Physical Books - Page 4

Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (2nd Edition)

David Buss

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

high on appeal, low on rigor 3 out of 5 stars.
39 of 48 people found this review helpful.

I used this book as a text book for a course I taught on Human Behavior. On the whole, the students really enjoyed the text and they found Buss's writing style to be very engaging and easy to read. I would agree.

Nevertheless, I feel this book--like the whole field of Evolutionary Psychology--requires a far more rigorous scientific framework before it can be considered a field that can substantively explain human behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Don't get me wrong: evolutionary hypotheses can provide a lot of insight into particular human behaviors. However, I would have liked to see much more discussion on what is science, what constitutes a scientifically valid argument, how do we falsify a particular hypothesis, etc. These issues could be covered in a few pages or so, and I think they could help flesh out or perhaps even justify some of the arguments put forth in the text. As it stands now, the book reads more like an apologetic and as I skim the pages, I get the same feeling that I do when I've been pamphleted by evangelicals. Buss's arguments are fraught with generalizations: studies on college kids are extrapolated to the whole human species, studies on plumage color in birds are used to argue for handicaps in humans, and on and on it goes. There are sentences that make pretty extraordinarly claims that go unreferenced and there are sentences that make trivial points that are tailed by six references.

Professor Buss does a good job in conveying the basics of natural selection, but then uses some of the most tenuous definitions of fitness in trying to make an adaptive argument: questionaires, age, symmetry, and even intuition are all stand-ins for fitness. This is a shame because in order to know when selection will operate, we need to know how phenotypic (including behavioral) variation covaries with fitness. Because his fitness proxies are so weak, I have a hard time buying many of the arguments advanced in the book. Other evolutionary forces are rarely discussed; such lapses are unfortunate since it is likely that drift has played some (if not a major) role in getting populations to cross adaptive valleys, as well as affecting the evolutionary dynamics of frequency-dependent selection. But I digress...

I hope future editions (and I'm sure they're on their way) will include a chapter on scientific and evolutionary epistemology. That is, I would like to see a chapter address the question: what steps do evolutionary biologists proceed through when they make an adaptive argument. This would be a timely and useful contribution given that intelligent-design folks are trying to loosen up and poke holes in the definition of science. One chapter starts down this road but never critically discusses how hypotheses are tested (and rejected!), it focuses more on how hypotheses are developed--and believe me, evolutionary psychologists are good at coming up with hypotheses. Professor Buss's book, with its profligate use of unfalsifiable hypotheses, does not help the cause in this respect. Sure, evolutionary psychologists can always hide behind Lakatos as they denigrate Popper for being too severe, or, like Dunbar et al., they can actually learn some math, some scientific epistemology, and help bring evolutionary psychology into a more rigorous, more reputable position. Buss's book does too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

Editorial Review:

In the first edition, Evolutionary Psychology was the premier and original text for the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology. The second edition continues this legacy. David Buss, one of the foremost researchers in the field, has thoroughly revised his already enormously successful text to provide an even more comprehensive overview of this dynamic field. Using cutting-edge research and an engaging writing style, the Second Edition of Evolutionary Psychology ensures that your students will master the material presented.

Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils

Marvin L. Lubenow

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 63 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Revised & Updated Version is Different 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I won't repeat the many fine comments that have been made, but the Revised & Updated version of this book is quite different:

Date: 1992 > 2004
Pages: 295 > 400
Chapters 20 > 32

plus, additional charts and indexes. If a person has read the prior version, the new one is worth a fresh read (I did).

Could have been much better 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I gave it four stars only because there really is some interesting and useful information here.
It could have been so much better, though, if the author had organized it differently, and left out his distracting, annoying, and very arguable biblical interpretations.

It's obvious the author knows a lot about human fossils. If only he could see his way clear to sharing what he knows in a straitforward way without all the sermonizing and biblical literalism coloring everything, this could have been a very useful book.

The religious dogmatism was worse than distracting, it seriously detracted from my learning about human fossils as I found myself mentally arguing with the author over his biblical pronouncements instead of considering his possibly valid points about the fossils.
He appears to be a biblical literalist, with a very shallow, rigid, and very un-exegetical understanding of biblical scripture.

The most annoying are his repetitive pronouncements about racism. He is correct that racism is inherent in Darwinian philosophy, but if he really thinks the Bible contains no racism he's either willfully blind to it or inexcusably ignorant. Just a few examples;

Matt 15:22-26 Jesus tells a Canaanite woman He's only sent to house of Israel, calls her a dog.

Matt 10:5-6 Jesus tells Apostles not to preach to Samaritans or Gentiles.

Joshua 9:23,27 Joshua makes Gibeonites slaves to Israelites

Josh 23: 12-13 Israel commanded not to intermarry with other races.

Nehemiah 13:1 Ammonites and Moabites permanently excluded from congregations

Josh 18:7 Levites not allowed any land, given priesthood instead. No other tribe allowed to be ordained to priesthood.

A book about fossils should be about fossils, not about one's perspective on the bible. If you want to preach your version of Christianity, write another book. I wanted to learn about fossils, and I did, some, but I feel like a little kid tricked into eating something icky by being tempted with candy. And it wasn't even good for me.

At least the title is accurate; I can't say I wasn't warned about the Creationist perspective.

I do feel I learned quite a bit about "human" fossils from this book, but the annoyance over the religious tone almost made it not worth it. I'm going to have to go through it again, trying harder to ignore the preaching, to see what I learned. It's like wading through sludge feeling around for gems.

If the author would find a fossil expert from "the other side" with whom he could collaborate, he would do us all a huge favor by rewriting, or writing another, book just presenting the fossils.
As it is, it's useful, but could have been so much better.

Editorial Review:

Seeking to disprove the theory of human evolution, the author examines the fossils of the so-called "ape men."

The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (Helix Books)

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco Cavalli-Sforza

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

genes, languages, prehistoric human migrations 5 out of 5 stars.
44 of 44 people found this review helpful.

The most rewarding part of this popular science book is the middle, fifth to seventh chapters, in which Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Professor of Genetics at Stanford Medical School, draws on scientific research in human population genetics, in which he has been a well respected pioneer, to describe the migration of human populations beginning about 100,000 years ago out of Africa until recent times. Because patterns of genetic and linguistic evolution exhibit high intercorrelations--even though their respective elements and mechanics differ--he also cites linguistic evidence for this account of migratory prehistory.

The most valuable contribution of this book to popular understanding is that population genetics provides possibly the best though not sole scientific basis on which to construct the prehistory of human "races." By this evidence, we learn, for example, about the migration of modern Homo sapiens to Southeast Asia and Australia approximately 55,000 to 60,000 years ago or about the spread of Neolithic farmer-cultivators from the Middle East into Europe beginning about 9,000 to 10,000 years ago. I suspect that readers unfamiliar with modern human evolution will find the genetic tree of the world's populations on page 119 intriguing. The diagram shows, for example, that Northeast Asians are more closely related to Europeans than Northeast Asians are to Southeast Asians.

For as rapidly advancing a science as human population genetics, it should not be surprising that some findings are dated. Recent evidence suggests, for instance, that North Asians descended from both southern China populations that gradually migrated northward as well as Caucasian populations that migrated eastward, so that some genetic mixing all across North Asia took place and is the source of the observed racial connections between North Asians and Caucasians.

In other chapters, Cavalli-Sforza tackles related topics somewhat unevenly. His anecdotes about the African pygmies are light and sympathetic. While his description of the hominid line is accurate for the time of publication, there are more insightful not to mention updated accounts now in print. His discussion of the links between genes and culture is engaging and humane but from the standpoint of science, no better than educated. His rejoinder to the controversial The Bell Curve (1994) is scientifically persuasive.

I very much enjoyed reading this book, the first I purchased at amazon.com.

Editorial Review:

Based on over 30 years of his research, Luigi Cavalli-Sforza recounts what is known about human evolution. He adopts an accessible style and ends with a prediction about the genetic future of mankind and the likely results of the Human Genome Project.

The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

Terrence W. Deacon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

some interesting content, slow going 3 out of 5 stars.
21 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Most of what I choose to read is non-fiction on cognition, education, memetics, and language. That said, I found this book hard to read. It has some interesting content, but it's broken up by so much detail it's hard to see the big picture. I finally got through it by skimming most of the chapters and doing a close read on bits that were interesting to me.

His premise is that physical evolution of human brains and cultural evolution of language have proceeded together, shaping one another, so that languages evolved to be more learnable by humans at the same time humans evolved to be better at language. This kind of interaction is categorized as "Baldwinian selection", which is an elaboration of Darwinian selection (not a conflicting view).

Deacon draws evidence from a wide range of sources including paleontology, live brain scans, electrode experiments, and animal behavior.

Editorial Review:

This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.

Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons (Computational Neuroscience)

Christof Koch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Neural network research often builds on the fiction that neurons are simple linear threshold units, completely neglecting the highly dynamic and complex nature of synapses, dendrites, and voltage-dependent ionic currents. Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons challenges this notion, using richly detailed experimental and theoretical findings from cellular biophysics to explain the repertoire of computational functions available to single neurons. The author shows how individual nerve cells can multiply, integrate, or delay synaptic inputs and how information can be encoded in the voltage across the membrane, in the intracellular calcium concentration, or in the timing of individual spikes.
Key topics covered include the linear cable equation; cable theory as applied to passive dendritic trees and dendritic spines; chemical and electrical synapses and how to treat them from a computational point of view; nonlinear interactions of synaptic input in passive and active dendritic trees; the Hodgkin-Huxley model of action potential generation and propagation; phase space analysis; linking stochastic ionic channels to membrane-dependent currents; calcium- and potassium-currents and their role in information processing; the role of diffusion, buffering and binding of calcium, and other messenger systems in information processing and storage; short- and long-term models of synaptic plasticity; simplified models of single cells; stochastic aspects of neuronal firing; the nature of the neuronal code; and unconventional models of sub-cellular computation.
Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons serves as an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in cellular biophysics, computational neuroscience, and neural networks, and will appeal to students and professionals in neuroscience, electrical and computer engineering, and physics.

Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others

Daniel P. Mannix

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

bizarre yet engrossing 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book is the end all best collection of sideshow anomalies that includes both people with congenital deformities and just those with special talents. The book provides graphic pictures, detailed explanation of defects (and talents) and personal stories about famed "freaks" that are blessed (or suffer) from their uniqueness. There are more pictures then anything else and it can be quite vivid for certain ages. The book includes midgets, giants, conjoined twins, parasitic twins, bearded women, dog faced boys, rare skin condition, lobster limbs, missing limbs, fossilized bodies, those with half bodies, hermaphrodites, and many other curiosities.
The book is very easy to follow, the infomation is thorough, and it contains rare photography that I have not seen in any other book or website (such as freque.com). I am not going to be crude, but I respect people's differences and like to see what the lure was of these people in their heyday, so this book was incredibly engrossing. This definately may not be for everyone, but it is a great book on a unique subject.

Editorial Review:

Another long out of print classic book based on Mannix's personal acquaintance with sideshow stars such as the Alligator Man and the Monkey Woman, etc. Read all about the notorious love affairs of midgets; the amazing story of the elephant boy; the unusual amours of Jolly Daisy; the fat woman; the famous pinhead who inspired Verdi's "Rigoletto"; the tragedy of Betty Lou Williams and her parasitic twin; the black midget, only 34 inches tall, who was happily married to a 264-pound wife; the human torso who could sew, crochet and type; and bizarre accounts of normal humans turned into freaks-either voluntarily or by evil design! 88 astonishing photographs and additional material from the author's personal collection.

The Dynasties of China: A History

Bamber Gascoigne

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Shang, Chou, Han, T'ang, Sung, Yuan, Ming, Ch'ing — for most Westerners, they stand only as adjectives to describe a lacquer, a bronze, a silk, a watercolor. And for all the familiarity a blue and white porcelain vase from the Ming dynasty or the bright and sturdy pottery figures of horses and grooms from the T'ang may now have acquired, the history of the civilization that produced them remains obscure. So do the names of the potters and artists and philosophers and emperors and generals — except perhaps for those of Kublai Khan, who was not Chinese, and K'ung Fu Tzu — known as Confucius — who flourished a century before Socrates. Focusing upon the incidents and personalities that epitomize most vividly each of the dynasties, this lucidly narrated volume, beautifully illustrated by a lavish selection of color photographs, places in their historical context the images that came to define imperial China from its origins in 1600 B.C. to the revolution of Sun Yat-sen in October 1911. It provides a background to China's turbulent twentieth century, which is surveyed in an informative postscript, highlighting such events as the troubled presidency of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung's ruthless Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa

Stephen Oppenheimer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

About 80 millennia ago, out of one major exodus by migratory human ancestors from Africa—from Eritrea to Yemen (then to India and Australia, and eventually to Europe)—was the entire non-African world in all its racial and cultural diversity ultimately peopled; and to one prehistoric woman in Africa 150,000 years ago, all the peoples of the world can trace their genetic origin. So argues Stephen Oppenheimer in a groundbreaking volume that has stirred heated controversy among authorities in geology, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology. Thoroughly researched and meticulously reasoned, with dramatic evidence garnered from recent advances in the field of genetics through DNA analysis, The Real Eve traces the evolution of modern humankind out of a common African ancestry—for again and again, Oppenheimer's extensive genealogical research, based on our gender-specific so-called Adam and Eve genes, has led him straight back to Africa. His conclusions have placed him in direct opposition to multiregionalists, who maintain that archaic human populations evolved locally, and have unsettled many long-established anthropological assumptions and cultural prejudices to provide a fresh perspective on the nature of the human destiny that all of us on planet Earth share. Color photographs are featured in this fascinating story of our human beginnings.

Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities

Ruby K.. Payne, Philip Devol, Terie Dreussi Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Powerful Mentoring Model 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 25 people found this review helpful.

I was fortunate to attend a workshop one year ago which included this book and two of the three authors, DeVol and Dreussi-Smith. They highlighted the content of the book, to an audience of counselors, social workers, case managers, residential treatment staff for chemical dependency recovery, and prevention specialists. This book spotlights the culture of poverty, and the distinct differences in the way in which the poor, the middle class and the wealthy view the world from their unique vantage points. I was enlightened in learning to understand the frames of references of persons without savings, present time- orientation, and the differences in the way each class views, uses and perfects the resources of each cultural status.
The concept of "bridging" and mentoring is strongly presented, and many individual, organizational and systemic suggestions are made by the authors. This is an excellent resource for people who wish to or need to broaden their awareness of the "hidden rules" of each economic class, and how to provide more effective assistance to those persons wishing to improve their economic and educational status, without judgment. I highly recommend this book.

Editorial Review:

Bridges Out of Poverty takes the concepts of hidden rules of economic class and uses them to educate social workers, employers and community organizations about hte unique and sometimes hidden obstacles that individuals from poverty face.

Strategies help improve services for clients, raise retention rates for new hires from poverty, and increase understanding of the differences in economic cultures and how those differences affect opportunities for success.

The Bone Lady: Life as a Forensic Anthropologist

Mary H. Manheim

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Skip it, its just fluff 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Don't waste your time or money on this one as there are far better forensic books out there. This book was just a collection of short narratives reading more like a personal diary than any kind of scientific narrative laying out the facts of cases. I guess it lives up to its subtitle of "Life as a Forensic Anthropologist" in that she usually presents only HER part in each case with little presentation of the entire case. The forensic cases are not really the star of this book, the author is. I was frustrated with the lack of depth. Instead, read "The Body Farm" by Bill Bass. Excellent storytelling there! He gives you personal stories, but also provides all the fascinating forensic info to provide a complete picture for the cases he has investigated.

Editorial Review:

When a skeleton is all that's left to tell the story of a crime, Mary H. Manhein, otherwise known as "the bone lady", is called in. For almost two decades, Manhein has used her expertise in forensic pathology to help law enforcement agents -- locally, nationally, and internationally -- solve their most perplexing mysteries. She shares the extraordinary details of the often high-profile cases on which she works, and the science underlying her analyses. Here are Civil War skeletons, cases of alleged voodoo and witchcraft, crimes of political intrigue, and the before-and-after of facial reconstruction. Written with the compassion and humor of a born storyteller, The Bone Lady is an unforgettable glimpse into the lab where one scientist works to reveal the human stories behind the remains.