KIM STERELNY The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique
KIM STERELNY The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique
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KIM STERELNY 进化学徒：进化如何使人类变得独特
DOI：
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发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
T. Lewens
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
T. Lewens
当哲学家们开始用他们学科的传统摘要（包括各种形式的概念分析和形而上学的思辨）来表达怀疑时，有些人建议我们的角色应该是把许多不同科学的结果汇集在一起，目的是为我们在自然中的位置提供一个平衡和连贯的形象，这个形象既有概念上的纪律，又有经验调查的适当基础。这种哲学的综合使命声明所带来的一个问题是，它使这项工作要求太高：任何人都不可能在如此广泛的领域中获得必要的批判性掌握。Kim Sterelny的精彩新书将人种学、理论生物学、认知科学和生物人类学的成果编织在一起，为其他旨在进行此类综合的人提供了令人生畏的可能性证明。这本书的副标题表明了它的主要目标：斯泰利尼旨在概述我们与其他物种相比的独特能力，并解释我们如何获得这些能力。不出所料，他认为人类最显著的特征是我们构建、增强和调动大量共享信息仓库的能力。当我们研究斯泰利尼对我们如何如此擅长这些活动的问题给出的答案时，惊喜就来了。第一，本书中的哲学内容相对较少，如果“哲学”指的是在我们的专业英国人J.菲尔的书中进行的那种讨论的话。Sci. 65（2014），185-189
As philosophers have begun to express scepticism with traditional briefs for their discipline—including various forms of conceptual analysis and metaphysical speculation—some have suggested instead that our role should be to draw together the results of many different sciences, with the aim of providing a balanced and coherent image of our place in nature that is both conceptually disciplined and properly grounded in empirical enquiry. One problem levelled at this synthetic mission statement for philosophy is that it makes the business too demanding: it is simply implausible that anyone can attain the necessary critical mastery of such a wide range of fields. Kim Sterelny’s wonderful new book, which knits together results from ethnography, theoretical biology, cognitive science, and biological anthropology, constitutes an intimidating possibility proof for others who would aim at such syntheses. The book’s subtitle indicates its main goal: Sterelny aims to outline our distinctive capacities when compared with other species, and to explain how we came to acquire those capacities. Unsurprisingly, he argues that the most salient feature of humans is our ability to construct, augment, and mobilize vast storehouses of shared information. The surprises come when we examine the answers Sterelny gives to the question of how we got to be so good at these activities. First, there is comparatively little philosophy in this book, if by ‘philosophy’ one means the sort of discussion that goes on in the pages of our professional Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 65 (2014), 185–189