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Human Success: Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications examines the concept of human success from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Its starting point is the observation that no mammal comes close to Homo sapiens' population size, geographical range, and domination of ecological systems. How did we arrive at this point? What does it mean moving forward? This volume explores the causes of our evolutionary success, how we can grapple with excessive success in a world impacted by climate change, and what our success means for the future of our species.
List of contents
- Editor and Contributor Biographies
- 1. Introduction: The Manifold Challenges to Understanding Human Success
- Hugh Desmond and Grant Ramsey
- Part I: What is Evolutionary Success?
- 2. Evolutionary Success: Standards of Value
- Dan McShea
- 3. Human Success: A Contextual and Pluralistic View
- Marion Hourdequin
- 4. Human success as a complex of autonomy, adaptation, and niche construction
- Bernd Rosslenbroich
- Part II: Explaining Human Success
- 5. The Origin and Evolution of Human Uniqueness
- Geerat Vermeij
- 6. Wanderlust: A View from Deep Time of Dispersal, Persistence, and Human Success
- Susan Antón
- 7. Culture as a life-history character: the cognitive continuum in primates and hominins
- Matt Grove
- 8. A Gene-Culture Coevolutionary Perspective on Human Success
- Kathryn Demps and Peter Richerson
- Part III. Human Success in the Anthropocene
- 9. Anthropocene patterns in stratigraphy as a perspective on human success
- Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Colin Waters
- 10. Utter success and extensive inequity: Assessing processes, patterns, and outcomes of the human niche in the Anthropocene
- Agustín Fuentes
- 11. Adaptability and the Continuation of Human Origins
- Richard Potts
- 12. Evolving Measures of Moral Success
- Allen Buchanan and Rachell Powell
- 13. Future Human Success: Beyond Techno-Libertarianism
- Hugh Desmond
About the author
Hugh Desmond is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz University of Hannover and Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp. He received his PhD from KU Leuven, and has held research and visiting positions at Paris I-Sorbonne, KU Leuven, Princeton University, New York University, and the Hastings Center. His work centers on the philosophy and ethics of science, with particular emphasis on biology.
Grant Ramsey is a Research Professor at KU Leuven. He earned his PhD at Duke University and served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame from 2007 until 2016. His work centers on the philosophy of biology, especially the foundations of evolutionary and behavioral biology.
Summary
Human Success: Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications examines human success from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with contributions from leading paleobiologists, anthropologists, geologists, philosophers of science, and ethicists. It considers how the human species grew in success-linked metrics, such as population size and geographical range, and how it came to dominate ecological systems across the globe. It probes whether the consequences of that dominance, such as human-driven climate change and the destruction of biodiversity, mandate a rethinking of the meaning of human success. The essays in this book urge us to reflect on what has led to our apparent evolutionary success—and, most importantly, what this success implies for the future of our species.
Additional text
This admirable collection has a rich diversity of cutting-edge authors, including philosophers, biologists, and anthropologists. The sections and chapters within are well organized. The book explores the many ways humans have been and may well be successful. The volume is a rich contribution that will aid both scientists and philosophers in thinking about what is and what is not the secret of our success.
