Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature

Reviews, etc.
Back Cover Endorsements
MIT Press Page
Reply to the Evolutionary Psychologists

Reviews, etc.

"In Adapting Minds Buller meticulously and relentlessly dismantles the pretensions of leading evangelists of the orthodoxy.... Buller hopes that Adapting Minds can clear the way for some actual science about how evolution equips us to have psychologies. Anyone with a serious interest in evolution, psychology or humanity should read it to free their mind for that task."
--Mike Holderness, "We're Not the Flintstones," New Scientist (April 16, 2005) [full review]

"... the most persuasive critique of evo psych I have encountered.... After Adapting Minds, it is impossible to ever again think that human behavior is the Stone Age artifact that evolutionary psychology claims."
--Sharon Begley, "Evolutionary Psych May Not Explain Our Behavior After All," Wall Street Journal (April 29, 2005) [full article]

"Adapting Minds is destined to become required reading among evolutionary psychology's detractors. But ... it will be read with interest by evolutionary psychologists too. Buller provides a useful overview of the field and of the current debates. He challenges evolutionary psychologists to reexamine which of their theoretical commitments are important and why. He advances alternative evolutionary hypotheses, which ... could contribute to its ongoing refinement."
--Oliver Curry, "A Change of Mind? Putting Evolutionary Psychology to the Test," Nature (May 26, 2005)

J.R. Minkel, "Psyching Out Evolutionary Psychology: Interview with David J. Buller," Scientific American Online (July 4, 2005) [full interview]

"On my bad days, I sometimes wonder what philosophers are for.... I'm happy to report, however, that books like David J. Buller's Adapting Minds go some way towards dispelling the gloom.... The second part of Buller's book, a critical review of the empirical data that have been offered in support of EP, does what has needed doing for years: it makes clear how exiguous these data are. Buller goes through the classical results, showing pretty convincingly how often they are inconclusive with respect to the theses they are alleged to support."
--Jerry Fodor, "The Selfish Gene Pool," The Times Literary Supplement (July 27, 2005) [full review]

"The author’s restraint and generous stance ensure that evolutionary psychologists have to take Adapting Minds seriously.... I highly commend [Buller] for having written an outstanding book. It sets the standard for the continuing debates on evolutionary psychology."
--Johan Bolhuis, "We're Not Fred or Wilma," Science (July 29, 2005) [full review available through the author's website]

"Buller persuasively argues that while evolutionary forces likely did play a role in shaping our minds, the assumptions and methods that have dominated EP are weak."
--Amanda Schaffer, "Cave Thinkers: How Evolutionary Psychology Gets Evolution Wrong," Slate (August 16, 2005) [full article]

"... the most widely accessible, informed, sophisticated and carefully written systematic critique of evolutionary psychology on the market. It is an important book...."
--Harmon R. Holcomb III, "Buller Does to Evolutionary Psychology what Kitcher Did to Sociobiology," Evolutionary Psychology (November 20, 2005) [full review]

Back Cover

"David Buller's searching critique of evolutionary psychology is intended to make the field stronger. He shows how much philosophy can contribute to an intense and ongoing scientific debate."
--David Sloan Wilson, Binghamton University, author of Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

"Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology is measured, logical, and clearly developed. It is also devastating. Buller does not seek to refute the entirety of evolutionary psychology by finding a single magic bullet. Rather, he attends to the details, finding a variety of serious problems in the different arguments that evolutionary psychologists deploy. This is philosophy of science in the trenches, and it is excellent."
--Elliott Sober, Hans Reichenbach Professor and William Vilas Research Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"How do you tell the difference between evolutionary psychology as popular culture and as science? Buller solves the problem. He disentangles convictions born of everyday intuition from the thinking and evidence that are necessary for a scientific understanding of human cognition and behavior in an evolutionary perspective. In clear and accessible prose, he delivers a much-needed analysis of current theory and research claiming to unlock human nature. This book is essential for evolutionary psychologists, their critics, and hungry audiences."
--Linnda R. Caporael, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

"This is a superb book, wonderfully clear in thought and expression. The evolutionary psychology program represented by Pinker, Cosmides, and their allies has already been the target of impressive theoretical discussion, but this has focused mostly on the assumptions they make about evolutionary theory and human paleobiology. Buller covers this material with exemplary clarity, but the real strength of his work lies in his searching critique of the experimental case for evolutionary psychology. His is by far the best treatment of these issues I have ever read. In case after case, Buller shows that the experimental case for the existence of Darwinian algorithms is much weaker than even skeptics like me have supposed."
--Kim Sterelny, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Australian National University