Human Success Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications

Human Success: Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications examines human success from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with contributions from leading paleobiologists, anthropologists, geologists, philosophers of science, and ethicists. It considers how the human species grew in success-linked metrics, such as population size and geographical range, and how it came to dominate ecological systems across the globe. It probes whether the consequences of that dominance, such as human-driven climate change and the destruction of biodiversity, mandate a rethinking of the meaning of human success. The essays in this book urge us to reflect on what has led to our apparent evolutionary success—and, most importantly, what this success implies for the future of our species.

Hugh Desmond is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz University of Hannover and Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp. He received his PhD from KU Leuven, and has held research and visiting positions at Paris I-Sorbonne, KU Leuven, Princeton University, New York University, and the Hastings Center. His work centers on the philosophy and ethics of science, with particular emphasis on biology.

Grant Ramsey is a Research Professor at KU Leuven. He earned his PhD at Duke University and served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame from 2007 until 2016. His work centers on the philosophy of biology, especially the foundations of evolutionary and behavioral biology.

Editor and Contributor Biographies
1. Introduction: The Manifold Challenges to Understanding Human Success
Hugh Desmond and Grant Ramsey

Part I: What is Evolutionary Success?
2. Evolutionary Success: Standards of Value
Dan McShea
3. Human Success: A Contextual and Pluralistic View
Marion Hourdequin
4. Human success as a complex of autonomy, adaptation, and niche construction
Bernd Rosslenbroich

Part II: Explaining Human Success
5. The Origin and Evolution of Human Uniqueness
Geerat Vermeij
6. Wanderlust: A View from Deep Time of Dispersal, Persistence, and Human Success
Susan Antón
7. Culture as a life-history character: the cognitive continuum in primates and hominins
Matt Grove
8. A Gene-Culture Coevolutionary Perspective on Human Success
Kathryn Demps and Peter Richerson

Part III. Human Success in the Anthropocene
9. Anthropocene patterns in stratigraphy as a perspective on human success
Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Colin Waters
10. Utter success and extensive inequity: Assessing processes, patterns, and outcomes of the human niche in the Anthropocene
Agustín Fuentes
11. Adaptability and the Continuation of Human Origins
Richard Potts
12. Evolving Measures of Moral Success
Allen Buchanan and Rachell Powell
13. Future Human Success: Beyond Techno-Libertarianism
Hugh Desmond