The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature - Softcover

Miller MD, Geoffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 038549517X ISBN 13: 9780385495172

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2001

Synopsis

At once a pioneering study of evolution and an accessible and lively reading experience, The Mating Mind marks the arrival of a prescient and provocative new science writer. Psychologist Geoffrey Miller offers the most convincing-and radical-explanation for how and why the human mind evolved.

Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the traits that make us human. Scientists have traditionally explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but Miller argues that they were sexual attractors, not side effects. He bases his argument on Darwin's theory of sexual selection, which until now has played second fiddle to Darwin's theory of natural selection, and draws on ideas and research from a wide range of fields, including psychology, economics, history, and pop culture. Witty, powerfully argued, and continually thought-provoking, The Mating Mind is a landmark in our understanding of our own species.

About this title

Review:

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's analogy is 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 which Miller brings to bear. Steeped in popular culture, it 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 (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 solacing, but denuding sexual chemistry can be a curiously unsexy business, akin to analysing humour. 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

Review:

"Quite ingenious stuff.... This is a welcome change from a lot of evolutionary psychology."-The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 038549517X
• ISBN 13: 9780385495172
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528