Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create

by Pascal Boyer

Overview

A watershed book that masterfully integrates insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300248548
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	1,129,254
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Human Societies Through the Lens of Nature 1

Six Problems in Search of a New Science

1 What Is the Root of Group Conflict? Why "Tribalism" Is Not an Urge but a Computation 33

2 What Is Information For? Sound Minds, Odd Beliefs, and the Madness of Crowds 66

3 Why Are There Religions? … And Why Are They Such a Recent Thing? 93

4 What Is the Natural Family? From Sex to Kinship to Dominance 125

5 How Can Societies Be Just? How Cooperative Minds Create Fairness and Trade, and the Apparent Conflict between Them 163

6 Can Human Minds Understand Societies? Coordination, Folk Sociology, and Natural Politics 203

Conclusion: Cognition and Communication Create Traditions 245

Notes 270

Bibliography 295

Acknowledgments 345

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

It is highly recommended . . . to researchers firmly settled within one of the many single disciplines in question. Not only will they encounter a wealth of information from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences, but the book will also serve as an invitation to look beyond the horizons of their own fields.”—Eveline Seghers, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture

"Elegant, dense, ambitious. . . . Anthropologists interested in challenging their view of their discipline and its relations to biology and psychology should give it a careful read."—Simon Lavoie, Anthropologica

“The most important work on a science of human culture in years.”—Leda Cosmides, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Pascal Boyer has written a wide-ranging, clear, and convincing book. It is an essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the workings of our social world.”—Hugo Mercier, co-author of The Enigma of Reason

“Pascal Boyer’s elegant and insightful essays on human nature and human society show the power of combining anthropology, evolutionary theory, and cognitive psychology. I particularly like his balance and even-handedness in evaluating various contending social theories.”—Herbert Gintis, author of Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life

“Read Pascal Boyer’s cool and captivating new book Minds Make Societies. It will change forever your understanding of society and culture.”—Dan Sperber, co-author of The Enigma of Reason

“Minds Make Societies is must-reading for those who are interested in what a new generation of scientists is discovering.”—John Tooby, Co-Director, Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara

From the Publisher