prolog

Part 1: Evolutionary Anthropology
: A new anthropology blossoming in Darwin's garden of knowledge

1 Humans Are 'Darwinian Machines' - The Challenge of Evolutionary Anthropology
2 Where Does Human Uniqueness Come From? - The Evolution of Imitative Power and the Origins of Civilization
3 Where is human uniqueness engraved? - The neurology of imitation
4 What are the common evolutionary principles that govern nature? - Memes and the general replicator theory
5. Is there a boundary between human and nonhuman? - Actor networks and intentional systems

Part 2: The New Evolution of the Humanities
: From sociology to religious studies, moral psychology, and innovation theory

6 In what sense are humans social animals? - Toward the naturalization of sociality
7 Why We Get Hooked on Porn - The Evolution of Sexual Fantasy
8 Why Religious Worldviews Persist - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
9 Where do morality's roots lie? - The evolution and psychology of morality
10 Does the mind exist outside the brain? - A critique of the embodied mind theory.
11 How Does Innovation Come? - Principles of Evolutionary Innovation Learned from Nature

Epilogue
main
References
Search

Evolutionary Anthropology: A New Anthropology Blossomed in Darwin's Garden of Knowledge

Charles Darwin, who cultivated his ideas about 'natural selection' by creating a vegetable garden and greenhouse in his backyard and conducting various interesting experiments.
Darwin's garden was a laboratory of knowledge, a place of convergence, and a breeding ground for new values.
Darwin's theory of evolution, born here, became a rich intellectual soil in itself, giving birth to new theories that changed the 20th century, and is now expanding beyond the realm of biology to include studies on humans and society.

Professor Jang Dae-ik, an evolutionary scholar who has sought to understand humans and society within the framework of evolutionary theory, has culminated in a book that has spanned the past decade.
"Darwin's Garden" introduces new knowledge and ideas that have blossomed from the theory of evolution, and argues that science will now become the humanities of the 21st century.
Professor Jang Dae-ik's critical awareness, which was occasionally revealed in his previous works, "Darwin's Study" and "Darwin's Table," is concretized in this book and established as an independent theory. This concludes the Darwin trilogy, which provides a new perspective on our society from the forefront of knowledge.

Why is scientific anthropology necessary? Is a true convergence of science and the humanities possible? In this book, Professor Jang Dae-ik reveals his interdisciplinary approach as an evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science, answering the questions we face today.
First, in Part 1, evolutionary anthropology is presented, which redefines humans from the perspective of evolutionary theory.
Here, the theory of evolution expands beyond the study of plants and animals (biology) to encompass humans (humanities) and artifacts (culture).
Part 2, which can be considered an application of evolutionary anthropology, examines sociology, sexology, religious studies, moral psychology, mind-body theory, and innovation theory, revealing new aspects of human nature from a perspective different from that of existing academic disciplines.

Beyond genetic machines to memetic machines
General replicator theory encompassing animals, humans, and artifacts

The exploration of human nature is the answer to the question of why humans are so unique.
From biologists after Darwin to modern psychologists, humans have been studied as an extension of animals and as a distinction from animals.
The first of the important insights they taught us is that we are 'survival machines of genes', and the second is that we are 'survival machines of memes'.
In other words, humans were able to develop unique sociality and culture and lead the explosion of civilization by not only passing on genes to future generations, but also non-genetically passing on knowledge and skills to future generations through the sophisticated imitation ability that evolved over a long period of time.


From this perspective, Professor Jang Dae-ik proposes a theory that can comprehensively explain the universality and uniqueness of human nature by considering both genetic and memetic aspects of fitness.
Evolutionary anthropology is the scientific exploration of human nature, an attempt to understand the human mind and behavior from the perspectives of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, primatology, and brain science.
The 'general replicator theory' presented here is the essence of evolutionary anthropology, a theory that extends evolution beyond animals to humans and artificial objects.


Professor Jang Dae-ik suggests the necessity of a general replicator theory by pointing out the limitations of the existing replicator theory and suggesting the need to consider memetic fitness. He further verifies the validity of this theory by citing research results from primatology and neuroscience.
Furthermore, after clarifying the points where this theory connects with existing humanities, we examine how the two disciplines can influence each other and discuss areas for further improvement to approach a fundamental understanding of human nature.
Evolutionary anthropology allows us to think broadly about humans not only as a biological species, but also as beings who formed the civilization that dominated the Earth.

ㆍA new evolution in the humanities
: From sociology to religious studies, moral psychology, and innovation theory

How can we understand the human mind and behavior from an evolutionary anthropological perspective? Evolutionary theory extends beyond biology to encompass all academic disciplines, profoundly influencing the nature and methodology of each discipline.
These include evolutionary biology, which has overturned the foundation of essentialism that formed the foundation of Western philosophy; evolutionary psychology, which offers a new explanation for the human mind and behavior; and primatology and social psychology, which examine the unique sociality of humans.
Primatology, in particular, compares the behavior of humans with that of chimpanzees, our cousins, and traces the evolutionary origins of human sociality, revealing surprising truths about humans.


For example, Robin Dunbar's 'social brain' theory predicts that the size of human social groups is around 150 people, based on the size of the human neocortex, and argues that social interactions such as conversation evolved to maintain groups of this size.
Primatologists, who have also noted the uniquely developed white sclera in humans, have hypothesized that the prominent white sclera allows humans to easily read each other's pupils and use this to send meaningful cooperative signals.
All of these studies are influencing existing psychology by providing scientific evidence for the origins of human sociality.


There is also work being done to reexamine the fundamental premises of each discipline by uncovering the biological origins of value.
Sexology actively embraces the evolutionary theory of parental investment to trace the origins of our sexual behavior.
That is, the sex that has invested more in its offspring (in the case of humans, females) is more selective in its mate selection, while the sex that has not invested more in its offspring engages in fierce intra-sex competition for mates.
This trend may explain why so many men enjoy pornography, while women prefer romance novels.

Evolutionary theory can also provide unique insights into the origins of morality, psychology, and the relationship between mind and body.
Moral psychologists recently observed which brain regions are activated in moral judgment situations using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and discovered that emotions and intuition play as important a role as reason in moral judgment.
If intuition has such a significant impact on decision-making, traditional moral psychology, which views moral judgment solely as a matter of reason, should be reconsidered.

Even the theory of evolution is very useful in finding the 'principle of innovation', which is a hot topic in management.
For the past 4 billion years, nature has been a veritable playground of innovation.
From the emergence of bacteria to the birth of multicellular organisms to the emergence of humans, nature has produced innovations that would be difficult to achieve through gradual evolution alone.
So, can't we also learn the principles of innovation from nature? Professor Jang Dae-ik seeks to elucidate the principles of evolutionary innovation through evo-devo.
From sociology to religious studies, moral psychology, and innovation theory, the latter part of this book explores the path forward for the humanities in the 21st century by discussing what insights evolutionary anthropology can offer us in understanding humanity.


ㆍPracticing the crossbreeding of science and humanities

Why science? Can science go beyond the "study of facts" to become the "study of universal human values"? Many people question the role of science and are reluctant to judge humanity within a scientific framework.
The horrors of eugenics and nuclear war still linger in our memories, making us fearful of science interfering directly with human society.
However, science has continued to produce new facts about the universe, nature, humanity, and society, and now the form of value is also changing according to the facts produced by science.
In such a changing landscape, can we continue to reject science? In this book, Jang Dae-ik argues that science can become a discipline of values, attempting to integrate science and the humanities.
According to him, the scientific worldview is the best framework for understanding ourselves and society through rational reasoning, verification, and scrutiny, and it is a reliable standard in these chaotic times.


So how can science and the humanities be integrated? Many people advocate for this convergence, but few have actually demonstrated how it can be achieved.
The results of fusion often simply overlap the two disciplines, disappointing readers who expected a new creation.
For true fusion to occur, crossbreeding is necessary, unearthing the most fundamental academic DNA of the two disciplines to be merged and mixing them at that level.
So what is the code that makes the crossbreeding of science and humanities possible?

Professor Jang Dae-ik answers, “It is human nature.”
The humanities, as well as the sciences (evolutionary studies in this case), ultimately share the same question: "What is human nature?"
Therefore, true convergence can be achieved by examining how the two disciplines have answered this question.
In other words, a true fusion of the two disciplines can be achieved when science answers questions about human nature from the perspective of the humanities with empirical data, and when science's new discoveries about human nature provide truly important insights to the humanities.
This is exactly what Professor Jang Dae-ik attempted in this book.