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The study of knowledge has for over two
thousand years been a province of philosophy. But today
we are beginning to develop a science of knowledge. As this
pioneering book makes clear, research is uncovering unexpected
links between our capacity for knowledge and the struggle
for survival and reproductive success. If we really want
to understand the nature of learning, rationality and intelligent
thought, it is now less to philosophers than to evolutionary
biologists that we should turn.
To elucidate this startling thesis, Henry
Plotkin explores the idea of Universal Darwinism. The same
basic mechanisms -- random generations of variants, selection
of the 'fittest' and retention of the survivors -- may underlie
not only the origin of species but the functioning of the
immune system, the development of language and even the
progress of science. The human capacity to acquire knowledge
is both a result of our evolutionary development and a process
that itself develops in an evolutionary fashion. And natural
selection itself can usefully be understood as a process
of the acquisition of biological knowledge: the seemingly
miraculous 'fit' between an animal and its environment --
between, for example, the coloration of a camouflaged insect
and the surface on which it lives -- represents a laboriously
attained 'knowledge' of its surroundings acquired over many
generations of selection.
For humans this kind of knowledge is not
enough. Although we use instinct when confronted with dangers
like a charging bull, we must also acquire knowledge as
individuals to guide us in an unpredictable and complex
world. Advanced intellectual abilities are spin-offs of
the more fundamental forms of knowledge essential to survival.
After instinct and knowledge acquired by
trial and error comes the jointly shared knowledge we call
culture, the final level on which we all operate. Plotkin
illustrates his argument with a fascinating range of examples:
the Somerset-born chaffinches, brought up in Sussex, who
acquire a Sussex 'dialect' of bird song; the space scientists
using the principles of learning from experience as they
built the Mars Rover; the male flies who only manage to
mate with ferocious females by offering them 'gift-wrapped'
delicacies (or tricking them with 'gift-wrapped' pebbles).
The result is a book which is clear, lively and of breathtaking
scope, since it offers nothing less than a compelling three-dimensional
theory of our nature.
Born in 1940 in South Africa, Henry Plotkin
came to England in the 1960s where he obtained a doctorate
in physiological psychology and worked for the Medical Research
Council. Awarded an MRC Travelling Fellowship he worked
at Stanford University for a time and returned to the UK
in 1972. Dr. Plotkin was appointed a Lecturer in Psychology
at University College London in 1972 and a Reader in 1988.
He has edited a number of collections of essays in the field
of evolutionary epistemology, and acts as an editorial advisor
to several scholarly journals.
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