Men's and Women's Mating Preferences: Distinct Evolutionary Mechanisms?

Have men and women evolved sex-distinct mating preferences for short-term and long-term mating, as postulated by some evolutionary theorists? Direct tests of assumptions, consideration of confounds with gender, and examination of the same variables for both sexes suggest men and women are remarkably similar. Furthermore, cross-species comparisons indicate that humans do not evidence mating mechanisms indicative of short-term mating (e.g., large female sexual skins, large testicles). Understanding human variability in mating preferences is apt to involve more detailed knowledge of the links between these preferences and biological and chemical mechanisms associated with sexual motivation, sexual arousal, and sexual functioning.     

Evolutionary Psychology: The Wheat and the Chaff

Evolutionary approaches are on the rise in the social sciences and have the potential to bring an all–encompassing conceptual framework to the study of human behavior. Together with neuroscience, which is digging the grave of mind–body dualism, evolutionary psychology is bound to undermine the still reigning human–animal dualism. If a Darwinian reshaping of the social sciences seems inevitable, even desirable, this should not be looked at as a hostile takeover. The underlying theme of this essay is that it is time for psychologists to join the Darwinian revolution, yet the essay also critically reviews current evolutionary psychology. It questions the loose application of adaptationist thinking and the fragmentation of the genome, behavior, and the brain. From biology we learn that not every species–typical trait is necessarily advantageous, and from neuroscience we learn that not every psychological ability or tendency necessarily needs to have its own specialized brain circuitry. But even if the concept of adaptation is hard to apply, psychologists would do well to start looking at human behavior in the light of evolution.     

Evolution,depression and counselling

In this paper a framework of evolutionary psychology is used to develop a model of depression. In this model depression is seen as not normally a biochemical illness or disorder, but instead as usually due to the person becoming trapped within a psychologically activated but unwanted and inappropriate suite of natural emotions, with the activation coming from a perception of a major decline in personal usefulness that can include failure, guilt, shame or perceived rejection. A neuropsychological observation that supports this model is described. The implications of the model for counselling with depressed clients are outlined in terms of a multi-dimensional approach, oriented around perceived usefulness. It is predicted that clients receiving such counselling will recover more rapidly and be less likely to suffer a relapse than those receiving just drugs or a form of counselling that covers fewer dimensions.     

HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY AND THE GAP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. Personality may play a role in disputes between religion and science. Personality is influenced by sixteen basic desires and core values, which provide the psychological foundation of meaningful experience. How we prioritize these sixteen desires is what makes us individuals. Religious persons may place a low priority on the desire for self‐reliance (they enjoy being in need of others), whereas nonreligious scientists may place a high priority on self‐reliance. These differences may motivate religious persons to find meaning in images of psychologically supportive deities and may motivate nonreligious intellectuals to find meaning in abstract scientific principles. To bridge the schism between religion and science, we need to appreciate the extent to which spirituality is an individual experience.     

Evolution: Journey or Random Walk?

Though early ideas of evolution saw it as progressive, most modern theories see it as a random walk. The theories of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward O. Wilson, Stuart Kauffman, Steven Rose, and Robert Wesson are surveyed, showing their agreement on the fact of evolution but not on the mechanism. Evolution is an incomplete theory. Any theology should therefore be based only on its broadest features. Generally, evolution is the development of complex forms from simple ancestors. Within a Christian context, it can be seen as a journey toward the unification of all things in Christ, the ultimate complexity.     

REMEMBERING ARTHUR PEACOCKE: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

I join others who have expressed profound gratitude for the life and thought of Arthur Peacocke. I recall some high points in my interaction with him during a period of forty years as an intellectual companion and personal friend. Some similarities in our thinking about evolution, emergence, top‐down causality, and continuing creation are indicated. Four points of difference are then discussed: (1) Emergent monism or two‐aspect process events? (2) Panentheism or process theism? (3) Creation ex nihilo and/or continuing creation? (4) Voluntary or necessary limitation of God's power? Even when we differed I have benefited immensely from our ongoing interaction.     

PRIMATES AND RELIGION: A BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST'S RESPONSE TO J. WENTZEL VAN HUYSSTEEN'S ALONE IN THE WORLD?

For a biological anthropologist interested in the prehistory of religion, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen's book is welcome and resonant. Van Huyssteen's central thesis is that humans' capacity for spirituality emerges from a transformation of cognition and emotions that takes place in the symbolic realm, within Homo sapiens and apart from biology. To his thesis I bring to bear three areas of response: the abundant cognitive and emotional capacities of living apes and extinct hominids; the role of symbolic ritual in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens; and the closely intertwined nature of biology and culture in the workings of evolutionary change.     

The social semantics of Mikhail Pokrovskij and Nikolaj Marr

Criticizing the works of “Western” specialists in semantics, Soviet academician M. M. Pokrovskij (1868–1942) comes to the conclusion that social factors are essential for semantic evolution, while psychological factors constitute an intermediate link between the “external” life of a society and the semantics of the corresponding language. This conception resembles the general explanations of semantic evolution proposed by N. Ja. Marr (1864–1934). Nevertheless, despite a number of common points in the semantic theories of these two researchers, Pokrovskij’s attitude towards Marr was negative: in particular, he disagreed with the thesis of the chronological primacy of Marr’s discoveries in the domain of semantics. The article investigates why Pokrovskij had for a long time constituted an intermediate link between Russian and “Western” “traditions” in the field of semantics.

高层次医学影像技师培养与临床水平的提高

随着我国经济飞速发展,医疗技术日新月异,综合医院从国外引进的影像设备越来越先进,而影像技术人员普遍存在学历、职称偏低、知识结构老化等问题,高层次医学影像技术人才出现断层,限制了新技术的高级临床应用和开发。急需培养知识面宽、基础扎实、素质高、能力强的复合型、实用型影像专业技术人才。建议加强高层次医学影像技术人才的培养,以适应新时期综合医院医学发展对影像技术人才的要求。     

Insight without cortex: lessons from the avian brain

Insight is a cognitive feature that is usually regarded as being generated by the neocortex and being present only in humans and possibly some closely related primates. In this essay we show that especially corvids display behavioral skills within the domains of object permanence, episodic memory, theory of mind, and tool use/causal reasoning that are insightful. These similarities between humans and corvids at the behavioral level are probably the result of a convergent evolution. Similarly, the telencephalic structures involved in higher cognitive functions in both species show a high degree of similarity, although the forebrain of birds has no cortex-like lamination. The neural substrate for insight-related cognitive functions in mammals and birds is thus not necessarily based on a laminated cortical structure but can be generated by differently organized forebrains. Hence, neither is insight restricted to mammals, as predicted from a “scala naturae”, nor is the laminated cortex a prerequisite for the highest cognitive functions.