ABSTRACT
Although Darwin’s theory of evolution by selection has been around since 1859, it is a plain fact that scientists for more than a century afterward could not figure out how to use the theory to study the most complex organic creation yet discovered-the human mind. Future historians of science will have fun figuring out why it took so long. Perhaps it was the reign of radical behaviorism, which dominated the social sciences for a good part of the 20th century. Perhaps it was the persistent refusal to dethrone our species from an exalted plane and view us through the same lens used for other animals. Perhaps it was religious resistance. Perhaps scientists recoiled in horror at imagined pernicious political fallout from viewing humans through the lens of evolutionary theory. Yet perhaps it was the sheer complexity of the subject matter: The human mind, encased in a 1,400 cubic centimeter brain, may be the most intricate and formidable product of the evolutionary process on earth.
