Introducing Evolutionary Psychology

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The Matrix is one of my favourite movies. I love it so much, I sat down and watched 3 hours of documentaries on the blu-ray Special Edition. I'm not sure if that makes me dedicated or just sad.

One of the interviews talks about how the Wachowski Brothers made the protagonists (Neo, Morpheus, Trinity and Agent Smith) read these three books before they began filming.

The first was 'Introducing Evolutionary Psychology' by Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate, which is part of a series of 'An Introduction to' books. Sounds scary and pretentious but actually it had pictures, speech bubbles, crazy Einstein quotes and was in general pretty easy to read.

I like the fact it treats you like an idiot - otherwise you wouldn't be reading an introductory book, right? It takes you through a brief history of psychology and makes a good case for human evolution. I personally don't think creation and evolution are mutually exclusive, so I'm happy to go with that theory. The interesting stuff for me is how and why we developed language. According to some schools of thought, language came from our need to gossip. It makes sense if you think about it. As ape descendants, running round the plains of Africa, we could talk in grunts and point at each other. We could indicate pretty easily "Look out!" "Food running that way!" and "I'm horny. NOW".

But, once we started living in large social groups, we needed a way to figure out the pecking order. The theory goes, we developed verbal communication to promote ourselves. Imagine someone in your clan needs help. So you help him out. In fact, everyone in your clan helps that person out. But when other people need help, that guy doesn't lift a finger. How do you grunt "That's not fair!"? Or "Hey man, that's not cool. You let us down." So you run a little whisper campaign: you know, a little bad mouthing here, a bit of backstabbing there. All the stuff that happens by water coolers and by text message now.

This is a fascinating theory and I want to find some other books on this. Suggestions welcome.

Back to the book though. It took me about 2 interrupted hours to read, and is one of those books you'll find yourself quoting from. As in "Hey did you know that ....." It's pretty easy reading and they've done a good job of making something potentially mind boggling interesting, understandable and enjoyable.

Books like this really open your mind. There's a real sense of separation between the mind and the body these days, and it can be surprising to remember that actually, neither exists without the other. If that's the case, why would our minds and how they work develop separately to our bodies? We lost our fur but gained language. We discovered fire and then had to figure out who gets to sit closest to it.

On the other hand, it's the only book on evolutionary psychology I've read, so it could be bad. But I'd recommend it.

Title: Introducing evolutionary psychology
Author: Dylan Evans, Oscar Zarate
Format: Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd