College Spotlight
Special Topics Course: The Evolution of Human Nature
Why do so many people fear harmless snakes more than guns? Why are the very people who reject us so often attractive to us? Why do we find junk food delicious and health food merely tolerable (or worse)? What does it mean to be sexy? These questions and many more will be answered in the Winter 2008 semester, as part of PSYC 4900, The Evolution of Human Nature. Offered for the first time at Nova Southeastern University, this special topics course will be taught by Glenn Scheyd, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences’ Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Charles Darwin, writing a century and a half ago, anticipated a time when the theory of evolution by natural selection would serve as the foundation for the field of psychology. It is perhaps premature to assert that that day has arrived; however, the explanatory and predictive power that Darwin’s theory has contributed in recent years to psychologists’ understanding of the behavior and mental processes of Homo sapiens portends well for Darwin’s prophecy. The human mind cannot be properly understood as an infinitely malleable vessel, equally willing to bear any set of thoughts, desires, fears, ambitions, and emotions at the command of individual circumstance. Each of us is a descendant of an unfathomably large number of ancestors, every single one of whichsucceeded in surviving and reproducing. As such, we carry in our genes the survival and reproductive strategies that allowed our ancestors to achieve this success.
This course will alter students’ notions of how the process of evolution operates, will enable students to view the modern human mind as a product of natural selection, and will explore the landscape of evolved adaptations that comprise the human mind. To enroll in PSYC 4900, The Evolution of Human Nature, students must have taken PSYC 1020, Introduction to Psychology. Registration for the Winter 2008 semester is currently available online via WebSTAR and through the college’s Office of Academic Advising.
