The Evolution of Human Wisdom ed. by Celia Deane-Drummond and Agustín Fuentes (review)

Evolution has brought together scholars in fields of theology, philosophy, and anthropology with specializations including zoology, evolutionary history, animal behavior, theological anthropology and ethics. The collection includes a forward, introduction by the editors, and a prologue on Philosophical Parameters, followed by four main sections: Signs of Evolutionary Anthropology, Evolving Homespun Wisdom, the Wisdom of Speech, and Evolving Wisdom as Virtue. The volume concludes with an Epilogue: Questions and Puzzles in Evolutionary Anthropology. The result is an engaging and fruitful conversation about how human wisdom is defined, how wisdom may have emerged and changed throughout evolutionary history, and what all of this might mean for human persons, communities, and the environment. This kind of interdisciplinary dialogue is vital in a climate that frequently pits the concerns and claims of science and religion in opposition to one another, to the detriment of the environment and its inhabitants.

Several themes are woven throughout the volume in chapters addressing quite varied topics including evolutionary anthropologies, theories of mind, intentionality in early childhood, Jesus of the gospels as homemaker, the realm of angels, and the origins and roles of language. Evolution navigates the dynamic, social aspects of human wisdom and tensions between the interdependence of homo sapiens within their environments and their evolving capacity for detachment from the same. Wisdom shapes and is shaped by sensory engagement with environment. Memory, future-thinking, thinking about thinking, speculation and symbolic representation in language, art, music and movement, all of which play key roles in theological ethics, are carefully examined in the context of evolutionary science. As scholars continue to find and interpret evidence from deeper within the archeological record, there appears no bright line on the chart of evolution where forms of cognition and metacognition appear and starkly differentiate homo sapiens. Shared across disciplines is the notion that wisdom is not closed, and that the evolution of wisdom is ongoing. However one might define or describe what is unique about homo sapiens, or what it means to say that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, Evolution presses scholars to consider carefully these claims and their consequences in light of the evidence. Readers come away with information and insight across disciplines, more questions than answers about where the evolution of wisdom and ideas about wisdom might lead us, and space to see these questions as thrilling rather than threatening.

Evolution is suitable for specialists and graduate students in moral theology, philosophy, and anthropology. Scholars working in the fields of ecology and environmental ethics will be rewarded by the careful attention to fundamental questions about human personhood and the nature of the relationship between homo sapiens and all of the created order. As a resource for those teaching theological ethics to undergraduates and non-specialists in this area, the text is especially helpful in complexifying theories of evolution and assumptions about human personhood that might be found in texts designed for these audiences. A “cheat sheet” of terms and the broad strokes of recent developments in evolutionary theories would be helpful for the non-specialist to have on hand. The project serves as a model for the kind of interdisciplinary conversations that are required for greater precision in ethical claims about the distinctiveness of the human person, human communities, and dare we say, greater wisdom about the moral challenges and possibilities such precision implies.