Darwins Bridge: Uniting the Sciences and Humanities

Edited by Joseph Carroll, Dan P. McAdams, and Edward O. Wilson

Oxford University Press, forthcoming
Abstract
Because nature forms a unitary order, scientific knowledge also forms a unitary order. This volume is designed to
display the unity of knowledge in the range that extends from evolutionary biology through the social sciences to the
humanities. Contributors include cutting-edge scientists and scholars in all three areas.
The volume consists of 14 separately authored essays, a foreword by Alice Dreger, a theoretical introduction by
Joseph Carroll, and afterwords by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Gottschall.
E. O. Wilson, Christopher Boehm, Herbert Gintis, and Henry Harpending are among the most important current
theorists of human social evolution. The essays in this volume link current thinking about human social evolution
with the integrative social psychology produced by Dan McAdams and Barbara Oakley. McAdams serves as a
pivotal figure between the evolutionary social theorists and the model of human identity used in a quantitative study
of Victorian novels by Carroll and his collaborators. The other contributors use evolutionary anthropology and
evolutionary psychology to illuminate topics in the humanities. Ellen Dissanayake and John Hawks probe the
mystery behind the markings ancestral humans made on stones. Brian Boyd demonstrates how evolutionary
cognitive psychology can be used for the close analysis of poetry and comics. Catherine Salmon and Mathias Clasen
use evolutionary psychology to explain the emotional appeal of salient genres of popular culture: horror fiction,
professional wrestling, romance novels, and male adventure novels.