Homo Novus - A Human Without Illusions

Converging evidence from disciplines including sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and human biology forces us to adopt a new idea of what it means to be a human. As cherished concepts such as free will, naïve realism, humans as creation's crowning glory fall and our moral roots in ape group dynamics become clearer, we have to take leave of many concepts that have been central to defining our humanness. What emerges is a new human, the homo novus, a human being without illusions.Leading authors from many different fields explore these issues by addressing a range of illusions and providing evidence for the need, despite considerable reluctance, to relinquish some of our most cherished ideas about ourselves.

List of contents

Humans Are Exceptional.- The Position of Man in the Cosmos.- Living Differences.- Nothing to Talk About.- We Are Independent of Our Sociobiological Roots.- The True Egoist Is Cooperative.- The Social Brain and Its Implications.- Why Most Theories Get It Wrong.- The Biological Imperative Doesn't Matter to Us.- Mortality Crises and Their Consequences for Human Life Histories.- Costs and Consequences of Reproduction.- Height and Reproductive Success.- The Past Doesn't Echo in Our Heads.- Developmental Psychology Without Dualistic Illusions.- The Psychology of Families.- Moral, Religion and Culture Are Social Constructions.- Moral Normativity Is (Naturally) Grown.- The Origins of Symbolic Culture.- Belief in Melanesia.- We Are Free in What We Want.- Free Will.- Could I Have Done Otherwise?.- Epilogue.- Modern Illusions of Humankind.

Product details

• Assisted by: Ulrich J. Frey (Editor), Charlotte Störmer (Editor), Kai P. Willführ (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 14.09.2010
• EAN: 9783642121418
• ISBN: 978-3-642-12141-8
• No. of pages: 291
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 20 mm x 240 mm
• Weight: 592 g
• Illustrations: XIV, 291 p.
• Series: The Frontiers Collection
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology; Anthropologie, Soziologie, Psychologie, Religion, B, Kognitive Psychologie, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Popular psychology, biotechnology, Epistemology, Cognition & cognitive psychology, Behavioral Sciences and Psychology, Sociology, general, Philosophie: Epistemologie und Erkenntnistheorie, cognitive psychology, Evolutionary Biology, Physics and Astronomy, Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge, Popular Science in Psychology