The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature PDF
Preview The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
Acclaim for Geoffrey Miller's THE MATING MIND "Miller is an extremely talented writer, and he has produced a beautifully written book that is a genuine pleasure to read. The strength of this work, however, goes well beyond style. Miller has ambitiously described a scenario that provides insight into a number of puzzles about the human mind." —Science "Fascinating.... This book will be intriguing even to readers with only a superficial knowledge of evolutionary biology." —The Washington Post Book World "A brilliant and seductive book. It will sweep you off your feet. And, when you come to earth again, you'll find yourself seeing the human mind and its most prized creations with new eyes." —Nicholas Humphrey, New School for Social Research "This elegant, original, and lucid book is beguiling testimony to its own thesis: a fitting new feather in our cultural cap." —Helena Cronin, London School of Economics "Miller is the real thing, and his wonderfully readable book should be read by everyone with a taste for serious ideas." —The Independent (London) "A refined, an intellectually ingenious, and a very civilized discus sion of the possible importance of sexual selection for mental evolution." —John Constable, Cambridge University, in Psychology, Evolution, and Gender "Entertaining and wide-ranging." —Nerve "Flies in the face of evolutionary orthodoxy—proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and others—which suggests that culture evolves on its own, separate from the evolution of the human mind." —The Observer (London) "Witty, well-argued. . . . Ultimately, Miller is arguing for a com- monsense view of the evolution of human nature." —The Times (London) "Anyone who thinks evolutionary theory is stuffy should pick up The Mating Mind. Geoffrey Miller sets our usual assumptions about human intelligence—that natural selection alone is re sponsible—on its head." —Meredith Small, author of What's Love Got to Do with It? "Erudite, lucid, and ambitious." —Mirabella "Written with grace and wit while conveying a new and world- changing scientific theory . . . Miller's prose is as fluent, clever and epigrammatic as a good novelist's. At the very least what he has done is to find a place for beauty, waste and extravagance in science." —Matt Ridley, The Sunday Telegraph (London) "Consistently penetrating and ingenious . . . mixing outstanding sober exposition of the mechanisms of sexual selection with spec ulations about its role in our capacities for morality, language, and creativity that range from deep to wild." —Financial Times Geoffrey Miller The Mating Mind Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and at UCLA, where he teaches animal communication and marketing. Born in 1965 in Cincinnati, he studied at Columbia University and received a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University. After moving to Europe, he worked at the Universities of Sussex and Nottingham, at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, and at University College London. He lives with his family in Surrey, England and Los Angeles. . THE MATING MIND THE MATING M I ND How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature Geoffrey Miller A N C H OR B O O KS A Division of Random House, Inc. New York FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2001 Copyright © 2000 by Geoffrey Miller All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2000. Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows: Miller, Geoffrey F. The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature / Geoffrey Miller.—1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 0-385-49516-1 Includes bibliographical references (p. 467-489) and index. 1. Human evolution. 2. Mate selection—History. 3. Intellect. 4. Brain—Evolution. I. Tide GN281.4M53 2000 306.82'01—dc21 00-22673 CIP Anchor ISBN: 0-385-49517-X Author photograph ©Jerry Bauer www.anchorbooks.com Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
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