The Evolution of Communication » (1st Edition)

Marc D. Hauser is Professor of Psychology and Codirector of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program at Harvard University.

Bound to become a classic and to stimulate debate and research, The Evolution of Communication looks at species in their natural environments as a way to begin to understand what the real units of analysis of communicating systems are, using arguments about design and function to illuminate both the origin and subsequent evolution of each system. It lights the way for a research program that seriously addresses the problem of how communication systems, including language, have been designed over the course of evolution.

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An original treatment on the evolution of the diversity of communication systems in the natural world, emphasizing the causal factors that have been responsible for the evolution of such diversity. Following ethologist-Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen on the matter of comparative perspective, Hauser (anthropology and psychology, Harvard U.) explores the diversity of animal communication systems from four perspectives: mechanistic, ontogenetic, functional, and phylogenetic. The diverse group of organisms covered includes insects, frogs, birds, bats, monkeys and humans. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)