img Leseprobe Leseprobe

Creatures of Cain

The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America

Erika Lorraine Milam

EPUB
ca. 28,99
Amazon iTunes Thalia.de Weltbild.de Hugendubel Bücher.de ebook.de kobo Osiander Google Books Barnes&Noble bol.com Legimi yourbook.shop Kulturkaufhaus ebooks-center.de
* Affiliatelinks/Werbelinks
Hinweis: Affiliatelinks/Werbelinks
Links auf reinlesen.de sind sogenannte Affiliate-Links. Wenn du auf so einen Affiliate-Link klickst und über diesen Link einkaufst, bekommt reinlesen.de von dem betreffenden Online-Shop oder Anbieter eine Provision. Für dich verändert sich der Preis nicht.

Princeton University Press img Link Publisher

Naturwissenschaften, Medizin, Informatik, Technik / Naturwissenschaften allgemein

Beschreibung

How Cold War America came to attribute human evolutionary success to our species' unique capacity for murder

After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. Creatures of Cain charts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man’s evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder.

Drawing on a wealth of archival materials and in-depth interviews, Erika Lorraine Milam reveals how the scientists who advanced this “killer ape” theory capitalized on an expanding postwar market in intellectual paperbacks and widespread faith in the power of science to solve humanity’s problems, even to answer the most fundamental questions of human identity. The killer ape theory spread quickly from colloquial science publications to late-night television, classrooms, political debates, and Hollywood films. Behind the scenes, however, scientists were sharply divided, their disagreements centering squarely on questions of race and gender. Then, in the 1970s, the theory unraveled altogether when primatologists discovered that chimpanzees also kill members of their own species. While the discovery brought an end to definitions of human exceptionalism delineated by violence, Milam shows how some evolutionists began to argue for a shared chimpanzee-human history of aggression even as other scientists discredited such theories as sloppy popularizations.

A wide-ranging account of a compelling episode in American science, Creatures of Cain argues that the legacy of the killer ape persists today in the conviction that science can resolve the essential dilemmas of human nature.

Kundenbewertungen

Schlagwörter

Paleoanthropology, Ethology, Masculinity, Illustration, Cultural anthropology, Hunter-gatherer, Culture, Jane Goodall, Harvard University, African Genesis, On Human Nature, Sherwood Washburn, Anthropologist, Robert Trivers, Politician, Chimpanzee, Technology, Behavioral modernity, Racism, Australopithecus, National Science Foundation, Scientist, Loren Eiseley, Primatology, Social relation, Human behavior, Zoology, Ashley Montagu, Scientific American, Curriculum, Female, Desmond Morris, Charles Darwin, Competition, Konrad Lorenz, Baboon, Career, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Biological anthropology, Psychology, Social behavior, Criticism, Evolution, Robin Fox, Biology, Americans, Social science, University of Chicago Press, Jerome Bruner, Sexual selection, On Aggression, Robert Ardrey, Lionel Tiger, Louis Leakey, Gender role, Writing, The Territorial Imperative, Margaret Mead, Popularity, Publication, Sam Peckinpah, Aggression, Sociobiology, The Naked Ape, Biologist, The Other Hand, Human evolution (origins of society and culture), Biological determinism, Paleontology, Hominidae