Some might argue that we already
know all we need to know about human evolution.  After all, works conjuring up intriguing
pictures of human evolution have been accumulating on bookshelves in a
seemingly boundless flood of catchy titles and creative accounts for quite some
time. But Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition
by Kim Sterelny is different.  It is an engaging, yet provocative, book that
examines current theories of human cognitive architecture and functioning
through the eyes of original speculations about the evolution of the human
species. 

As it would be expected by a book
within the functionalist/evolutionary tradition, its organizing principle is
that cognition, as we know it, is the outcome of an evolutionary process guided
by environmental demands. Yet, the book promotes some thought-provoking
speculations about human uniqueness, the relationship between folk psychology
and scientific theories of human cognition, and proposes an alternative account
of modular views of human cognition.  Altogether, Sterelny develops an
interesting and original narrative around a plausible account of the evolution
of human cognition and its current state, even though this account does not
necessarily translate into easily testable postulates.  For instance, he proposes
that human uniqueness is based on three factors linked to evolutionary
selection: cooperation, human niche construction (discussed above), and
plasticity.  He argues that although none of these factors alone makes us
unique, together they account for the evolution of human cognition and for its
current state as a rather unique entity compared to that of other species.

Notwithstanding testability, one of
the most thought-provoking proposals by Sterelny is that human evolution has
been marked by the active role that human beings have exhibited in structuring
the social, physical, and epistemic environments of their distant past, which
can account for most of the resilience and rapidity of their offspring’s
acquisition of mainly human-specific skills.  Thus, human beings are not only
responsible for molding the demands that these environments have placed on them,
but also for devising environments in which the skills that make them most
human can be easily acquired and transmitted to other generations, thereby
considerably reducing the role that popular nativist conceptions of cognitive
development attribute to genetic endowment.  In this vein, Sterelny argues
against the notion that human cognition is massively modular (i.e., composed of
functionally encapsulated, autonomous, domain-specific, innately structured
computational mechanisms). He also proposes that human cognition is largely
self-engineered, even though he does not deny its dependency on dual
inheritance systems, those based on genes and those relying on
information-sharing devices.

The book is not for neophytes to
scientific conceptions of human cognition, but for scholars who are interested
in critically examining these conceptions as portrayed by functionalist, evolutionary,
and nativist traditions, and those eager to debate the innovative ideas that
are bound to emerge from exploring the contradictions, limitations, or mere
weaknesses of the epistemic breath of such traditions.  The book is a powerful
critical tool of analysis for evolutionary psychology, a field criticized for
attributing cognitive adaptations to innate mechanisms that are merely
supported by niche construction and for ignoring adaptations to variability
itself. Similarly, it can serve as a tool of analysis for behavioral ecology, a
field also criticized for underestimating the role of niche construction and
non-genetic inheritance. A must-read book for any scholar of cognition and,
most of all, for evolutionary psychologists.

© 2003 Maura Pilotti

Maura Pilotti,
Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Dowling
College, New
York.

Categories: Psychology, Philosophical