The Human Species and the Good Gripping Dreams of H.G. Wells (original) (raw)

Evolved Human Sociality and Literature

Handbook on Evolution and Society: Toward an Evolutionary Social Science, edited by Jonathan H. Turner, Richard Machalek, and Alexandra Maryanski (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2015): 572-608., 2015

Within the past few years, theoretical biology, evolutionary social science, and evolutionary literary study have been correcting basic mistakes, producing new concepts, and reaching a more complete and adequate understanding of human behavior, including cultural and literary behavior. This chapter integrates these new concepts and demonstrates how they can be used to understand specific literary works. Separate sections are devoted to ideas from theoretical biology about the sources of cooperation in all living things, to ideas from the social sciences about human social organization, to ideas from evolutionary aesthetics about the adaptive function of the arts, and to ideas from literary theory about how meaning works in fiction. A section discussing specific literary examples illustrates the way the arts help generate group identity, integrate individuals into groups, and mediate between the needs of individuals and the claims of groups. Seven concepts from the research on evolved human sociality are used to organize the literary examples: dominance, reverse dominance, internalized norms, leadership, strong reciprocity, legal institutions, and legitimacy.