ISBN: PB: 9780300248548

Yale University Press

February 2020

376 pp.

23,5x15,6 cm

20 black&white illus.

PB:
£14.99
QTY:

Categories:

Minds Make Societies

How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create

"There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature". Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book.

Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as, Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation.

About the author

Pascal Boyer is the Henry Luce Professor of Collective and Individual Memory and professor of anthropology and psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. His books include "Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought".