ABSTRACT

This title was first published in 2000:  Complex Life argues for the importance of the new perspective of non modern social theory in understanding human agency. Darwinian natural selection theory and complexity theory are used to provide new insights into human origins, mind and culture. Through bringing these ideas together it is argued that nature and culture are inseparably linked within human agency and that in consequence it is time to transcend the limitations of both modern and postmodern social science. This book argues that nature has never been controlled or transcended. Humankind is instead an emerged outcome of the historical interweaving of the environment, morphology, mind and culture. This wide-ranging analysis offers new insights into human nature for anthropologists and sociologists interested in human evolution, social theory or human agency.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|22 pages

From Primate to Human

chapter 2|21 pages

The Emergence of Symbolic Reasoning

chapter 3|25 pages

Cognition and Adaptation

chapter 4|12 pages

Encountering the Cultural World

chapter 5|28 pages

Nature in Culture

chapter 6|15 pages

Nonlinearity in the Social World