The Importance of Evolution to Understandings of Human Nature

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone is an interdisciplinary scholar (BA: French/Comparative Literature, University of California; MA: Dance; PhD: Philosophy/Dance; 2nd PhD: incomplete [ABD] Evolutionary Biology, University of Wisconsin). She has over ninety articles in humanities, science, and art journals, as well as ten published books. She has given keynote addresses and guest lectures in Europe and in North and South America, and was awarded a Distinguished Fellowship for her research on xenophobia in the inaugural year of the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University, UK, the theme of which was 'The Legacy of Charles Darwin'.

Foreword


Acknowledgements


Introduction


1 Evolutionary Realities of Animate Life

 i Darwin


 ii Insects


 iii Biodiversity


 iv Male-Male Competition


 v 21st-Century Archetypal Exemplifications of Male-Male Competition


 vi A Return to Darwin and His Principles of Natural Selection


 vii The Pan-Animate Nature of Emotions


 viii Vindications and Elaborations of Darwin’s Foundational Insights into Emotions


 ix Chapter 1 Summation




2 Phenomenological Realities of Animate Life

 i Naturalizing Phenomenology and a Proposed Neurophenomenology


 ii Darwin’s Evolutionary Biology and Enaction


 iii Pregiven and Pregivennesses: Sorting Basic Facts of Human Life from Biased Claims


 iv The Foundational Import of Pregivennesses


 v The Confluence of a Darwinian Perspective on Animate Life and Husserl’s Phenomenological Methodology


 vi Human Experience: the Nature and Challenges of Phenomenological Analyses


 vii Research Perspectives Complementary to Husserlian Phenomenology


 viii The Neurodynamics of Embodied Minds and Naturalizing Phenomenology vs Real-Life Subject-World Relationships




3 Joint Concerns and Complementarities Linking Darwinian Evolutionary Biology and Husserlian Phenomenology

 i On the Road to Recovery: Beginning Correlations


 ii The Centrality of Methodology and of Dynamics in Understandings of Human Nature




4 The Centrality and Critical Importance of Wonder and of an Ongoing Spiral of Inquiry in Understandings of Human Nature

 i Self-imposed Ideational Limitations in the Pursuit of Human Knowledge and the Open-Ended “Wonderful” Nature of Darwin’s Thinking and Writings


 ii The Complex Experiential Nature of Wonder: Its Value, Challenges, and Importance to the Nature of Human Knowledge


 iii Obstacle #1: the Ongoing Decade of the Brain


 iv Obstacle #2: the Age of Information


 v Concluding Thoughts




References


Subject Index