
A depiction evolutionary psychology, the explanation of mind and ideas through the lens of Darwin-based evolutionary theory. (Ѻ)

A depiction evolutionary psychology, the explanation of mind and ideas through the lens of Darwin-based evolutionary theory. (Ѻ)

In science, evolutionary psychology is the study of the mind and motives from the point of view of evolution; being a synthesis of psychology and evolutionary biology. [1] Dylan Evans defines evolutionary psychology as the combination of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology. [15]

Evolutionary psychology can also be defined as the study of the human psyche in the context of evolutionary anthropology, as many of its topics often delve into anthropological subjects. A claim often made by detractors is that evolutionary psychology is simply sociobiology renamed in efforts to escape opprobrium. [2]

History
The first mentioning of a new branch of psychology based on evolution principles came from English naturalist Charles Darwin who at the end of his classic 1859 treatise On the Origin of Species stated:

“In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researchers. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”

The term "evolutionary psychology" was coined in 1890 by American psychologist William James in his The Principles of Psychology. From his section “Evolutionary Psychology Demands a Mind-Dust”, to give a representative example, he states: [16]

“As evolutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all the new forms of being that make their appearance are really nothing more than results of the redistribution of the original and unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains’ and the ‘evolution’ of the brain, if understood, would be simply the account of who the atoms came to be so caught and jammed. In this story now new natures, no factors not present at the beginning, are introduced at any later stage.”

The founders of evolutionary psychology are American psychologist David Buss, along with Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Don Symons, Martin Daly, and Margo Wilson. [12] Key among this group is Buss who in 1975 published the first outlines of this subject in a term paper, modeled on primate comparisons, which argued that main reason men have evolved a status striving motive is because higher status produces increased sexual opportunities. The first modern treatise on human evolutionary psychology, according to Buss, was American anthropologist Donald Symons’ 1979 book The Evolution of Human Sexuality. [3] Buss and Symons soon thereafter began to collaborate. Soon thereafter, Buss conducted a 1982 cross-cultural study of 10,047 participants on human mating. Buss published and promoted his findings in the excellent 1994 book The Evolution of Desire. [4]


A depiction of the some of the tenets of evolutionary psychology, those of measurements: waist-to-hip ratio, the golden ratio, symmetry, among others.

A depiction of the some of the tenets of evolutionary psychology, those of measurements: waist-to-hip ratio, the golden ratio, symmetry, among others.

During this period, Buss began to influence, interact, and debate with graduate student Leda Cosmides and her husband John Tooby. The 1987 essay “From Evolution to Behavior: Evolutionary Psychology as the Missing Link”, by Cosmides and Tooby, seems to be the first dominant coining of evolutionary psychology as a subject. [6] This synergy resulted in the noted 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, by Cosmides and Tooby (edited by Canadian anthropologist Jerome Barkow). [5]

The first textbook on evolutionary psychology was Buss’ 1999 Evolutionary Psychology. [1] The first graduate program in evolutionary psychology was established about this time at the University of Texas at Austin, under the direction of Buss. The Evolutionary Psychology journal was launched in 2003. [7]

Entropy
The 1992 book The Adapted Mind gives one of the first speculations on entropy in relation to evolution and psychology: [13]

“Entropic effects of many types act to introduce functional disorder into the design of organisms. They are recognizable by the lack of coordination that they produced within the architecture or between it and the environment, as well as by the fact that they frequently vary between individuals. Classes of entropic processes include mutation, evolutionarily unprecedented environmental change, individual exposure to unusual circumstances, and developmental accidents. Of course, one can decompose organisms into properties (or holistic relations) according to any of an infinite set of alterative systems. But, unless one applies a categorization system designed to capture their functional designs or adaptations, organisms will seem to be nothing but spandrels, chemistry, and entropy.”

Although this statement is unreferenced, it would seem logical that this logic was culled, indirectly, from English evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher's 1930 entropy-fitness theories. [14]

Thermodynamics
The first publication in evolutionary psychology to incorporate thermodynamics logic was the 2002 book The Origin of Minds by American neuroscientists Peggy La Cerra and Roger Bingham, which supposedly is said to have "explained how entropy drove the design of the human mind". [8] The book, however, is very elementary, mentioning the word entropy only twice, describing it as "disorder and randomness", and arguing that "life forms owe their temporary victory against entropy to an evolved capacity to acquire energy and to use it to survive and reproduce."

This premise later evolved into a set of articles in 2003 attempting to formulate psychological laws based on the second law of thermodynamics. [9] The attempt, however, seems to be very rudimentary. Tooby and Cosmides, for instance, in 2005, follow the "degradation force" view of entropy in stating that with regard to genes and design: “self-reproducing systems could not exist unless there were adaptations that conserved the functional design against entropy from one generation to the next.” [10]

Human chemistry
Much of the development of American chemical engineer Libb Thims’ Human Chemistry textbook, particularly regarding the thermodynamical nature, structure, and composition of the human chemical bond, was based on findings from evolutionary psychology.

Symmetry, in face and body, for instance, is universally viewed as attractive. Stable long-term marriage bonds are found to have a ratio of attraction-to-repulsion of 5-to-1 (Gottman stability ratio). The formation of stable chemical bondings are those typically characterized by a decrease in the Gibbs free energy of the system evolution over time or a negative in the change in the Gibbs energy ΔG over the extent of the reaction. Subsequently, the recognition of symmetry in the psyche must have an evolutionary psychology explanation, and this explanation must find quantification in the bonds of the family (or relationships), extended family, and those of social life. [11]

Hmolscience
A 2012 pearltree, made by user jazzpanda, showing one take on how human chemistry, human thermodynamics, human molecular theory, and evolutionary psychology overlap and intertwine, so to speak, in regards to the science of interpersonal relationships. [16]

See also
● Evolutionary thermodynamics
● Thims’ mate selection book collection – Dating Sites Wiki

References
1. Buss, David M. (1999). Evolutionary Psychology: the New Science of the Mind. Needham Heights, MA: A Viacom Co.
2. Konner, Melvin. (2003). The Tangled Wing (pg. xvii). MacMillian.
3. Symons, Donald. (1979). The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
4. Buss, David M. (1994). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books.
5. Barkow, Jerome H., Cosmides, Leda and Tooby, John. (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
6. Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (1987) "From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link" in J. Dupre (ed.), The latest on the best: Essays on evolution and optimality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
7. Evolutionary Psychology - a journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior.
8. (a) La Cerra, Peggy and Bingham, Roger. (2002). The Origin of Mind: Evolution, Uniqueness, and the New Science of the Self (pgs. 11, 222-23). New York: Harmony Books.
(b) La Cerra, Peggy. (2003). “The First Law of Psychology is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: The Energetic Evolution Model of the Mind and Generation of Human Psychological Phenomena.” [PDF]. Human Nature Review, 3. 440-47.
9. Tooby, John, Cosmides, Leda, and Barrett, H.C. (2003). “The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the First law of Psychology: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology and the Theory of Tandem, Coordinated Inheritances: Comment on Lickliter and Honeycutt [PDF], Psychological Bulletin.
10. Buss, David M. (editor) (2005). The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, (ch. 1: Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology, by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, pgs: 8, 21, 35, 67). Wiley-IEEE.
11. (a) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume One), (preview), (Google books). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
(b) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two), (preview), (Google books). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
12. Email correspondence between David Buss and Libb Thims on 20 January 2009.
13. ibid, The Adapted Mind, pg. 63.
14. Fisher, Ralph. A. (1930) The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, (pgs. 36-37), Clarendon Press, Oxford.
15. Evans, Dylan. (2010). Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology: a Graphic Guide, illustrated by Oscar Zarate. Gutenberg Press.
16. Jazzpanda (EP, HC, HT) – Pearltress.com.
17. James, William. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (pg. 146). Publisher.

Further reading
● Ridley, Matt. (1993). The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Penguin.
● Wright, Robert. (1994). The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. New York: Vintage Books.
● Small, Meredith F. (1995). What’s Love Got to Do with It? The Evolution of Human Mating. New York: Anchor Books.
● Ridley, Matt. (1996). The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Penguin.
● Miller, Geoffrey. (2000). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Anchor books.
● Miller, Alan S. and Kanazawa, Satoshi. (2007). Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire: Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do. New York: A Perigee Book.

External links
● Evolutionary psychology – Wikipedia.