Evolutionary Thought in Psychology A Brief History

by Plotkin, Henry

• ISBN13: 9780470773840
• ISBN10: 0470773847
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2008-02-28
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

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.

• First book to trace the history of evolutionary thinking in psychology from its beginnings to the present day in an accessible and lively fashion.
  
• Focuses on the rise of evolutionary theories begun by Lamarck and Darwin and the creation of the science of psychology.
  
• 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.
  
• Examines the complex and changing relations between psychology and evolutionary theory.

Author Biography

Henry Plotkin is Professor of Psychobiology at University College London. He is the author of Darwin Machines (1994), Evolution in Mind (1997) and most recently The Imagined World Made Real (2002)."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.

Preface.

1. Curious Histories.

2. Before Darwin.

3. Psychology Born and the Darwinian Revolution.

4. The Near Death of Darwinism in the Social Sciences.

5. An Exceptional Case.

6. Lessons To Be Learned: Ethology and Sociobiology.

7. Contemporary Evolutionary Psychology.

8. Future Prospects.

References.

Index