Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The Evolution of Human Intellect: A Review

How I got this book:
The author contacted me and sent this to me in exchange for an honest review.
Dates read: March 7-14th

My rating: 3 stars



My Review:
  I'm going to start off by saying, that the author appealed to my intellectual side, so I jumped this book to the front of the long line of books that I've won lately.

I have to admit, when I first started reading this book I thought the backdrop of exploring human evolution through the eyes of passengers on a Disney ride was a little cheesy. But, the more I read, it actually worked for the setting. For people who have a background in the social sciences, or anthropology, this is an interesting look at human evolution.

In pretty much all of my Sociology classes, (and several other classes of different disciplines) there is often a lecture or two on the nature versus nurture debate. I've always been somewhere in the middle on this issue. I think that some traits are the result of nature, and some of nurture. The author explores something I'd never thought about before. He makes the statement that nature causes nurture (L.N. Smith (Bert). The Evolution of Human Intellect --- Discover the Information that Schools and Religions Aren’t Yet Teaching (Kindle Location 308). L.N. Smith (Bert).

Rather than just nature or just nurture, through the evolutionary process we have caused some of the elements of nurture. For example, Smith states that the loss of facial hair on females is what created easier to recognize emotional signaling between mothers and children, which leads to a stronger bond.

It's pretty interesting stuff.

There are a few hints at modern day political affairs that I'll let you all discover for yourselves. There are also some nice comparisons of the evolution process to life stages which I appreciated.
 

No comments: