Carroll, Joseph. "Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts." ON THE HUMAN FORUM (June 2009).

Evolutionists insist that genes constrain and direct human behavior. Cultural constructivists counter that culture, embodied in the arts, shapes human experience. Both these claims are true, but some evolutionists and some cultural constructivists have mistakenly regarded them as mutually exclusive (D. S. Wilson, “Evolutionary”). Some evolutionists have either ignored the arts or tried to explain them away as epiphenomenal to the basic processes of life. Many cultural constructivists, in contrast, have sought to collapse biology into culture, eliminating “human nature” and thus turning culture into a first cause or unmoved mover. In the past few years, evolutionists in both the sciences and the humanities have broken through this impasse, arguing that the imagination is a functional part of the adapted mind. These new ideas revise an earlier model of human cognitive evolution—a model most closely associated with “evolutionary psychology” (EP) as a specific school within the evolutionary human sciences. Revising that model makes it possible for us now fully to integrate the evolutionary human sciences and literary study. . . .

Read the rest here: http://onthehuman.org/humannature/?p=274.

Carroll, Joseph. "What is Literary Darwinism? An Interview with David DiSalvo." NEURONARRATIVE February 27, 2009.

If you’ve heard the term “Literary Darwinism,” you may have been tempted to lump it in with the list of schools of thought conjoining evolutionary thinking with, well, almost everything. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit I did the same. But the simple fact that this field has in the last couple of decades attracted a diversity of credible thinkers, from the sciences and literary studies alike, urged me to take a closer look. After all, there aren’t many fields featuring in their ranks both preeminent scientists like E. O. Wilson and renowned authors like novelist Ian McEwen. The closer look led me to the work of the field’s most respected thinkers, among them Joseph Carroll. Joseph Carroll, professor of English at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, wrote the book on Literary Darwinism, literally. Literary Darwinism (2004) and, before it, Evolution and Literary Theory (1995), are considered the foundational texts in the field. No article is written about Literary Darwinism that doesn’t quote Carroll, and no anthology in the field is complete without his contribution (notably, The Literary Animal [2005]) He recently spent some time with Neuronarrative discussing what Literary Darwinism is all about, addressing a few of the main criticisms levied against it, and envisioning what the future may hold for evolutionary thinking and literary study. . . . Read the rest here: http://neuronarrative.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/what-is-literary-darwinism-an-interview-with-joseph-carroll/.

Carroll, Joseph. "From Evolution Comes Literature." FORBES.COM February 5, 2009.

Literature depends on literacy, a very recent acquisition in human evolutionary history--so recent that it cannot plausibly be considered an adaptation. But people in all non-literate cultures use language, tell stories and play with words in creative and evocative ways. Written language is just a cultural technology that extends those universal human aptitudes. Literature and its oral antecedents are thus part of the basic profile of "human nature." Over the past 15 years or so, literary scholars in a small but now rapidly growing group have argued that producing an adequate theory of literature requires an evolutionary conception of human nature. By assimilating evolutionary social science, these "literary Darwinists" aim to form a new paradigm for the study of literature. Not surprisingly, that grand ambition has often met with a skeptical response: "There have been previous efforts to establish a scientifically based criticism--Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism. All these efforts have failed. Why would your effort be any different?" Not a bad question, but we have a good answer. This effort is different because the historical moment is ripe. We now have, for the first time, an empirically grounded psychology that is sufficiently robust to account for the products of the human imagination. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/05/evolution-literature-psychology-opinions-darwin09_0205_joseph_carroll.html?partner=email.