ABSTRACT
Probably the greatest satisfaction I obtain from academic life is the experience of opening the door on a domain I had neglected and discovering new systems of ideas that, on reflection, help me think about more familiar ideas in new ways. In the 1970s, the door opened on information processing and then later on the broader discipline of cognitive psychology. Through the years, other doors have opened on anthropology, philosophy, history, and most recently on evolutionary biology. I make no claim, of course, to discovery. All that I have seen has been seen more clearly before. In fact, every idea I have had about human abilities is probably contained, in some form, in one of the thousands of journal articles, books, and book chapters devoted to the topic. Indeed, one lesson to this tale is that, after many months of reading and thinking about the implications of evolutionary biology for a theory of abilities, I discovered that Dick Snow had been there ahead of me. Nevertheless, it is useful—even necessary—to cross over periodically to an unfamiliar domain in order to gain perspective on one’s own domain. This chapter, then, is the report of one journey of this sort.
