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Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge (Penguin science)

Science & Math

Plotkin, Henry

Biological Sciences

Penguin Group Canada

Necessary Knowledge takes on one of the big questions at the heart of the cognitive sciences - what knowledge do we possess at birth, and what do we learn along the way? It is now widely accepted that evolution, individual development, and individual learning can no longer be studied in isolation from each-other - they are inextricably linked. Therefore any successful theory must integrate these elements, and somehow relate them to human culture. Clearly we learn from the world around us, but that learning is skewed towards specific things about the world. We do not just attend to and learn about every stimuli that confronts us - if we did, learning would be impossibly time-consuming and ineffective. Learning is constrained - we are primed to learn about certain aspects of the world and ignore others. So what are these constraints, and where do they come from? The theory expounded in this book is that we enter the world with small amounts of innate representational knowledge. It neither sides with those who believe in 'blank slate' theories, nor with those who believe all learning is innate. In fact, what is written on our 'slates' at birth is a certain type of knowledge about specific things in the world, the general configuration of the human face for instance, a knowledge that other people possess minds and motives. Necessary Knowledge presents an important new theory, in a book that makes an accessible and thought provoking contribution to one of the enduring issues about human nature.

Necessary Knowledge

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Diversity and complexity are the hallmarks of living forms. Yet science aims for general causal explanations of its observations. So how can these be reconciled within the non-physical sciences? Is it possible for a science of life to conform to the requirements of a general theory - the type of theory seen in a 'hard' science such as physics? These are the questions that are explored in this important new book. In Evolutionary Worlds Without End, Henry Plotkin considers whether there is any general theory in biology, including the social sciences, that is in any way equivalent to the general theories of physics. It starts by examining Ernest Rutherford's famous dictum as to what science is. In the later chapters he considers the possibility, within an historical framework, of a general theory being based upon selection processes. Throughout, the author constructs a compelling argument for the idea that there are within biology, and that includes the social sciences, something like the general theories that make physics such powerful science. The book will be valuable for all those in the biological and social sciences, in particular, biologists, psychologists, as well as philosophers of science.

Evolutionary Worlds without End

Evolution

We aren't very strong, nor very fast, we have insufficient body hair to keep us warm and dry, and we will never eat bananas with our feet. But like our chimpanzee cousins, we, the naked apes, have evolved to flourish in our surroundings--a cultural environment largely of our own creation. For the human race, the critical evolution of the past million years has been the evolution of our minds. 
 Yet psychology, the very science that purports to understand us, has long been deeply ambivalent about Darwin's unsettling discoveries. In an accessible, level-headed overview, Henry Plotkin describes the new rapprochement called 'evolutionary psychology.' He examines how such a powerful theory as Darwinism could have been disregarded by much academic psychology and shows why the relationship between the two must be readdressed. The theory and data of evolutionary biology and animal behavior can illuminate many of our most basic mental processes and activities: language learning, perception, social understanding, and most controversially, culture and the sharing of knowledge and beliefs. 
 Ranging from the nature-nurture question, which has bedeviled philosophers and scientists for thousands of years, to recent debates about the mind's structure, Evolution in Mind vividly demonstrates how an evolutionary perspective helps us understand what we are, and how we got that way.

Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Harvard University Press

Learn and survive. Behind this simple equation lies a revolution in the study of knowledge, which has left the halls of philosophy for the labs of science. This book offers a cogent account of what such a move does to our understanding of the nature of learning, rationality, and intelligence. Bringing together evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy, Henry Plotkin presents a new science of knowledge, one that traces an unbreakable link between instinct and our ability to know. Contrary to the modern liberal idea that knowledge is something derived from experience, this science shows us that what we know is what our nature allows us to know, what our instincts tell us we must know. Since our ability to know our world depends primarily on what we call intelligence, intelligence must be understood as an extension of instinct. Drawing on contemporary evolutionary theory, especially notions of hierarchical structure and universal Darwinism, Plotkin tells us that the capacity for knowledge, which is what makes us human, is deeply rooted in our biology and, in a special sense, is shared by all living things. This leads to a discussion of animal and human intelligence as well as an appraisal of what an instinct-based capacity for knowledge might mean to our understanding of language, reasoning, emotion, and culture. The result is nothing less than a three-dimensional theory of our nature, in which all knowledge is adaptation and all adaptation is a specific form of knowledge.

Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge

Published by Penguin Books Canada Limited, Toronto, Ontario; Canada

Nature of Knowledge

Can the insights of science provide a proper understanding of human culture, or must we leave the analysis of culture to the so-called humanities? The ability to share knowledge and beliefs is the preeminent characteristic of our species. Science itself is a product of culture and the natural sciences are the most powerful forms of knowledge we have. From explanations of the origins of the universe to descriptions of the molecular structure of life, science has a spectacular record of achievement. Yet it has mostly failed to provide an understanding of human culture.
The Imagined World Made Real changes this by showing how a grasp of human evolution extends the reach of science. Henry Plotkin recognizes that at the heart of human culture are social constructs, such as justice and money, and that collective beliefs, values, and actions are essential to their formation and maintenance. Only when these constructs are integrated into an accepted biological framework will there be a true synthesis between the social and natural sciences. This book describes the beginnings of a comprehensive natural science of culture, and with it, an understanding of why people do what they do. Culture can now be thought of as a natural process that is actually a billion years old.

The Imagined World Made Real: Toward a Natural Science of Culture

Rutgers University Press

Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History

Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History traces the history of evolutionary thought in psychology in an accessible and lively fashion and examines the complex and changing relations between psychology and evolutionary theory. <ul> <li>First book to trace the history of evolutionary thinking in psychology from its beginnings to the present day in an accessible and lively fashion. 
</li> <li>Focuses on the rise of evolutionary theories begun by Lamarck and Darwin and the creation of the science of psychology. 
</li> <li>Explains evolutionary thought’s banishment by behaviorism and cultural anthropology in the early 20th century, along with its eventual re-emergence through ethology and sociobiology. 
</li> <li>Examines the complex and changing relations between psychology and evolutionary theory.</li> </ul>

Wiley/Blackwell

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Books by Plotkin, Henry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Plotkin, Henry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge (Penguin science)

Necessary Knowledge

Evolutionary Worlds without End

Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology

Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge

Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology

Nature of Knowledge

The Imagined World Made Real: Toward a Natural Science of Culture

Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History

Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History