Table of Contents

Introduction by Celia Deane-Drummond and Agustín Fuentes
Prologue: Philosophical Parameters
Chapter 1: The Human as World-Open Spirit: An Exploration into Philosophical Anthropology and the Foundations of Human Wisdom by Dylan Belton
Part I: Signs in Evolutionary Anthropology
Chapter 2: What Can Anthropology Say about the Evolution of Human Wisdom? by Marc Kissel
Chapter 3: In the Minds of Others by Marcus Baynes-Rock
Part II: Evolving Homespun Wisdom
Chapter 4: Growing Wisdom by Ben Campbell
Chapter 5: Homo Sapiens Sapiens: The Human as Homemaker by Julia Feder
Part III: The Wisdom of Speech
Chapter 6: Speaking Truthfully: A Thomistic Perspective on the Peculiar Origins of Human Language by Stewart Clem
Chapter 7: Precursors to Explanations of Action: Collective Intentionality and the Wisdom of Early Childhood by Craig Iffland
Part IV: Evolving Wisdom as Virtue
Chapter 8: Change and Constancy in the Nature of Wisdom over Time by Adam Willows
Chapter 9: Practical Wisdom in the Making: A Theological Approach to Early Hominin Evolution in Conversation with Modern Jewish Philosophy by Celia Deane-Drummond
Epilogue: Questions and Puzzles in Evolutionary Anthropology
Chapter 10: Manipulating Materials, Bodies, and Signs: How the Ecology of Creative Problem Solving, Tool Manufacture, and Imaginative Sociality Set the Context for Language in the Later Pleistocene Human Niche by Agustín Fuentes

About the Author

Celia Deane-Drummond is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.
Agustín Fuentes is professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

The Evolution of Human Wisdom is an informed engagement with one of the great questions of our time—a question I doubt will ever be answered, in part because we don’t know how to ask it. The contributors, fortunately, seem to recognize this and, for the most part, maintain a consistently open, exploratory, tentative, and even humble tone. The invitation to the conversation is wide open.
*Reading Religion*

Seldom are books on wisdom as wise or cogently argued as Celia Deane-Drummond and Augustin Fuentes’ splendid new collected volume. Their interdisciplinary inquiry will be an invaluable resource for scholar and student alike interested in the evolutionary origins of human wisdom, both secular and sacred.
*William O'Neill, Santa Clara University*

Homo sapiens may have evolved, but what about human sapientia or wisdom? Can we explain how it emerged from biological evolution? The Evolution of Human Wisdom takes up this challenge. Contributors agree that wisdom requires intelligence and language. They all insist, however, that wisdom is much more than cleverness. It is something deeply human, coming into existence and making possible the complex totality of our creative interactions with nature, technology, and society. Wisdom arises within our evolution and affects its course, both in the shrouded past and the uncharted future. The Evolution of Human Wisdom is intelligent, informed, creative . . . in a word, wise.
*Ron Cole-Turner, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary*