adaptive functioning – On the Human http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human a project of the National Humanities Center Thu, 14 Sep 2017 16:39:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 On the Human: Rethinking the natural selection of human language http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/02/on-the-human-rethinking-the-natural-selection-of-human-language/ http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/02/on-the-human-rethinking-the-natural-selection-of-human-language/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:32:43 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/?p=881 Introduction

Since Darwin’s time, the human language capacity has been a perennially cited paragon of extreme complexity that defies the explanatory powers of natural selection. And it is not just critics of Darwinism who have argued that this most distinctive human capacity is problematic. Alfred Russel Wallace—the co-discoverer of natural selection theory and in many

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]]> http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/02/on-the-human-rethinking-the-natural-selection-of-human-language/feed/ 30 The Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/06/the-adaptive-function-of-literature-and-the-other-arts/ http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/06/the-adaptive-function-of-literature-and-the-other-arts/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:47:46 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/humannature/?p=274 Massive Modularity vs. Cognitive Flexibility

Evolutionists insist that genes constrain and direct human behavior. Cultural constructivists counter that culture, embodied in the arts, shapes human experience. Both these claims are true, but some evolutionists and some cultural constructivists have mistakenly regarded them as mutually exclusive (D. S. Wilson, “Evolutionary”). Some evolutionists have either ignored the

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