know what Evolutionary Psychology isn't about. This book sets up an strawman and attacks it with wet noodles. It'll remind you of how ID'ers combat evolution. In the ID case it's religion cloaked as science, in the Rose case it's the political left cloaked as science.

There isn't anything worthwhile in it that puts up a scientific case against the research found in journals such as "Evolution and Human Behavior." ( Do they even mention it in the book?).

It's not good enough to claim to have 'arguments against EP', they actually have to produce some. Against actual EP, not against the wispy nonsense they claim is EP.

[pilliwinks]

Interesting. I hadn't seen a political motive behind the book - I'll go back and look.

I disagree that they use only wet noodles, though I agree several straw men get molested. I think the chapter on memes is particularly worthwhile - so many people use that analogy so badly that even Dawkins says it can be taken too far.

In terms of EP itself, I have read plenty of wispy nonsense of the sort that they refute. That does not mean there is no good work being done, and I am not trying to suggest that EP is imaginary or false. Just that a lot of nonsense gets bandied about, and unless you are critical, it is easy to get taken in.

Would anybody here like to explain Consilience to me?

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
Just that a lot of nonsense gets bandied about, and unless you are critical, it is easy to get taken in.

[/ QUOTE ]

An attack on the nonsense isn't an attack on EP which is what the authors claim they've done. It's like disproving cosmological claims by attacking astrology. If they'd have titled their book, "an attack on the nonsense bandied about claiming to be EP" they'd have been honest with the public but because they took the strawman approach, they've done a large disservice.