What do you think?
Rate this book
The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind
This book is an intellectual tour de force: a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Melvin Konner tells the compelling and complex story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain.
All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology.
As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution.
All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology.
As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution.
960 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2010
20 people are currently reading
572 people want to read
About the author
Melvin Konner
19 books81 followersMelvin Konner, M.D. is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. He is the author of Women After All, Becoming a Doctor and Medicine at the Crossroads, among other books.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 23, 2011
Technical, detailed and insightful. It just goes to show how complicated a parent's job really is.
February 4, 2021
I may have first begun to suspect that Konner could have used editorial help with this tome as early as page 18, where Dobzhansky’s quip about nothing in biology making sense “except in light of evolution” appears *for the second time*. Alas, the suspicion bore out. Konner really, really needed a good editor, preferably sooner rather than later, help him decide what this book was going to be about. Was it going to be a rich overview of how we can explain living systems, all the levels of explanation from hormones to natural selection to culture, about determinism and complexity, and scientific paradigms? Or was it going to about human childhood? As a reader hoping for the latter, it felt like the discussions of the former (which, it must be noted, apply just as well to a bluebird as a human child) took up 40% or more of the book. Without exaggeration there are hundreds of pages of explaining paradigms in the abstract before we turn at long last to childhood.
No doubt this book is chock full of good information. As in The Tangled Wing, Konner comes across as having a just astonishing combo of breadth and depth of knowledge, as well as an extremely decent person. He was done a disservice not having someone helping him narrow his focus, or perhaps just turning this project into two books.
No doubt this book is chock full of good information. As in The Tangled Wing, Konner comes across as having a just astonishing combo of breadth and depth of knowledge, as well as an extremely decent person. He was done a disservice not having someone helping him narrow his focus, or perhaps just turning this project into two books.
June 22, 2011
I confess that I have read this in more of a cafeteria-style way, reading the chapters and portions that were of particular interest to me. This will stay on my academic reference shelf for a long time.
p.s. I heard Konner speak this spring at Harvard and thoroughly enjoyed his presentation on human (and other species) infancy and evolution.
p.s. I heard Konner speak this spring at Harvard and thoroughly enjoyed his presentation on human (and other species) infancy and evolution.
September 1, 2015
comprehensive, a bit of a dense read (and massive book--it is a door stopper), but full of information, interesting history and research. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in understanding more about social evolution, development, society, and the intricacies of how we all connect to our environment, experiences, genetics, and so on.
February 3, 2022
This is a pretty amazing book although the title is ambiguous.
You could see this as detailing how the concept of childhood evolved. You can see this as detailing how childhood evolved due to the very human development of culture. Konner does not seem to make the distinction at all; although he goes quite in depth to examine many scientific studies about childhood. From here he is doing a philosophy of science but not from too much of a big picture perspective; instead he lists all the details to let us pick and choose how to go about it. He does note that there is a lack of approaches that combine somatic/psychological and culture -- perhaps because of the difficulty of expertly navigating such a transdisciplineary approach.
Out of all the books I have read about childhood, this is perhaps the most comprehensive as far as citing studies and different paradigms go. For that reason it is pretty invaluable, even if most of the analysis will probably be lost by students who otherwise want to specialize in a particular approach and not pay much attention to other approaches.
You could see this as detailing how the concept of childhood evolved. You can see this as detailing how childhood evolved due to the very human development of culture. Konner does not seem to make the distinction at all; although he goes quite in depth to examine many scientific studies about childhood. From here he is doing a philosophy of science but not from too much of a big picture perspective; instead he lists all the details to let us pick and choose how to go about it. He does note that there is a lack of approaches that combine somatic/psychological and culture -- perhaps because of the difficulty of expertly navigating such a transdisciplineary approach.
Out of all the books I have read about childhood, this is perhaps the most comprehensive as far as citing studies and different paradigms go. For that reason it is pretty invaluable, even if most of the analysis will probably be lost by students who otherwise want to specialize in a particular approach and not pay much attention to other approaches.
August 12, 2011
This book is encyclopedic: it is a refresher course in genetics, evolution and developmental psychology. Still I am reading it for the big ideas. And I think I am getting some new ones about the passe' notion of nature or nurture. The regulation of genes is far more dependent upon environment at each stage of life than I had previously understood.
February 3, 2011
Extremely dense & lengthy, but I plugged through it. I'm planning to review it w/ a colleague in a series of "mini-journal clubs" to better recall important ideas & findings.
April 2, 2017
"'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,' wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution."
Written in 2010, this book is state of the art in its compilation of evolutionary biology studies, especially those occurring in the wake of the discovery of DNA.
Konner is not as good a theorist as he is an open-minded, diligent, assimilating scholar of these studies, but that's OK.
"Evolution" is needed to understand biology, "evolution" is needed to understand childhood, and its also true that nothing currently going on in political economies of "developed countries" or "developing countries" makes sense except in the context of evolution, evolution of childhood and the Copernican information bomb of paternity of a human infant becoming as easily and inexpensively determined as his/her maternity. I call this "Copernican" because of its analogy to Copernicus illustrating that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth. To be able to identify the father of every infant, something that will be available to the poorest corners of the globe by the end of this decade, does work as similar foundational realignment of many political economies and their legal systems.
Written in 2010, this book is state of the art in its compilation of evolutionary biology studies, especially those occurring in the wake of the discovery of DNA.
Konner is not as good a theorist as he is an open-minded, diligent, assimilating scholar of these studies, but that's OK.
"Evolution" is needed to understand biology, "evolution" is needed to understand childhood, and its also true that nothing currently going on in political economies of "developed countries" or "developing countries" makes sense except in the context of evolution, evolution of childhood and the Copernican information bomb of paternity of a human infant becoming as easily and inexpensively determined as his/her maternity. I call this "Copernican" because of its analogy to Copernicus illustrating that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth. To be able to identify the father of every infant, something that will be available to the poorest corners of the globe by the end of this decade, does work as similar foundational realignment of many political economies and their legal systems.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews