Barkow, Jerome H.., Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby (eds.) (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

This is the sourcebook for the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm. Its introduction (Cosmides, Tooby, & Barkow 1992) and first two chapters (Tooby & Cosmides 1992; Symons 1992) provide an overview and defense of the foundational theory and methodology of Evolutionary Psychology. The remainder of the book consists of chapters illustrating applications of the theory and methodology to aspects of human psychology, including social cooperation, mate choice, parental care, language and cognition, aesthetic preference, psychopathology, and culture. Particularly good chapters are those by Buss on sex differences in mate preferences (chapter 5), Wilson and Daly on male sexual proprietariness and its implications for paternal care (chapter 7), and Pinker and Bloom on language as an adaptation (chapter 12).

Buller, David J. (in preparation). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. Under contract with MIT Press/Bradford Books.

A comprehensive critical examination of the Evolutionary Psychology. Several chapters are devoted to investigating theoretical and empirical problems with each of the theoretical tenets of Evolutionary Psychology. Remaining chapters investigate methodological problems with Evolutionary Psychology’s most prominent explanatory exemplars concerning the psychology of mate choice, infidelity, jealousy, parental care, and social cooperation.

Buss, David M. (1995). Evolutionary Psychology: A New Paradigm for Psychological Science. Psychological Inquiry 6, pp. 1-30.

An excellent summary of the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm. Demonstrates the alleged empirical fruits of the paradigm with a discussion of sex differences in sexual jealousy. Also argues that Evolutionary Psychology provides a framework within which to unite the so-far fragmented areas of social psychology, personality theory, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology.

Buss, David M. (1999). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

A textbook designed for undergraduate courses, this is in effect a longer and more detailed version of Buss (1995), providing an extensive survey of the empirical work that has been done in Evolutionary Psychology on various aspects of human psychology. The first part provides an overview of the theoretical foundations of Evolutionary Psychology, which is followed by parts on psychological adaptations to problems of survival, to problems of mating, to problems of parenting and kinship, and to problems of living in groups. It concludes with a part on how Evolutionary Psychology will unify psychology in the new millennium.

Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1987). From Evolution to Behavior: Evolutionary Psychology as the Missing Link. In John Dupré (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (pp. 277-306). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

One of the early theoretical papers in Evolutionary Psychology, this attempts to synthesize evolutionary theory with the cognitive revolution. Drawing from cognitive science the idea that the mind is an information-processing device, which is best described in terms of its cognitive "programs" rather than its physiological functioning, Cosmides and Tooby argue that evolutionary theory allows a precise specification of the computational problems that the mind is designed to solve. This is because, they argue, evolutionary theory allows immediate understanding of the adaptive problems that a species must have faced in its evolutionary past, and these adaptive problems are those that the mind must have evolved to solve.  It also provides an early argument for the necessity of modularity.

Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1994). Origins of Domain Specificity: The Evolution of Functional Organization. In Lawrence A. Hirschfeld & Susan A. Gelman (eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture (pp. 85-116). New York: Cambridge University Press.

An extended argument in support of what Samuels (1998) calls "the massive modularity hypothesis." There is a great deal of redundancy in Cosmides and Tooby's writings, but this article probably provides the most extensive array of arguments in support of the idea that selection would have designed separate cognitive mechanisms to solve separate adaptive problems, and that selection would have designed into these mechanisms a substantial amount of innate knowledge about their problem domains.

Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby (1997). Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer.

This is intended as a widely accessible overview of the theoretical foundations of Evolutionary Psychology directly from the horses' mouths. Covers all the topics discussed in section 2 of the Guided Tour.

Cosmides, Leda, John Tooby, and Jerome H. Barkow (1992). Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration. In Jerome H. Barkow, et al. (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (pp. 3-15). New York: Oxford University Press.

This is the introduction to The Adapted Mind. As such, it provides a brief overview of the theoretical and methodological commitments of the articles contained in the book. It also provides a brief argument that cognitive psychology needs to be "conceptually integrated" with evolutionary biology.

Daly, Martin, and Margo Wilson (1988). Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Daly and Wilson occupy a tangential position in the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm. While their work on sexual jealousy, violence, and parental investment ranks among the core exemplars of the paradigm, they have not explicitly endorsed the theoretical and methodological positions articulated by Buss, Cosmides and Tooby, Pinker, and Symons. Indeed, their work is somewhat independent of those other aspects of the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm. This book is a study of patterns of fatal violence from the standpoint of inclusive fitness. The kinds of fatal violence it examines include killing kin, killing children (and child physical abuse more generally), killing parents, killing for "honor," spousal homicide, and revenge killings. This is perhaps the finest, and most fascinating, empirical work in evolutionary psychology (which is not to say, however, that it is problem free). Daly and Wilson draw from an impressive cross-cultural array of evidence, ranging from historical data dating back to the 13th century to data drawn from urban municipalities in North America. Agree with it or not, this is a book that deserves to be read several times.

Deacon, Terrence W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

A fascinating and provocative work in the field of evolutionary psychology, but outside the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm. Deacon is focused on explaining the progressive increase in relative brain size in the hominid line, and he argues that it was a result of interactive coevolution with language. This book is notable for its strong challenge to the Chomskyan view that only an innate language organ can explain the ability to acquire a language.

Elman, Jeffrey L., Elizabeth A. Bates, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett (1996).  Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

An ambitious attempt to provide a theory of cognitive development in the middle ground between the view of the mind as a tabula rasa, which takes nothing to be innate, and the extreme nativism of Evolutionary Psychologists and Chomskyans, which takes our full-blown knowledge of particular domains to be fully innate and merely awaiting activation by certain developmental events. Elman et al. argue that neither of these extremes can be correct. They altogether reject representational nativism, which takes certain classes of representation to be innate, while arguing for a minimal architectural nativism, according to which the developing brain is biased toward storing and processing representations of certain types of environmental stimuli. Such biases provide some guidance for learning, so learning isn't wholly domain general. But, in this view, learning is genuine learning, and not simply the activation of already possessed knowledge.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1983). The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The locus classicus on modularity. Fodor argues for a restricted modularity, which contrasts sharply with the promiscuous modularity of Evolutionary Psychology.  For Fodor, only the sensory input systems and the language input system are modules.  Also, for Fodor modules possess an array of specific properties, only a few of which are considered by Evolutionary Psychology to be properties of evolved modules.  For Fodor, modular input systems possess all the following properties: (1) they are domain specific, (2) they are informationally encapsulated, (3) their operation is mandatory, i.e., not under conscious control, (4) their operation is fast compared with that of central cognitive processing, (5) they are neurally localized, (6) they exhibit characteristic patterns of malfunction and breakdown, (7) they are not cognitively penetrable, i.e., accessible to and affected by conscious thought, (8) their development exhibits characteristic chronotypic sequencing, and (9) their outputs are basic phenomenological categories.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter (1999). Adaptationism and the Power of Selection. Biology and Philosophy 14, pp. 181-194.

Distinguishes three kinds of adaptationism.  (1) Empirical adaptationism, according to which virtually all organic form can be predicted from models that exclude all evolutionary forces other than selection.  (2) Explanatory adaptationism, according to which explaining the existence of adaptation is the primary explanatory task of evolutionary biology, and this is a task in which selection plays the focal role.  (3) Methodological adaptationism, according to which the most fruitful approach for biologists is to begin by attempting to explain organic form as the result of selection. Godfrey-Smith focuses on explanatory adaptationism and discusses the possibility that it accepts too readily the explanatory desiderata stipulated by the tradition of natural theology.

Gould, Stephen Jay (1991). Exaptation: A Crucial Tool for an Evolutionary Psychology. Journal of Social Issues 47, pp. 43-65.

Argues that evolutionary approaches to the mind are mistakenly fixated on discovering psychological adaptations. Gould argues that the phenomenon of exaptation is central to human psychology, so evolutionary psychology should be the search for exaptations, instead of adaptations. The central argument of this paper, which was sketched in section 3 of the Guided Tour, is repeated in Gould (1997).

Gould, Stephen Jay (1997). Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism. New York Review of Books 44(11), pp. 47-52.

Two recent purveyors of what Gould calls "Darwinian Fundamentalism" come in for ill-tempered attack in this article. One of the two purveyors is Evolutionary Psychology, and Gould attacks it for the reasons discussed in section 3 of the Guided Tour. The other purveyor is Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which contained its own highly ill-tempered attack on Gould. Here Gould seeks his revenge against Dennett's "slurs and sneers" by matching him slur for slur and sneer for sneer.  Amid the mud wrestling there are a few ideas.

Gould, Stephen Jay, and Richard C. Lewontin (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205, pp. 581-598.

This is the classic paper that started all the fuss about adaptationism. Gould and Lewontin argue that adaptationism suffers from two flaws: (1) it neglects non-selective explanations of traits (e.g., drift, developmental byproducts [so-called "spandrels"], and pleiotropy), and (2) its standards for the acceptance of an adaptive explanation of a trait are too low, often consisting simply in mere consistency with natural selection (the famous "just-so stories"). The article has spawned a huge literature and debate.  Good overviews of the issues and subsequent discussion can be found in Elliott Sober's Philosophy of Biology, second edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), and Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths' Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Gould, Stephen Jay, and Elisabeth S. Vrba (1982). Exaptation: A Missing Term in the Science of Form. Paleobiology 8, pp. 4-15.

Another classic paper of Gould's.  Whereas the Gould and Lewontin paper introduced the term spandrel into biological discourse, this one introduced the term exaptation (discussed and explained in section 3 of the Guided Tour). An exaptation, according to Gould and Vrba is a trait that is currently useful to an organism, but did not arise by selection for that use, having arisen instead by selection for some other use. Gould and Vrba restrict the term adaptation to those traits that continue to play the role for which they were originally selected. Readers should be cautioned that this is a highly idiosyncratic use of the term adaptation.  If a trait arose because of selection for some purpose P, but later became used for purpose P*, it is standard to consider that trait an adaptation for P* provided that there has been selection for P*, regardless of when during the trait's history that selection occurred. So many traits that Gould and Vrba insist on categorizing as exaptations would be unproblematically classified as adaptations by most biologists.

Griffiths, Paul E. (1997). What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This is an excellent work in the field of evolutionary psychology, focused exclusively on the evolution of the emotions. Griffiths draws on work in ethology, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and anthropology, as well as philosophy, to provide an interesting theory of the nature of the emotions.  One of Griffiths' provocative theses is that our concept of emotion incorrectly lumps together three distinct phenomena; as such, the term does not demarcate a natural kind. Along the way, Griffiths offers some brief criticisms of the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm.

Hardcastle, Valerie Gray, and David J. Buller (forthcoming). Evolutionary Psychology, Meet Developmental Neurobiology: Combating Promiscuous Modularity. Brain and Mind.

Drawing on current cognitive neuroscience, this paper argues that our knowledge of brain development and plasticity belies Evolutionary Psychology's claim that the mind must consist of "hundreds or thousands" of "genetically specified" modules. It argues that something like modules can result from development, but that they are not a "prespecified" result. The main gist of this paper was summarized in section 4 of the Guided Tour.

Hull, David L. (1989). On Human Nature. In The Metaphysics of Evolution (pp. 11-24). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Hull draws on his vast knowledge of evolutionary biology to argue compellingly that the concept of human nature has no foundation in biology (as long as one means by "human nature" something more substantive than "whatever human beings do"). Hull's argument consists in demonstrating two primary things. First, Hull demonstrates that variation is not only ubiquitous and necessary for evolution to occur, but that it is essential to any species, so there can be no stable universal traits that "define" a species. Second, all appeals to a universal human nature always run up against exceptions; there is nothing that is literally universal in a species. This is dealt with by restricting the universality to all "normal" members of the species. Hull demonstrates that the concept of "normalcy" that is a part of all such appeals to a human nature has no foundation in evolutionary theory.

Karmiloff-Smith, Annette (1992). Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

An earlier statement of the theory of development defended by Elman et al. (1996), written by one of the authors of that work. What this book has to offer that the other doesn't is the fact that here Karmiloff-Smith illustrates this theory with detailed discussion of development in the areas of language processing, folk physics, mathematics, folk psychology, and drawing and writing.

Kuhn, Thomas S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

A classic -- perhaps the classic -- of 20th century philosophy of science. Kuhn argues that the history of science consists of cyclic alternations between periods of "normal science" (scientific research conducted within a paradigm, which is ultimately devoted to solving problems set by the paradigm) and "abnormal science" (which occurs when a paradigm has collapsed, and scientific research is not guided by accepted rules for solving accepted problems).  A paradigm for Kuhn consists of (1) a set of "symbolic generalizations," or laws of nature, (2) metaphysical commitments, (3) methodological standards, and (4) exemplars, concrete solutions to problems the paradigm considers important and that serve as models for future scientific research.

Pinker, Steven (1997a). How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton.

A bloated overview of the entire Evolutionary Psychology paradigm, which attempts to account for every aspect of human thought and behavior. There is little original in this book; readers who seek a single, but comprehensive, introduction to Evolutionary Psychology would be much better off reading Barkow et al. (1992). But, if you seek to be entertained while learning Evolutionary Psychology, Pinker's impressive repertoire of jokes is on display in this book, interwoven throughout his more "theoretical" discussions.

Pinker, Steven (1997b). Letter to the Editors.  New York Review of Books 44(15), pp. 55-56.

Pinker's brief response to Gould (1997). Pinker defends the standard Evolutionary Psychology line that complexity is a mark of adaptation; consequently, since the psychological phenomena of interest to Evolutionary Psychologists are complex, Evolutionary Psychology is right to presume that those phenomena are adaptations.  Pinker also correctly argues that Gould's hypothesis that brain size is an adaptation is mistaken, and that it must be a byproduct of selection for something else.

Plotkin, Henry (1998). Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

A very nice overview to the field of evolutionary psychology, touching partly on the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm. Its greatest strength, perhaps, is its historical orientation, clarifying the evolution of evolutionary approaches to behavior and the mind. While clearly and convincingly advocating an evolutionary psychology, Plotkin falls short of advocating the full-blown Evolutionary Psychology paradigm.

*Samuels, Richard (1998). Evolutionary Psychology and the Massive Modularity Hypothesis. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, pp. 575-602.

Analyzes the evidence that Evolutionary Psychologists provide for their claim that the mind consists of "hundreds or thousands" of special-purpose, "genetically specified" information-processing mechanisms. Samuels distinguishes two different claims:  (1) that the mind contains numerous, innate, domain-specific bodies of knowledge, and (2) that the mind contains numerous, innate, domain-specific information-processing mechanisms. Samuels argues that Evolutionary Psychologists have tended to conflate these, although the former doesn't require the latter. Indeed, Samuels endorses (1), but argues that there is no evidence for (2). Thus, he claims, the mind's innate bodies of domain-specific knowledge are operated on by domain-general computational mechanisms.

Sterelny, Kim (1995). The Adapted Mind. Biology and Philosophy 10, pp. 365-380.

A critical review article of The Adapted Mind (Barkow et al. 1992). Most notably, Sterelny argues against the idea of "the psychological unity of mankind" and against the notion that contemporary human minds are adapted to Pleistocene environments.

Symons, Donald (1987). If We're All Darwinians, What's the Fuss About? In Charles Crawford, et al. (eds.), Sociobiology and Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications (pp. 121-146). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

The fuss, Symons claims, is about whether the mind consists of a highly flexible, domain-general learning mechanism or whether it consists of numerous domain-specific problem-solving mechanisms. Symons argues that, although many have thought that selection made the human mind more general over time, evolutionary considerations strongly favor a modular view of mind (although Symons didn't call it a modular view at this point). Consequently, this is one of the early papers in Evolutionary Psychology defending the modular view.

Symons, Donald (1989). A Critique of Darwinian Anthropology.  Ethology and Sociobiology 10, pp. 131-144.

Many in the field of evolutionary psychology -- particularly those who call their work "evolutionary anthropology" or "human behavioral ecology" -- study human behavior from the standpoint of inclusive fitness theory. This approach seeks evidence of adaptiveness at the level of behavior. Symons argues in this paper that this is a mistake. Adaptive design, Symons argues, doesn't manifest itself at the level of behavior, but at the level of the psychological mechanisms that underlie and control behavior. Selection, he argues, has designed psychological mechanisms, not behaviors directly. As a result, evolutionary psychology, Symons argues, should be focused on studying psychological mechanisms, not behaviors.

Symons, Donald (1990). Adaptiveness and Adaptation.  Ethology and Sociobiology 11, pp. 427-444.

This echoes the theme of Symons (1989), but also provides extended discussion of the concept of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (or EEA). If we are to seek adaptation at the level of psychological mechanisms, rather than behaviors, Symons argues, we must provide an account of the features of the environment to which those mechanisms are adapted. Those features constitute the EEA. Psychological mechanisms have been designed by selection to produce behaviors that were adaptive in the EEA. However, features of contemporary environments may not strongly resemble the EEA. And, when they don't, evolved psychological mechanisms may fail to produce adaptive behavior. Consequently, evolutionary psychology should not be studying whether human behavior is adaptive, but should be studying psychological adaptations.

Symons, Donald (1992). On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior. In Jerome H. Barkow, et al. (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (pp. 137-159). New York: Oxford University Press.

This is one of the two theoretical articles in The Adapted Mind. It synthesizes and summarizes the arguments from Symons 1987, 1989, and 1990. In addition, it provides a brief overview of the standard Evolutionary Psychological claims about sex differences in mate preferences: males prefer lots of nubile women, females prefer a high-status male.

Symons, Donald (1995). Beauty is in the Adaptations of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Psychology of Human Female Sexual Attractiveness In Paul R. Abramson & Steven D. Pinkerton (eds.), Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture (pp. 80-118). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Summarizes the standard Evolutionary Psychological line about male mate preference. Symons argues that males have evolved preferences for females with smooth skin, lighter-than-the-local-average skin, and a waist-to-hip ratio around .75, since all of these are indicators of nubility, hence indicators that a woman is at her peak reproductive capacity.

Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides (1990a). On the Universality of Human Nature and the Uniqueness of the Individual: The Role of Genetics and Adaptation. Journal of Personality 58, pp. 17-67.

This is the source of the argument for a universal human nature. The burden of the article is to attempt to reconcile the fact of substantial genetic variation in human populations with the claim that there is a species-universal collection of psychological adaptations. The argument attempting this reconciliation was summarized in section 6 of the Guided Tour. Tooby and Cosmides conclude from it that all genetic variation in human populations either underlies non-adaptive traits or is restricted to adaptive traits at the biochemical level only.

Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides (1990b). The Past Explains the Present: Emotional Adaptations and the Structure of Ancestral Environments. Ethology and Sociobiology 11, pp. 375-424.

Another Evolutionary Psychological article arguing that the proper study of evolutionary psychology is not the adaptiveness of contemporary human behavior, but the behavior control mechanisms that were shaped by ancient selection processes. Tooby and Cosmides argue that, even when contemporary human behavior is adaptive, it is due to the operation of underlying behavior control mechanisms. Those mechanisms are present in contemporary humans not because of currently operating selection, but because contemporary humans inherited those mechanisms from an ancestral line in which those mechanisms were shaped by selection.. The extent to which contemporary human behavior is adaptive, then, is due to the fact that those mechanisms are operating in conditions that resemble the ancestral conditions in which they were shaped by selection. Tooby and Cosmides thus attempt to provide an account of those ancestral conditions -- the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (the EEA) -- and demonstrate the ways in which contemporary human environments resemble aspects of the EEA.

Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides (1992). The Psychological Foundations of Culture. In Jerome H. Barkow, et al. (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (pp. 19-136). New York: Oxford University Press.

This is the most comprehensive statement and defense of the fundamental theoretical commitments of Evolutionary Psychology, written by its leading theorists. If you're going to read just one article or book elaborating and defending Evolutionary Psychology, this is what you should read. The article opens with a defense of the application of neo-Darwinism to human psychology, then argues extensively against what Tooby and Cosmides call the "Standard Social Science Model" of human psychology, according to which the mind is a blank slate on which culture imprints itself. Tooby and Cosmides do an excellent and definitive job of detailing the shortcomings in this view and showing why our biology must affect our mentality.  In the remainder of the article, they articulate and defend the tenets sketched in section 2 of the Guided Tour. Unfortunately for Tooby and Cosmides, none of their positive tenets (those sketched in section 2) are entailed by a rejection of the Standard Social Science Model.

Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides (1995). Mapping the Evolved Functional Organization of the Mind and Brain. In Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences (pp. 1185-1197). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tooby and Cosmides here argue that cognitive neuroscience is actually a branch of evolutionary biology, so cognitive neuroscientists should allow their research to be informed by contemporary evolutionary theory. The principal implication of evolutionary theory, argue Tooby and Cosmides, is that it allows a precise specification of the functions of cognitive mechanisms, which can be inferred from knowledge about the adaptive problems that ancestral human populations faced. Knowledge of the functions of cognitive mechanisms in turn allows the construction of experiments that have greater ecological validity than traditional cognitive scientific experiments (such as those that require the memorization and recall of lists of nonsense syllables). Of course, Tooby and Cosmides use the occasion to trot out the usual Evolutionary Psychological tenets.

Williams, George C. (1966). Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

A classic of 20th century evolutionary biology. Williams' primary goal was to demonstrate the inadequacies of prevailing group selectionism. In the process, he articulated a number of principles to be employed in the study of adaptation. Ironically, Williams has been cited by Evolutionary Psychologists as a founder of their form of adaptationism, in spite of the fact that Williams argued that "adaptation is a special and onerous concept that should be used only where it is really necessary" (p. 4). Williams was clearly conservative with respect to adaptation -- a point that has been lost on Evolutionary Psychologists. Partly this may be due to the fact that Williams made a comment in passing that has been quoted repeatedly in Evolutionary Psychological writings: "Is it not reasonable to anticipate that our understanding of the human mind would be aided greatly by knowing the purpose for which it was designed?" (p. 16).

Wills, Christopher (1998). Children of Prometheus: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution. Reading, MA: Perseus.

Wills argues that not only are humans continuing to evolve, but that human evolution is actually accelerating. He details a number of phenomena that are accelerating human evolution, most of them related to ways in which humans have altered their own environments (for example, through creating job stress and ever more virulent strains of infectious disease). Wills concludes with speculations about the future course of human evolution.

Wilson, David Sloan (1994). Adaptive Genetic Variation and Human Evolutionary Psychology. Ethology and Sociobiology 15, pp. 219-235.

A very important article in the field of evolutionary psychology, which argues definitively that much variation in human populations is no doubt adaptive, rather than simply the byproduct of the same underlying psychological adaptations responding to differing developmental circumstances. Consequently, the article is an important critique of a central tenet of Evolutionary Psychology. How have Evolutionary Psychologists dealt with Wilson's critique? They have chosen to pretend that it doesn't exist. Tooby and Cosmides have never cited -- let alone responded to -- the article. Pinker (1997a) doesn't cite Wilson at all. And Buss (1999) mentions Wilson only once, and that pertains only to Wilson's defense of group selection. The strategy appears to be:  If you can't beat 'em, then act like they don't exist. This kind of insularity is all the more evidence that Evolutionary Psychology has the characteristics of a Kuhnian paradigm.

*Wright, Robert (1994). The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. New York: Vintage.

This is probably the best popularization of Evolutionary Psychology. It receives the endorsement of the Evolutionary Psychology establishment by being included on the list of recommended readings posted on the web site of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at UCSB   , which is under the stewardship of Tooby and Cosmides.

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