Darwin's Unfinished Symphony

Laland synthesises forty years of research across biology, psychology, and anthropology to argue that human cognition is the product of gene-culture coevolution -- a feedback loop between cultural learning, teaching, and biological adaptation that accelerated over hundreds of thousands of years. The human brain did not evolve first and then produce culture; culture shaped the brain that produces it. The book draws on Laland's own experimental work with fish and primates alongside the broader theoretical tradition of Boyd, Richerson, and Tomasello. It is the most comprehensive recent synthesis of how cultural evolution and biological evolution intertwine, and a natural companion to Henrich's work on cumulative culture.