Field of Human Evolution: Critical Perspectives from History and Epistemology

Mathilde Lequin holds a PhD in Philosophy of Science from the University of Paris Nanterre, France. She is currently a CNRS Junior Researcher at the University of Bordeaux, where she works within the PACEA laboratory alongside paleoanthropologists and archaeologists. Her research focuses on the epistemology of paleoanthropology, with particular attention to its intersections with the philosophy of biology and philosophical anthropology. Juan Manuel Rodriguez Caso obtained his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) from the University of Leeds, UK. Previously, he studied Biological Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is currently Visiting Researcher at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Xochimilco), and a part-time lecturer at the UNAM Faculty of Sciences. He is also a member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico. His primary areas of interest are the history of Darwinism, the dialogue between science and religion, and the development of Victorian anthropology.

• Part I. Introduction.- Chapter 1. Critical Thinking in Human Evolution: Reflexive Approaches to the Human Past.- Chapter 2. Why It Is Necessary to Critically Rethink How (Scientific) Knowledge Is Constructed.- Part II. Historical Perspectives on the Study of Human Evolution.- Chapter 3. Historical Reflections on Human Evolution in the Nineteenth Century: Beyond Darwin and “Darwinism”.- Chapter 4. The Methodological and Theoretical Framework of Early Paleoanthropology.- Chapter 5. Interpretations, Influences, Personalities, and the Phylogeny of Palaeoanthropology.- Chapter 6. Sherwood Washburn’s Pragmatic Evolutionary Theory.- Chapter 7. Punctuated Equilibrium and Human Evolution, 50 Years Later.- Part III. Historical PeFrom Data to Evidence: Concepts, Models, and Representations.- Chapter 8. Images of Phylogeny and Visualizations of Evolution: Scales, Trees, Networks, and Maps.- Chapter 9. Proximate-Ultimate Causation in Human Evolution? Implications from Archaeology.- Chapter 10. On Genetic Data, Models, Story-Telling and Consensus: (Re) Constructing the Demographic History of Homo Sapiens and Its Putative Admixture with Neanderthals.- Chapter 11. Human Behavior Genetics and Human Evolution.- Part IV. Otherness and Diversity in Human Evolution: Anthropological and Political Perspectives.- Chapter 12. Critical Hominin Theory.- Chapter 13. Is and Ought? Problems with Deriving “Natural” and Prescribing “Normal” via the Human Evolutionary Record.- Chapter 14. When Neanderthals and Modern Humans Coexisted: How Philosophy, Archaeology and Prehistory Novels Are Working Towards a More Inclusive Understanding of Deep Human History.- Chapter 15. A Decolonial and Multilayered Analysis on the Silencing of the Latin American Biological Anthropology: the Case of ‘The Peopling of the Americas’ Research.