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The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 576
EAN: 9780385495172
ISBN: 038549517X
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: April 17, 2001
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: April 17, 2001
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Review:
Evolutionary psychology has been called the "new black" of science fashion, though at its most controversial, it more resembles the emperor's new clothes. Geoffrey Miller is one of the Young Turks trying to give the phenomenon a better spin. In The Mating Mind, he takes Darwin's "other" evolutionary theory--of sexual rather than natural selection--and uses it to build a theory about how the human mind has developed the sophistication of a peacock's tail to encourage sexual choice and the refining of art, morality, music, and literature.
Where many evolutionary psychologists see the mind as a Swiss army knife, and cognitive science sees it as a computer, Miller compares it to an entertainment system, evolved to stimulate other brains. Taking up the baton from studies such as Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, it's a dizzyingly ambitious project, which would be impossibly vague without the ingenuity and irreverence that Miller brings to bear on it. Steeped in popular culture, the book mixes theories of runaway selection, fitness indicators, and sensory bias with explanations of why men tip more than women and how female choice shaped (quite literally) the penis. It also extols the sagacity of Mary Poppins. Indeed, Miller allows ideas to cascade at such a torrent that the steam given off can run the risk of being mistaken for hot air).
That large personalities can be as sexually enticing as oversize breasts or biceps may indeed prove comforting, but denuding sexual chemistry can be a curiously unsexy business, akin to analyzing humor. As a courting display of Miller's intellectual plumage, though, The Mating Mind is formidable, its agent-provocateur chest swelled with ideas and articulate conjecture. While occasionally his magpie instinct may loot fool's gold, overall it provides an accessible and attractive insight into modern Darwinism and the survival of the sexiest. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk
At once a pioneering study of evolution and an accessible and lively reading experience, The Mating Mind marks the arrival of a prescient and provocative new science writer. Psychologist Geoffrey Miller offers the most convincing–and radical–explanation for how and why the human mind evolved. Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the traits that make us human. Scientists have traditionally explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but Miller argues that they were sexual attractors, not side effects. He bases his argument on Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, which until now has played second fiddle to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and draws on ideas and research from a wide range of fields, including psychology, economics, history, and pop culture. Witty, powerfully argued, and continually thought-provoking, The Mating Mind is a landmark in our understanding of our own species.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Clever, intelligent, full of insights
I found this book after I started to search the Internet researching the idea I had - I thought that the human mind developed like a peacock's tail, as a way to attract females, and only later became useful for other purposes and gave other survival advantages. That was just a raw idea, and to my surprise and delight I found that I was not the first one to think of it. This book really explores this idea in depth, gives good arguments for it and deals with its weak sides as well.
One thing ... Read More
Rating: - Geoffrey Miller is Charles Darwin on Steroids!
Actually I had absolutely no interest in evolutionary psychology and sexual selection. Although I am a psychologist I do not read much about this topics. However, checking David DeAngelo, one of the most re-knowned dating gurus or dating advisers, I realized he constantly quoted The Mating Mind on his interviews and seminars.
The fact is, that my topic of interest was human attraction and sexuality, to my surprise, human attraction more than a social behavior it is a biological behavior triggered ... Read More
Rating:  - My mind will never see itself in the same way again!
This book was a very enjoyable read, both for the ideas it proposed and for the personality of the author.
What impressed me the most about the author was his willingness to explore aspects of reality that, by their basic nature, cannot be seen or probed with scientific instruments. What do I mean? Well, I am strongly of the persuasion that consideration of the internal, subjective experiences of living organisms is completely inseparable from any scientific understanding of life, and that this ... Read More
Rating: - Every marriage counselor should have a copy
Although this book doesn't directly deal with marital problems per se, reading it helps to gain understanding of both what is, and what is NOT particularly "natural" in man-woman relations (mating behavior).
As other reviewers have indicated, the main thrust of the book is to chronicle the thinking of evolutionary scientists as to the nature of non-directly survival oriented selection, i.e. selection outside the realm of the conventional "natural selection" of traits needed to survive to reproductive ... Read More
Rating:  - Some Credibility Checks On An Active Imagination
This young, obviously learned author has really "pushed the envelope" with his radically reductive explanations of human nature, and human behavior. Perhaps the time is ripe for an astute application of Sir Karl Popper's "falsifiability criterion," in order to restore some balance to an otherwise very creative account; for while creativity and imagination are essential to the advancement of science (or any other human endeavor), so is rigor. On the humorous side, I don't recommend that "dashing young suitors" ... Read More
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