Dear Charles,

Good to hear from you my friend. Your dilemma is one in which I cannot help but be
interested. I am pleased to hear about your interest in evolutionary psychology, and for good
reason! The same hankering for the answers to the ultimate questions one has about life and
humanity was one I shared for many years throughout my university career. The questions of:
how did we get here? Where did we come from? And perhaps most importantly, how do our
origins influence and urge our direction in the future. This course on evolutionary psychology
has endowed me with the tools and knowledge to first understand the scope of what these
questions really mean, and how to pursue their answer in a fascinating, mechanistic and
historically rich manner.
It has foremost allowed me insight into one of the most magnificent, eternal simple ideas
known to science: evolution by natural selection. This is, put simply, the idea that all the variety
living complexity that we can see today on Earth, arose from a common ancestor, and through
the incomprehensible amount of time since, the organisms successful at survival and
reproduction have lived on, and the countless organisms that were not so fortunate have become
extinct. This success or lack of it is merely a result of how the genes of these organisms are
expressed, and how this expression allowed them to adapt and survive in their respective
environments (Dawkins, 1976). That is when things get interesting. You can learn about the role
that sex plays in this plays in this process. The idea that the difference between male and female
is a driving factor in the evolution of species, and how each of them contribute to the traits that
organisms, including humans bear today.

Then comes the nature versus nurture debate, which is not a debate after all but indeed,
an interaction. One learns that human development isnt a valley between the two mountains of
nature and nurture, but more of a bumpy landscape shaped by experience just as much as it is
shaped by genes (Waddington, 1975). Furthermore, the higher human functions like language,
social interaction, and emotion are examined in turn. The course makes a point of looking at the
development of language as a monumental shift in human history, and how we are born with a
language organ, how it just a part of our psychology as our eyes or ears (Chomsky, 1957). Social
interaction is looked at from the point of view from our ancestors, and how we developed the
ability to think as others think, and develop empathy and also manipulation (Brne & BrneCohrs, 2006).
Finally we look at how all these ideas shapes how culture, the ultimate human creation
has been shaped by our evolutionary past, and why some human cultures have dominated the
globe rather than others. What has our evolutionary past revealed to us about the spread of
Europeans across the world, shaping the aspects of our modern culture? These among many
other captivating theories and stories are what await you in a course in evolutionary psychology.
I will however provide one word of caution: simply because youve learned about the way our
species once was, this does not give you licence to galvanise any hurtful ideas about our modern
culture, like the role of gender or race.
I hope this letter has assuaged any doubts you have had in taking this course, and I hope
you will learn and enjoy it as much as I did.
All the best,
Tushita

References
Brne, M., & Brne-Cohrs, U. (2006). Theory of mindevolution, ontogeny, brain mechanisms
and psychopathology. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 30(4), 437-455.
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.(1959). A review of B. F.
Skinners Verbal Behaviour. Language. 35, 2658.

Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene (1st edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Diamond, J. (1998). Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000
University Press.

Waddington, C. (1975). The Evolution of an Evolutionist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

Years. London: Vintage.