Amazon.com
Evolutionary psychology has been called the "new black" of science fashion, though at its most controversial, it more resembles the emperor's new clothes. Geoffrey Miller is one of the Young Turks trying to give the phenomenon a better spin. In The Mating Mind, he takes Darwin's "other" evolutionary theory--of sexual rather than natural selection--and uses it to build a theory about how the human mind has developed the sophistication of a peacock's tail to encourage sexual choice and the refining of art, morality, music, and literature.
Where many evolutionary psychologists see the mind as a Swiss army knife, and cognitive science sees it as a computer, Miller compares it to an entertainment system, evolved to stimulate other brains. Taking up the baton from studies such as Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, it's a dizzyingly ambitious project, which would be impossibly vague without the ingenuity and irreverence that Miller brings to bear on it. Steeped in popular culture, the book mixes theories of runaway selection, fitness indicators, and sensory bias with explanations of why men tip more than women and how female choice shaped (quite literally) the penis. It also extols the sagacity of Mary Poppins. Indeed, Miller allows ideas to cascade at such a torrent that the steam given off can run the risk of being mistaken for hot air).
That large personalities can be as sexually enticing as oversize breasts or biceps may indeed prove comforting, but denuding sexual chemistry can be a curiously unsexy business, akin to analyzing humor. As a courting display of Miller's intellectual plumage, though, The Mating Mind is formidable, its agent-provocateur chest swelled with ideas and articulate conjecture. While occasionally his magpie instinct may loot fool's gold, overall it provides an accessible and attractive insight into modern Darwinism and the survival of the sexiest. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk
From Publishers Weekly
The booming but controversial field of evolutionary psychology attempts to explain human feelings and behaviors as consequences of natural selection, using plausible analogies from the animal kingdom to show (for example) why we have the capacity to enjoy music, or why men commit violent crimes. Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at University College-London, argues that much of human character and culture arose for the same reason peacocks have beautiful tails: mating purposes. A peacock that can find enough to eat and avoid being eaten despite such an enormous appendage must have very good genes; by displaying its tail, then, a peacock displays its potential to be a good mate. Miller looks at several kinds of sexual selection. "Romantic" behavior like the making of complex art wouldn't have helped our ancestors find more food or avoid predators. It might, however, have helped display the fitness of proto-men for the proto-women with whom they wanted to mate--and vice versa. If we like to show off our large vocabularies, it's at least in part because our ancestors sought smart partners. Miller's enjoyable book also surveys animal kingdom parallels and recent theoretical arguments about sexual selection. Like most popular evolutionary psychologists, however, Miller doesn't always distinguish between a plausible story and a scientifically testable hypothesis. And some of his arguments seem covertly circular, or self-serving: Do we really need Darwin to explain why men publish more books than women? Still, picturing "the human brain as an entertainment system that evolved to stimulate other brains," Miller provides an articulate and memorable case for the role of sexual selection in determining human behaviors. Agent, John Brockman.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Miller (senior research fellow, Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, Univ. Coll., London) here argues that the human mind and human behaviorDincluding language and moralityDhave evolved in part as a result of mating choices made by our hominid ancestors over millions of years. In addition to natural selection, he stresses reproductive adaptations through sexual selection that have emerged in physical traits to distinguish our unique bipedal species from the quadrupedal great apes. His analysis pays special attention to ornamentation, courtship displays, group leadership, and aesthetic creativity as heritable fitness indicators. Miller is to be commended for his frank and learned focus on those sexual aspects of human nature that have enhanced the evolutionary success of our species in terms of both physical characteristics and social patterns. This fascinating and provocative contribution to understanding human sexuality is highly recommended for all large science collections.DH. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
A full-throated exponent of evolutionary psychology, Miller is enamored with totally explaining the creative and moral attributes of the mind. He posits that they evolved through the string of human sexual selections that reaches back to the cave-dwelling days of the Pleistocene. So if you think you make art for aesthetic reasons or behave nicely for altruistic ones, Miller begs to dissuade you. These and other expressions of personality are all display devices for attracting a mate. Miller cautiously casts his book as a nondoctrinaire catalyst of debate. Still, although he makes his points lightly and humorously, he makes them insistently. If discomfort at Miller's reduction of the personally felt human uniqueness--whether in language, sympathy and empathy, morality, or creativity--into another cog in the organism's sex machine is overcome, the series of scenarios he presents on how sexual selection proclivities may have favored the expressive and self-revealing aptitudes of the human mind prove most thought provoking. If Miller is right, courtship will never be the same. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Helena Cronin
Why does our species tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, give to charity, compete in sports, follow fashion? Our endless inventiveness, our elaborate culture, seem to defy Darwinian explanation. Not so, says Geoffrey Miller. They are our sexual ornaments, our peacocks' tails, displaying our value to potential mates. This elegant, original and lucid book is beguiling testimony to its own thesis: a fitting new feather in our cultural cap.
Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, New School for Social Research
A brilliant and seductive book. It will sweep you off your feet. And, when you come to earth again, youll find yourself seeing the human mind and its most prized creations with quite new eyes.
Dr. Marc Hauser, Harvard University
In a quite favorite cartoon, the artist shows that a huge proportion of the male brain is occupied by machinery dedicated to dating lots and lots of women. In contrast, the female brain is filled with defense mechanisms to fend off cads. Are men really from Mars, and women from Venus? Yes, and the reason is quite simple: sexual selection has designed the sexes differently, and not just their bodies, but their brains. In this fascinating new book, Geoffrey Miller does a wonderful job explaining how the latest advances in the field of evolutionary psychology have helped us understand our biological heritage.
Review
"Sexual selection, Darwin's 'other' theory, has finally come in from the cold....One of the hottest topics in modern Darwinism. The idea that the human mind evolved as a sort of software peacock's tail has been mooted before, usually to be dismissed in favor of some alternative theory. Geoffrey Miller has really been the one to run with that ball, and he now brings his ideas and evidence together in this thoughtful, witty, and vividly written book. It is a work of advocacy, and Miller is a beguilingly skilled advocate. But there's nothing wrong with advocacy if you are right. And I think he just may be."
--Richard Dawkins
"Why does our species tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, give to charity, compete in sports, follow fashion? Our endless inventiveness, our elaborate culture, seem to defy Darwinian explanation. Not so, says Geoffrey Miller. They are our sexual ornaments, our peacocks' tails, displaying our value to potential mates. This elegant, original, and lucid book is beguiling testimony to its own thesis: a fitting new feather in our cultural cap."
--Helena Cronin
"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."
--Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, New School for Social Research
--Richard Dawkins
"Why does our species tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, give to charity, compete in sports, follow fashion? Our endless inventiveness, our elaborate culture, seem to defy Darwinian explanation. Not so, says Geoffrey Miller. They are our sexual ornaments, our peacocks' tails, displaying our value to potential mates. This elegant, original, and lucid book is beguiling testimony to its own thesis: a fitting new feather in our cultural cap."
--Helena Cronin
"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."
--Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, New School for Social Research
Book Description
Many aspects of how and why the human mind evolved remain mysterious. While Darwinian natural selection has successfully explained the evolution of much of life on earth, it has never seemed fully adequate to explain the aspects of our minds that seem most uniquely and profoundly human--art, morality, consciousness, creativity, and language. Nor has natural selection offered solutions to how the human brain evolved so quickly--in less than 2 million years--and why such a large brain remains unique to our species.
Now, in The Mating Mind, a pioneering work of evolutionary science, these aspects of human nature are at last explored and explained. Until fairly recently most biologists have ignored or rejected Darwin's claims for his other great theory of evolution--sexual selection through mate choice, which favors traits simply because they prove attractive to the opposite sex. But over the last two decades, biologists have taken up Darwin's insights into how the reproduction of the sexiest is as much a focus of evolution as the survival of the fittest.
In this brilliantly ambitious and provocative book, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller shows the evolutionary power of sexual choice and the reasons why our ancestors became attracted not only to pretty faces and healthy bodies, but to minds that were witty, articulate, generous, and conscious. The richness and subtlety of modern psychology help to reveal how the human mind evolved, like the peacock's tail and the elk's antlers, for courtship and mating.
Drawing on new ideas from evolutionary biology, economics, and psychology, Miller illuminates his arguments with examples ranging from natural history to popular culture, from the art of New Guinea's bowerbirds to the sexual charisma of South Park's school chef. Along the way, he provides fascinating insights into the inarticulacy of teenage boys, the diversity of ancient Greek coins, the reasons why Scrooge was single, the difficulties of engaging with modern art, and the function of sumo wrestling.
Witty, powerfully argued, and continually thought-provoking, Miller's cascade of ideas bears comparison with such pivotal books as Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. It is a landmark in our understanding of our own species.
Now, in The Mating Mind, a pioneering work of evolutionary science, these aspects of human nature are at last explored and explained. Until fairly recently most biologists have ignored or rejected Darwin's claims for his other great theory of evolution--sexual selection through mate choice, which favors traits simply because they prove attractive to the opposite sex. But over the last two decades, biologists have taken up Darwin's insights into how the reproduction of the sexiest is as much a focus of evolution as the survival of the fittest.
In this brilliantly ambitious and provocative book, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller shows the evolutionary power of sexual choice and the reasons why our ancestors became attracted not only to pretty faces and healthy bodies, but to minds that were witty, articulate, generous, and conscious. The richness and subtlety of modern psychology help to reveal how the human mind evolved, like the peacock's tail and the elk's antlers, for courtship and mating.
Drawing on new ideas from evolutionary biology, economics, and psychology, Miller illuminates his arguments with examples ranging from natural history to popular culture, from the art of New Guinea's bowerbirds to the sexual charisma of South Park's school chef. Along the way, he provides fascinating insights into the inarticulacy of teenage boys, the diversity of ancient Greek coins, the reasons why Scrooge was single, the difficulties of engaging with modern art, and the function of sumo wrestling.
Witty, powerfully argued, and continually thought-provoking, Miller's cascade of ideas bears comparison with such pivotal books as Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. It is a landmark in our understanding of our own species.
Back Cover copy
"Sexual selection, Darwin's 'other' theory, has finally come in from the cold....One of the hottest topics in modern Darwinism. The idea that the human mind evolved as a sort of software peacock's tail has been mooted before, usually to be dismissed in favor of some alternative theory. Geoffrey Miller has really been the one to run with that ball, and he now brings his ideas and evidence together in this thoughtful, witty, and vividly written book. It is a work of advocacy, and Miller is a beguilingly skilled advocate. But there's nothing wrong with advocacy if you are right. And I think he just may be."
--Richard Dawkins
"Why does our species tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, give to charity, compete in sports, follow fashion? Our endless inventiveness, our elaborate culture, seem to defy Darwinian explanation. Not so, says Geoffrey Miller. They are our sexual ornaments, our peacocks' tails, displaying our value to potential mates. This elegant, original, and lucid book is beguiling testimony to its own thesis: a fitting new feather in our cultural cap."
--Helena Cronin
"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."
--Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, New School for Social Research
--Richard Dawkins
"Why does our species tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, give to charity, compete in sports, follow fashion? Our endless inventiveness, our elaborate culture, seem to defy Darwinian explanation. Not so, says Geoffrey Miller. They are our sexual ornaments, our peacocks' tails, displaying our value to potential mates. This elegant, original, and lucid book is beguiling testimony to its own thesis: a fitting new feather in our cultural cap."
--Helena Cronin
"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."
--Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, New School for Social Research
About the author
Geoffrey F. Miller is senior research fellow at the Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution at University College, London. 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 and at the Max Planck Institute of Psychological Research in Munich. He lives in Surrey with his family.
