Richard O. Prum

I might have given this a five, the theme is very well argued, all of the examples are great. It kept driving me to you-tube to see videos of the mating rituals . The one thing that kept it from being a five was the frequent insistence that there had to be a ton of papers proving the hypothesis that just weren't being [ublished. Mentioning this once, while it might have made me skeptical , would have been acceptable. It is quite possible true. The continued insistence seemed a bit like zealotry.
Of ocurse if you are a zealot on the side of truth, who can blame you… (more)

Y'all.... I just finished reading _The Evolution of Beauty_
https://smile.amazon.com/Evolution-Beauty-Darwins-Forgotten-Theory-ebook/dp/B01K...
This is an absolutely amazing book. He argues that there is more to natural selection than "survival of the fittest." He says that some evolution happens because females make aesthetic decisions. He studies this in birds first, because he's an ornithologist. Female birds think bright plumage is pretty, so they pick males with bright plumage, so males evolve brighter plumage which gives them no survival advantages whatsoever but girls like it so they evolve it. In other words, evolution happens because _females make decisions and have preferences_. Not only that, but in birds, those female decisions have led to greater female autonomy and female control over male behavior: females decisions have made rape harder (almost impossible) among birds. He then extends this to human evolution, and his conclusions are utterly amazing. He even manages to use this whole idea of aesthetic evolution to account for the existence of races, homosexuality, and female orgasm. Even if you aren't normally into this kind of book, this is an amazing work of feminist science and I can't recommend it enough. It will make you think about patriarchy in a totally new light. And I generally hesitate to call anything written by a man "feminist", but this book is totally feminist, and I'm actually surprised it is written by a man. Also. he has a great sense of humor. He gets really sarcastic about the patriarchy, and it's hilarious. Prum fully acknowledges how the work of his women students has been really revolutionary and has led him to these conclusions. I hope this book has a huge impact on the future of the study of evolution.… (more)