Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior

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University of Chicago Press, 1987 - 700 pages
With insight and wit, Robert J. Richards focuses on the development of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first distinct appearance in the eighteenth century to their controversial state today. Particularly important in the nineteenth century were Charles Darwin's ideas about instinct, reason, and morality, which Richards considers against the background of Darwin's personality, training, scientific and cultural concerns, and intellectual community. Many critics have argued that the Darwinian revolution stripped nature of moral purpose and ethically neutered the human animal. Richards contends, however, that Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and their disciples attempted to reanimate moral life, believing that the evolutionary process gave heart to unselfish, altruistic behavior.

"Richards's book is now the obvious introduction to the history of ideas about mind and behavior in the nineteenth century."—Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement

"Not since the publication of Michael Ghiselin's The Triumph of the Darwinian Method has there been such an ambitious, challenging, and methodologically self-conscious interpretation of the rise and development and evolutionary theories and Darwin's role therein."—John C. Greene, Science

"His book . . . triumphantly achieves the goal of all great scholarship: it not only informs us, but shows us why becoming thus informed is essential to understanding our own issues and projects."—Daniel C. Dennett, Philosophy of Science

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
3
1 Origins of Evolution Biology of Behavior
20
2 Behavior and Mind in Evolution
71
3 Contributions of Natural Theology to Darwins Theory of the Evolution of Mind and Behavior
127
4 Debates of Evolutionists over Human Reason and Moral Sense 18591871
157
5 Darwin and the Decent of Human Rational and Moral Faculities
185
6 Spencers Conception of Evolution as a Moral Force
243
7 Evolutionary Ethics
295
9 The Personal Equation in Science
409
10 James Mark Baldwin
451
11 Transformation of the Darwinian Image of Man in the Twentieth Century
504
Conclusion
549
Appendix 1
559
Appendix 2
595
Bibliography
629
Index
663

8 Darwinism and the Demands of Metaphysics and Religion
331

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About the author (1987)

Robert J. Richards is the Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor in History of Science at the University of Chicago, where he is professor in the departments of history, philosophy, and psychology and in the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science and directs the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine.

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