Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge

Plotkin, Henry

ISBN 10: 067419280X / ISBN 13: 9780674192805

Published by Harvard University Press, 1994

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 9780674192805-2-2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067419280X
• ISBN 13: 9780674192805
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very good

About this title

Synopsis

Learn and survive. Behind this simple equation lies a revolution in the study of knowledge, which has left the halls of philosophy for the labs of science. This book offers a cogent account of what such a move does to our understanding of the nature of learning, rationality, and intelligence. Bringing together evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy, Henry Plotkin presents a new science of knowledge, one that traces an unbreakable link between instinct and our ability to know.
Contrary to the modern liberal idea that knowledge is something derived from experience, this science shows us that what we know is what our nature allows us to know, what our instincts tell us we must know. Since our ability to know our world depends primarily on what we call intelligence, intelligence must be understood as an extension of instinct. Drawing on contemporary evolutionary theory, especially notions of hierarchical structure and universal Darwinism, Plotkin tells us that the capacity for knowledge, which is what makes us human, is deeply rooted in our biology and, in a special sense, is shared by all living things. This leads to a discussion of animal and human intelligence as well as an appraisal of what an instinct-based capacity for knowledge might mean to our understanding of language, reasoning, emotion, and culture.
The result is nothing less than a three-dimensional theory of our nature, in which all knowledge is adaptation and all adaptation is a specific form of knowledge.

About the Author

Henry Plotkin is Professor of Psychobiology and Head of the Department of Psychology at the University College in London.