Human Success: Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications examines human success from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with contributions from leading paleobiologists, anthropologists, geologists, philosophers of science, and ethicists. It considers how the human species grew in success-linked metrics, such as population size and geographical range, and how it came to dominate ecological systems across the globe. It probes whether the consequences of that dominance, such as human-driven climate change and the destruction of biodiversity, mandate a rethinking of the meaning of human success. The essays in this book urge us to reflect on what has led to our apparent evolutionary successDLand, most importantly, what this success implies for the future of our species.
Editor and Contributor Biographies 1. Introduction: The Manifold Challenges to Understanding Human Success Hugh Desmond and Grant Ramsey Part I: What is Evolutionary Success? 2. Evolutionary Success: Standards of Value Dan McShea 3. Human Success: A Contextual and Pluralistic View Marion Hourdequin 4. Human success as a complex of autonomy, adaptation, and niche construction Bernd Rosslenbroich Part II: Explaining Human Success 5. The Origin and Evolution of Human Uniqueness Geerat Vermeij 6. Wanderlust: A View from Deep Time of Dispersal, Persistence, and Human Success Susan Antón 7. Culture as a life-history character: the cognitive continuum in primates and hominins Matt Grove 8. A Gene-Culture Coevolutionary Perspective on Human Success Kathryn Demps and Peter Richerson Part III. Human Success in the Anthropocene 9. Anthropocene patterns in stratigraphy as a perspective on human success Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Colin Waters 10. Utter success and extensive inequity: Assessing processes, patterns, and outcomes of the human niche in the Anthropocene Agustín Fuentes 11. Adaptability and the Continuation of Human Origins Richard Potts 12. Evolving Measures of Moral Success Allen Buchanan and Rachell Powell 13. Future Human Success: Beyond Techno-Libertarianism Hugh Desmond
Hugh Desmond is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz University of Hannover and Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp. He received his PhD from KU Leuven, and has held research and visiting positions at Paris I-Sorbonne, KU Leuven, Princeton University, New York University, and the Hastings Center. His work centers on the philosophy and ethics of science, with particular emphasis on biology. Grant Ramsey is a Research Professor at KU Leuven. He earned his PhD at Duke University and served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame from 2007 until 2016. His work centers on the philosophy of biology, especially the foundations of evolutionary and behavioral biology.
Reviews for Human Success: Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications
If you want to understand human success, its biological and cultural components, start with this groundbreaking collection. Essays authored by experts from many disciplines—paleoanthropology, biology, philosophy, and more. Top-quality scholarship, jargon free. I feel proud to be part of a community of scholars such as these. * Michael Ruse, Florida State University (Emeritus) * It is worth stressing that the current volume is an excellent collection of scholarship. It is immensely successful in bringing together complex historical narratives of hominin evolution and using them to speculate about how best to understand human success and the collective challenges in striving towards it. * Andrew Buskell, Georgia Institute of Technology *
