Cover image for The evolution of childhood : relationships, emotion, mind
Title:
The evolution of childhood : relationships, emotion, mind
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010
Physical Description:
xv, 943 p. ; 25 cm.
ISBN:
9780674045668

9780674062016

Available:*

Library
Item Barcode
Call Number
Material Type
Item Category 1
Status
Searching...
30000010283355 GN482 K66 2010 Open Access Book Book
Searching...
Searching...
30000010312077 GN482 K66 2010 Open Access Book Book
Searching...

On Order

Summary

Summary

This book is an intellectual tour de force: a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Melvin Konner tells the compelling and complex story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain.All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology.As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described."Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution.


Author Notes

Melvin Konner is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and an associate professor and neurology at Emory University. A Fellow o f the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he lives in Atlanta.


Reviews 1

Library Journal Review

In his introduction, Konner (anthropology, Emory Univ.) states that this four-part work "presents.findings relevant to the question of how the laws and facts of biology underlie normally developing social behavior." And how! The author covers almost every topic imaginable in anthropology, biology, and psychology that involves child development. Moreover, since the book is on evolution, there's a lot about other animals, from the platypus to the great ape. While gearing his text to scholars in the biological and social sciences, Konner has written a number of books for general readers (e.g., Childhood), and the writing here, while scholarly, is lucid and accessible to students and general readers. Verdict If you want to know the latest scholarly information on child development, you can buy this book for $40 or get a new scholarly encyclopedia of child development for $1500. Odds are that this one will be more thought-provoking and better written-and probably almost as extensive. Highly recommended.-Mary Ann Hughes, Shelton, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.