The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature | 
|  | | | Title: | The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature | | Author: | Geoffrey Miller | | Publisher: | Anchor | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 17 April, 2001 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 038549517X / 9780385495172 | | List Price: | $16.95 | | You Save: | $5.42 | | Amazon Price: | $11.53 | |
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Product Description
At once a pioneering study of evolution and an accessible and lively reading experience, The Mating Mind marks the arrival of a prescient and provocative new science writer. Psychologist Geoffrey Miller offers the most convincing–and radical–explanation for how and why the human mind evolved.
Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the traits that make us human. Scientists have traditionally explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but Miller argues that they were sexual attractors, not side effects. He bases his argument on Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, which until now has played second fiddle to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and draws on ideas and research from a wide range of fields, including psychology, economics, history, and pop culture. Witty, powerfully argued, and continually thought-provoking, The Mating Mind is a landmark in our understanding of our own species.
Amazon.com Review
Evolutionary psychology has been called the "new black" of science fashion, though at its most controversial, it more resembles the emperor's new clothes. Geoffrey Miller is one of the Young Turks trying to give the phenomenon a better spin. In The Mating Mind, he takes Darwin's "other" evolutionary theory--of sexual rather than natural selection--and uses it to build a theory about how the human mind has developed the sophistication of a peacock's tail to encourage sexual choice and the refining of art, morality, music, and literature. Where many evolutionary psychologists see the mind as a Swiss army knife, and cognitive science sees it as a computer, Miller compares it to an entertainment system, evolved to stimulate other brains. Taking up the baton from studies such as Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, it's a dizzyingly ambitious project, which would be impossibly vague without the ingenuity and irreverence that Miller brings to bear on it. Steeped in popular culture, the book mixes theories of runaway selection, fitness indicators, and sensory bias with explanations of why men tip more than women and how female choice shaped (quite literally) the penis. It also extols the sagacity of Mary Poppins. Indeed, Miller allows ideas to cascade at such a torrent that the steam given off can run the risk of being mistaken for hot air). That large personalities can be as sexually enticing as oversize breasts or biceps may indeed prove comforting, but denuding sexual chemistry can be a curiously unsexy business, akin to analyzing humor. As a courting display of Miller's intellectual plumage, though, The Mating Mind is formidable, its agent-provocateur chest swelled with ideas and articulate conjecture. While occasionally his magpie instinct may loot fool's gold, overall it provides an accessible and attractive insight into modern Darwinism and the survival of the sexiest. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk
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Customer Reviews:
• Clever, Intelligent, Full Of Insights 22 March, 2008
I found this book after I started to search the Internet researching the idea I had - I thought that the human mind developed like a peacock's tail, as a way to attract females, and only later became useful for other purposes and gave other survival advantages. That was just a raw idea, and to my surprise and delight I found that I was not the first one to think of it. This book really explores this idea in depth, gives good arguments for it and deals with its weak sides as well.
One thing however surprised me - the author fails to understand how homosexual trends developed, if they have no reproductive advantage. For me there is no question about it - it is clear that the males heterozygous for homosexual "genes" and characteristics have a reproductive advantage - maybe they care more for their kids or just are liked more by the females. The fact that homozygote is not reproductive will not diminishing the survival and reproductive advantage of the heterozygote. Such is the case with sickle-cell anemia and many other hereditary conditions. Of course this is just an idea that should be examined by a future research.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1OBBYU898T9GM
• Seminal Work! 24 July, 2008
This book is amazing! I'm a huge fan of evolutionary biology/evolutionary psychology... and this book is perhaps the best account of sexual selection I've seen out there.
The importance of sexual selection as a driving force in evolutionar history is very clearly explained and thoroughly backed up.
This book is phenomenal in explaining a ton of quirky human behaviors -- why women love big diamond rings, how men tip at restaurants, and so much more!
Some of the book's content is controversial (as our most findings in evolutionary psychology). There are some interesting debates regarding Geoffrey Miller's work on www.edge.org
Paul
paultheo2004@yahoo.ca
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1IC6M2TS1CJZ1
• My Mind Will Never See Itself In The Same Way Again! 21 June, 2007
This book was a very enjoyable read, both for the ideas it proposed and for the personality of the author.
What impressed me the most about the author was his willingness to explore aspects of reality that, by their basic nature, cannot be seen or probed with scientific instruments. What do I mean? Well, I am strongly of the persuasion that consideration of the internal, subjective experiences of living organisms is completely inseparable from any scientific understanding of life, and that this persuasion is sorely lacking from the worldview of most scientists. This matters less, if at all, for fields such as particle physics, but for a field such as evolutionary psychology it is crucial.
To ignore the inner experiences of our ancestors... their desires, their passions, their religious beliefs, their inexplicable aesthetic tastes... and focus merely on the biological, or the cartesian processes of natural selection, or tribal cohesion or whatever, is to utterly cripple the entire endeavor. Natural selection, while very powerful, is also very limited - this seems incredibly obvious to me, but for some reason is not incredibly obvious to most evolutionary psychologists.
Geoffrey Miller, in fortunate contrast to the majority of his colleagues, actually has a soul. As long as one does not deviate from a scientific approach to knowledge, there is (I contend) simply no reason to put any absolute limit whatsoever on the depths to which one attempts to unravel the interior dimensions of the human experience. In this regard Mr. Miller goes laudably deeper than most scientists, and as a result his book contains many very original ideas that are very, very satisfying to witness integrated with evolutionary psychology. I find it difficult to believe that any human being with a calm approach to knowledge and an interest in the origins and nature of our species could fail to find this book fascinating.
The only possible shortfall of the book is it's prose. This is something for which I have no actual complaint - Mr. Miller's writing is quite clear, indisputably lucid, and at times very imaginative - it's just that I have a personal appetite for metaphors, figurative speech, and philosophical tangents that exceed normal levels. Mr. Miller, being a professional scientist rather than a professional author, didn't leave me fully satisfied on this level. To his credit, however, the book contains a parody of Carl Sagan that had me almost rolling on the floor with laughter!
In short, while this book didn't quite send my divine, intangible essence up rocketing through the azure firmament in an ecstatic convergence of infinite cosmic forces regurgitated by the Great Wug, an experience that in it's supreme form is comparable to a burrito achieving self-transcendance in a microwave, it was nonetheless very, very good. I recommend it to all incurably curious people who are also occasionally fascinated by the many ways the universe works.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1HL2RV6NFB9W0
• Geoffrey Miller Is Charles Darwin On Steroids! 20 February, 2008
Actually I had absolutely no interest in evolutionary psychology and sexual selection. Although I am a psychologist I do not read much about this topics. However, checking David DeAngelo, one of the most re-knowned dating gurus or dating advisers, I realized he constantly quoted The Mating Mind on his interviews and seminars.
The fact is, that my topic of interest was human attraction and sexuality, to my surprise, human attraction more than a social behavior it is a biological behavior triggered by sexual selection which is something that has evolved throughout the evolution of the species.
It is fascinating how the female, being the key element in sexual selection has guided nature to the evolution of intelligence.
This book is absolutely fascinating and I believe it develops in lay terms a complement to Darwin's Natural Selection theory.
Though I am not an evolutionist nor defend these postures I absolutely think it is in one of the most accurate and reasonable perspectives to understand evolution, sexuality and human intelligence.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AUWF5LMML0C9I
• Every Marriage Counselor Should Have A Copy 12 March, 2007
Although this book doesn't directly deal with marital problems per se, reading it helps to gain understanding of both what is, and what is NOT particularly "natural" in man-woman relations (mating behavior).
As other reviewers have indicated, the main thrust of the book is to chronicle the thinking of evolutionary scientists as to the nature of non-directly survival oriented selection, i.e. selection outside the realm of the conventional "natural selection" of traits needed to survive to reproductive age. For this purpose, traits that may indicate overall offspring strength and health tend to be sexually selected for, based on the traits' difficulty to fake and conspicuous costliness. For example if a peacock can be so strong as to survive with such a heavy colorful predator attracting tail, well, he surely must be a strong peacock and, as such, quite sexy. The analog to the peacock tail for humans is, in general, extensive human intelligence.
But beyond detailing the various theses of sexual selection and its related evolutionary processes, the book also covers mating behavior of pre-civilization (Pleistocene) humans. Furthermore it notes that the amount of time civilization has existed, measured in reproductive generations, is so small that hardly an iota of genetic difference exists between civilized humans and pre-Neolithic hunter gatherers. (Some of the latter are still in existence today.) As such there can be no doubt that our basic genetic human nature is that of the hunter gatherer. Moreover, there is a material consistency in sexual/mating behavior of hunter gatherers, behavior that could be described as "natural". It's not prostitution, at least to the extent that hunter gatherers don't have/use money. It's not polygamy, this appearing as a kind of corollary to skewed distributions of power and wealth that occur in civilization. And finally it's not ultra long-term monogamy (marriage), also an outcome of civilization invented to deal with legal and economic matters concerning property, inheritance, education in child rearing, etc. Nope. The "natural", hunter gatherer way is described in the book a something akin to "serial monogamy", which across diverse hunter gatherer societies yields quite consistent observation of fairly strong temporary monogamous bonds, at least through to pregnancy. Such bonds may even extend through child birth and early baby care, but little continues after that. Half siblings and multiple lifetime lovers are more the rules than the exceptions.
With this sort of knowledge and understanding of both the evolutionary purpose and the more natural norms of human mating behavior, it seems possible that marriage counselors and their clients might be better prepared to come up with more apt solutions to marital difficulties. And I also suspect there's an important policy implication from this book for social and legal planners: invent renewable, one to five year term marriages.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A35VG0CL3S2Y5T
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