Robin Dunbar Book order

"When did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured? Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the 'mystical stance' - the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. As he explores world religions and their many derivatives, as well as religions of experience practised by hunter-gatherer societies since time immemorial, Dunbar argues that this instinct is not a peculiar human quirk, an aberration on our otherwise efficient evolutionary journey. Rather, religion confers an advantage: it can benefit our individual health and wellbeing, but, more importantly, it fosters social bonding at large scale, helping hold fractious societies together. Dunbar suggests these dimensions might provide the basis for an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious, and so help unify the myriad strands that currently populate this field. Drawing on path-breaking research, clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe, as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders, mysterious sects and lost faiths, How Religion Evolved offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse - to believe"--Publisher's description

Focusing on the gelada baboon's intricate social structure, Robin Dunbar employs economic models to analyze their behavior. He highlights how social interactions are fundamentally linked to reproductive success and the optimization of genetic contributions to the species. This approach sheds light on the complexities of primate social systems, emphasizing the evolutionary significance of social behavior in relation to survival and reproduction.

What makes us human? How did we develop language, thought and culture? Why did we survive, and other human species fail? The past 12,000 years represent the only time in the sweep of human history when there has been only one human species. How did this extraordinary proliferation of species come about - and then go extinct? And why did we emerge such intellectual giants? The tale of our origins has inevitably been told through the 'stones and bones' of the archaeological record, yet Robin Dunbar shows it was our social and cognitive changes rather than our physical development which truly made us distinct from other species.

We are the product of our evolutionary history and this history colours our everyday lives - from why we kiss to how religious we are. In this book, the author explains how the distant past underpins our current behaviour, through the experiments that have changed the thinking of evolutionary biologists forever.

With contributions from over 50 experts in the field, this book provides an overview of the latest developments in evolutionary psychology. In addition to well studied areas of investigation, it also includes chapters on the philosophical underpinnings of evolutionary psychology, comparative perspectives from other species, and more.

This book explains with vivid examples and historical excursions, what science is, what it does, what it cannot do, and why most of us find science - or even thinking logically - relatively difficult.

"This book was devised and produced by Multimedia Productions" Includes index.