The term “evolutionary psychology” worries me. It somehow implies that there are lots of non‐evolutionary psychologists out there teaching creationist psychology, alongside their flat‐earther geographical colleagues. I am surprised that the Geoplanarian Society (if there is one) has not offered to sponsor a new City Academy school. If they did, I am sure that they would want a non‐Darwinian psychologist or two on the staff.
In practice, of course, the term makes perfectly good sense. Psychology is divided into sub‐disciplines, some of which barely overlap. In particular, at a very early stage in its development, the study of behaviour was divided between the scientists' approach of measuring accurately, even if it was not at all clear what it was they were actually measuring, and the psychoanalytic approach of producing ideas that were completely unverifiable. A century earlier, what we now think of as “biology” was also a number of different disciplines – “botany”, “anatomy and physiology”, “zoological taxonomy”, rudimentary “biochemistry”, etc. that did not really inter‐relate to any great extent. It was Darwinism that gave them a common vocabulary and a common scientific core. Now, the latest developments in genetics, along with new developments in neurobiology and neuro‐imaging, are giving psychology and biology a common vocabulary and a common core of ideas. These developments have given the scientists a better idea of what they are actually measuring, and have started giving the analysts the notion that they could try to verify their ideas.
This is an edited collection of about 50 chapters summarising the latest developments in much of modern psychology (appropriate handbooks of neurochemistry and neuro‐radiology would be necessary in order to present a completely rounded picture). The target reader is clearly the postgraduate research psychologist, or just possibly the advanced undergraduate. This book is likely to be much too heavy going for the average public reference library, but all academic libraries catering for postgraduate work in any of the behavioural sciences will find it to be an important source of up to date information. Public libraries, even if they do not buy this, should be aware that evolutionary ideas are changing the face of psychology, so they will need to keep a regular eye on updating their stock.
