Although evolutionary psychology is typically associated with "selfish gene theory," numerous other approaches to the study of mind and behavior provide a wealth of concepts for theorizing about psychology, culture, and development. These include general evolutionary approaches and theories focused on sociality, dual inheritance, multilevel selection, and developmental systems. Most evolutionar...

Theories within psychology tend to follow a Lakatonian structure, sometimes harbouring a strong resilience towards falsification. Theories that potentially could be discarded stay in the field because no strong challenger exists. Popper’s philosophy suggests that falsified theories should be rejected, but in practice psychology is more robust and theories are typically subject to batteries of e...

Evolutionary theories of aging explain why we age. These theories take into account the fact that, in the wild, mean lifespan of many species is usually shorter than it could be in protected environments. In such conditions, because most of animals die before reaching old age, there is no selection in favor or against alleles with effects at old age. Alleles with negative effects at this age ca...

Bruce H. Weber Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry California State University Fullerton Fullerton, CA, USA [email protected] & Robert H. Woodworth Chair in Science and Natural Philosophy Bennington College Bennington, VT, USA Abstract From its inception Darwinian evolutionary biology has been seen as having a problematic relationship of fact and theory. While the forging of the modern...

Numerous psychological, biological, and evolutionary theories have been proposed to explain sexual orientation. For a theory to be valid it must account for the evolutionary or Darwinian paradox of how homosexual behavior seemingly blocking evolutionary fitness could have evolved. Typically it is only evolutionary based theories that attempt to address this issue. All theories proposed to date ...

Applications of modern evolutionary theory to human culture have generated several different theoretical approaches that challenge traditional anthropological perspectives. “Cultural selection” and “mind parasite” theories model culture as an independent evolutionary system because transmission of cultural traits via social learning is distinct from transmission of genes vla DNA replication. “D...

Among portrayals of evolutionary biology and intelligent design, some evolutionary biologists and organizations have claimed religion and science are compatible, commonly referred to as ‘accommodationism.’ This claim is, from the perspective of science, wholly incorrect. While religion and science are similar in that both seek causal explanations for natural phenomena, this does not render the ...