Description
While acknowledging that, in an uncertain world, it is easy to "blame it on the genes," Oyama claims that the renewed trend toward genetic determinism colors the way we think about everything from human evolution to sexual orientation and personal responsibility. She presents instead a view that focuses on how a wide variety of developmental factors interact in the multileveled developmental systems that give rise to organisms. Shifting attention away from genes and the environment as causes for behavior, she convincingly shows the benefits that come from thinking about life processes in terms of developmental systems that produce, sustain, and change living beings over both developmental and evolutionary time.
Providing a genuine alternative to genetic and environmental determinism, as well as to unsuccessful compromises with which others have tried to replace them, Evolution's Eye will fascinate students and scholars who work in the fields of evolution, psychology, human biology, and philosophy of science. Feminists and others who seek a more complex view of human nature will find her work especially congenial.
Collection of essays by Susan Oyama looking at the implications of developmental systems approach for evolutionary theory, specifically for nature-nurture oppositions, ideas of essential human nature, and the limits of human agency and possibility.
About the Author
Susan Oyama is Professor of Psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York. Her book The Ontogeny of Information is also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews
"Oyama writes elegantly and from a deep intellectual base. This alternative view to the dominant genetic determinism will be of interest to all who seek a more complex view of human nature. It is an excellent book, beautifully composed."-Katherine Nelson, City University of New York
"Susan Oyama's Ontogeny of Information provided a navigational chart for researchers seeking to avoid the shoals of the nature-nurture dichotomy. Here, in Evolution's Eye, she good-humoredly unmasks the rhetorical stratagems of reflexive genecentrism, while continuing to strengthen the case for the integrative, multifocal approach of developmental systems theory."-Helen E. Longino, University of Minnesota
"To think of nature and nurture as two distinct categories is not only wrong, Susan Oyama convincingly argues, but doing so hobbles our attempts to understand the nature of development and evolution at every level. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard."-Evelyn Fox Keller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Book Information
ISBN 9780822324720
Author Susan Oyama
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 503g