The Things We Do: Using the Lessons of Bernard and Darwin to Understand the What, How, and Why of Our Behavior (Bradford Book) - Softcover

Cziko, Gary A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262529440 ISBN 13: 9780262529440

Publisher: MIT Press, 2016

Synopsis

Cziko shows how the lessons of Bernard and Darwin, updated with the best of current scientific knowledge, can provide solutions to certain long-standing theoretical and practical problems in behavioral science and enable us to develop new methods and topics for research.

The remarkable achievements that modern science has made in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, and engineering contrast sharply with our limited knowledge of the human mind and behavior. A major reason for this slow progress, claims Gary Cziko, is that with few exceptions, behavioral and cognitive scientists continue to apply a Newtonian-inspired view of animate behavior as an organism's output determined by environmental input. This one-way cause-effect approach ignores the important findings of two major nineteenth-century biologists, French physiologist Claude Bernard and English naturalist Charles Darwin.

Approaching living organisms as purposeful systems that behave in order to control their perceptions of the external environment provides a new perspective for understanding what, why, and how living things, including humans, do what they do. Cziko examines in particular perceptual control theory, which has its roots in Bernard's work on the self-regulating nature of living organisms and in the work of engineers who developed the field of cybernetics during and after World War II. He also shows how our evolutionary past together with Darwinian processes currently occurring within our bodies, such as the evolution of new brain connections, provide insights into the immediate and ultimate causes of behavior.

Writing in an accessible style, Cziko shows how the lessons of Bernard and Darwin, updated with the best of current scientific knowledge, can provide solutions to certain long-standing theoretical and practical problems in behavioral science and enable us to develop new methods and topics for research.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Cziko is Professor and AT&T Technology Fellow in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Without Miracles (MIT Press, 1995).

Review

Cziko points evolutionary psychology in the right direction by showing that what can be passed from one generation to the next are not successful behaviors but successful specifications for the intended results of these behaviors.

―Richard S. Marken, Research Scientist, Life Learning Associates

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0262529440
• ISBN 13: 9780262529440
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304