Robin Dunbar

Did mankind evolve unusually large brains simply in order to gossip? Primates differ from other animals by the intensity of their social relationships, by the amount of time they spend grooming one another. Not just a matter of hygiene, grooming is all about cementing bonds, making friends and influencing your fellow ape. Early humans, in their characteristic large groups of 150 or so, would have had to spend almost half their time in mutual grooming. Instead, Professor Robin Dunbar argues, they evolved a more efficient mechanism: language. It seems there is nothing idle about idle chatter. Having a good gossip ensures that a dynamic group - of hunter-gatherers, soldiers, workmates - remains cohesive.Men and women gossip equally, but men tend to talk about themselves, while women talk more about other people, working to strengthen the female-female relationships that underpin both human and primate societies. Until now, most anthropologists have assumed that language developed in male-male relationships, during activities such as hunting. Dunbars intriguing research suggests that, to the contrary, language evolved among women.

Falling in love is one of the strangest things we can do - and one of the things that makes us uniquely human. But what happens to our brains when our eyes meet across a crowded room? Why do we kiss each other, forget our friends, seek a good sense of humour in Lonely Hearts adverts and try (and fail) to be monogamous? How are our romantic relationships different from our relationships with friends, family or even God? Can science help us, or are we better off turning back to the poets?Basing his arguments on new and experimental scientific research, Robin Dunbar explores the psychology and ethology of romantic love and how our evolutionary programming still affects our behaviour. Fascinating and illuminating, witty and accessible, The Science of Love and Betrayal is essential reading for anyone whos ever wondered why we fall in love and what on earth is going on when we do.

The trouble with science began in 1632, when Galileo demolished the belief that the earth is the centre of the universe. Yet despite the bewildering success of the scientific revolution, many continue to hanker after the cosy certainties of a man-centred universe, and young people increasingly turn away from science.In The Trouble with Science, Professor Robin Dunbar launches a vigorous counter-blast. Drawing on studies of traditional societies and animal behaviour, his argument ranges from Charles Darwin to Nigerian Fulani herdsman, from lab rats to the mathematicians of ancient Babylonia. Along the way, he asks whether science really is unique to western culture - even to mankind - and suggests that our trouble with science may lie in the fact that evolution has left our minds better able to cope with day-to-day social interaction than with the complexities of the external world.

Cerca ya de un nuevo milenio y más de trescientos cincuenta años después de que Galileo diera paso a la era de la revolución científica, la actividad y el pensamiento relacionados con la ciencia siguen despertando aun en muchos casos actitudes de rechazo o llenas de prejuicios. Estudioso de la evolucion de la mente y de los sistemas sociales de los primates, ROBIN DUNBAR indaga en esta obra acerca de la justificacion que puede tener ese frecuente MIEDO A LA CIENCIA y rompe con amena seriedad una lanza a favor de un dominio de conocimiento cuya finalidad es solucionar -y, en la medida de lo posible, anticipar- los problemas que el mundo fisico presenta al ser humano, para acabar propugnando una adecuada divulgacion en las aulas de la filosofia e historia de la ciencia, el uso de un lenguaje mas comprensible en sus formulaciones y el reconocimiento social de la labor del cientifico.

A fascinating account of the latest thinking on human evolution, by one of the most respected evolutionary psychologists in Britain.For scientists studying evolution, the past decade has seen astonishing advances across many disciplines - discoveries which have revolutionised scientific thinking and turned upside down our understanding of who we are. The Human Story brings together these threads of research in genetics, behaviour and psychology to provide an understanding of just what it is that makes us human. Robin Dunbar looks in particular at how the human mind has evolved, and draws on his own research during the last five years into the deep psychological and biological bases of music and religion.

We are the product of our evolutionary history and this history colours our everyday lives - from why we kiss to how religious we are. In How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Robin Dunbar explains how the distant past underpins our current behaviour, through the groundbreaking experiments that have changed the thinking of evolutionary biologists forever. He explains phenomena such as why Dunbars Number (150) is the maximum number of acquaintances you can have, why all babies are born premature and the science behind lonely hearts columns. Stimulating, provocative and highly enjoyable, this fascinating book is essential for understanding why humans behave as they do - what it is to be human.

What makes us human?How did we develop language, thought and culture?Why did we survive, and other human species fail?The past 12,000 years represent the only time in the sweep of human history when there has been only one human species. How did this extraordinary proliferation of species come about - and then go extinct? And why did we emerge such intellectual giants? The tale of our origins has inevitably been told through the stones and bones of the archaeological record, yet Robin Dunbar shows it was our social and cognitive changes rather than our physical development which truly made us distinct from other species.

A fascinating analysis of the evolution of religion from the internationally renowned evolutionary psychologistWhen did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religions evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured?Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the mystical stance - the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. As he explores world religions and their many derivatives, as well as religions of experience practised by hunter-gatherer societies since time immemorial, Dunbar argues that this instinct is not a peculiar human quirk, an aberration on our otherwise efficient evolutionary journey. Rather, religion confers an advantage: it can benefit our individual health and wellbeing, but, more importantly, it fosters social bonding at large scale, helping hold fractious societies together. Dunbar suggests these dimensions might provide the basis for an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious, and so help unify the myriad strands that currently populate this field.Drawing on path-breaking research, clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe, as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders, mysterious sects and lost faiths, How Religion Evolved offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse - to believe.

Fascinating...In essence, the number and quality of our friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life save for giving up smokingGuardian, Book of the DayFriends matter to us, and they matter more than we think. The single most surprising fact to emerge out of the medical literature over the last decade or so has been that the number and quality of the friendships we have has a bigger influence on our happiness, health and even mortality risk than anything else except giving up smoking.Robin Dunbar is the world-renowned psychologist and author who famously discovered Dunbars number: how our capacity for friendship is limited to around 150 people. In Friends, he looks at friendship in the round, at the way different types of friendship and family relationships intersect, or at the complex of psychological and behavioural mechanisms that underpin friendships and make them possible - and just how complicated the business of making and keeping friends actually is.Mixing insights from scientific research with first person experiences and culture, Friends explores and integrates knowledge from disciplines ranging from psychology and anthropology to neuroscience and genetics in a single magical weave that allows us to peer into the incredible complexity of the social world in which we are all so deeply embedded.Working at the coalface of the subject at both research and personal levels, Robin Dunbar has written the definitive book on how and why we are friends.

Los amigos son importantes, y mucho más de lo que creemos. Durante la última década en la literatura médica se ha hecho cada vez más hincapié en el hecho de que el número y la calidad de nuestras amistades influencia enormemente en nuestra felicidad y nuestra salud e incluso puede reducir el riesgo de mortalidad mas que cualquier otra cosa, excepto dejar de fumar.Robin Dunbar es el psicologo y autor de renombre mundial que descubrio el famoso numero de Dunbar, en el que limita nuestra capacidad de amistad a unas 150 personas. En Amigos, el autor analiza la amistad en su conjunto: la forma en que se cruzan los diferentes tipos de amistades y relaciones familiares, la amalgama de mecanismos psicologicos y de comportamiento que las sustentan y las hacen posibles, y cuan complicado es tanto generarlas como mantenerlas.Con una mezcla de conocimientos de cientificos y de experiencias en primera persona, Amigos explora e integra el conocimiento de disciplinas que van desde la psicologia y la antropologia hasta la neurociencia y la genetica en un unico tejido magico que nos permite observar la increible complejidad de nuestro mundo social.Robin Dunbar ha escrito el libro definitivo sobre como y por que tenemos amigos.

Pocas historias atraen más a los humanos que la de sus orígenes, la de cual fue el camino que nos llevó a ser lo que somos, incluyendo, claro, con quienes estamos emparentados, y cómo y cuándo nos separamos de tales ancestros. Este libro, un fascinante viaje a traves de las brumas del tiempo, explora quienes somos. ¿Que es lo que nos aparto tan decisivamente de todas las otras especies con las que compartimos el planeta? ¿En que momento de nuestra historia evolutiva aparecieron las diferencias que nos separaron de las demas criaturas? ¿La denominada “mente” (o mundo mental) es algo especifico de los humanos o se trata de un rasgo mas general de la psicologia animal? ¿Por que surgio el lenguaje? ¿Que es eso que llamamos cultura, y que muchos consideran el sello de la humanidad? ¿Somos la unica especie que puede jactarse de ella? Y quizas la pregunta mas sugestiva de todas: ¿por que estas diferencias bendijeron a nuestro linaje y no a otro? Existen, por supuesto, muchas obras dedicadas a estas cuestiones, pero pocas las engloban en un conjunto armonioso, que permite a sus lectores verse al final de una forma diferente, mas integrada y comprensible. Y pocas, si es que alguna, despliega la claridad, estilo literario, variedad de recursos y sensibilidad historica,

Los amigos son importantes, y mucho más de lo que creemos. Durante la última década en la literatura médica se ha hecho cada vez más hincapié en el hecho de que el número y la calidad de nuestras amistades influencia enormemente en nuestra felicidad y nuestra salud e incluso puede reducir el riesgo de mortalidad mas que cualquier otra cosa, excepto dejar de fumar.Robin Dunbar es el psicologo y autor de renombre mundial que descubrio el famoso numero de Dunbar, en el que limita nuestra capacidad de amistad a unas 150 personas. En Amigos, el autor analiza la amistad en su conjunto: la forma en que se cruzan los diferentes tipos de amistades y relaciones familiares, la amalgama de mecanismos psicologicos y de comportamiento que las sustentan y las hacen posibles, y cuan complicado es tanto generarlas como mantenerlas.Con una mezcla de conocimientos de cientificos y de experiencias en primera persona, Amigos explora e integra el conocimiento de disciplinas que van desde la psicologia y la antropologia hasta la neurociencia y la genetica en un unico tejido magico que nos permite observar la increible complejidad de nuestro mundo social.Robin Dunbar ha escrito el libro definitivo sobre como y por que tenemos amigos.