647 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 T. Heams et al. (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_30 Chapter 30 Evolutionary Psychology: Issues, Results, Debates Philippe Huneman and Edouard Machery Abstract This chapter, supposed to introduce to the next four chapters devoted to evolutionary psychology, defines and explains the program of “evolutionary psychology” as it has been initiated in the 80s and then developed. It sketches the main explananda of this project, specifies the major assumptions, sketches some major points of methodological and philosophical controversy that arose in the last decade, and indicates some applications to specific questions. Emerging 20 years ago, evolutionary psychology has become a general conceptual framework for numerous studies in psychology and anthropology (Buss 2005; Dunbar and Barrett 2007). From developmental psychology to social psychology through psychopathology or linguistics, it suggests new perspectives and theoretical refinements in most branches of psychology and even in some areas of the human sciences. In a few words, evolutionary psychology approaches the mind from the perspec- tive of Darwinian evolutionism. The mind is seen as an ensemble of abilities that are molded in the course of evolution, abilities that can be conceived of as adaptations – aptitudes selected by the environment throughout the long period of hominization in the Pleistocene, the longest period of existence for Homo Sapiens and during which the broad outlines of the humans we now are were arguably created. Formulated first in Cosmides and Tooby’s essays (Tooby and Cosmides 1989), illustrated by the essays collated in The Adapted Mind (Barkow et al. 1992), defended by science celebrities from different disciplines such as Steven Pinker and David Buss, embraced in France by the anthropologist Dan Sperber, evolutionary psychology clearly inherits from the sociobiology put forth by Edward Wilson, P. Huneman (*) Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne), Paris, France e-mail: Philippe.huneman@gmail.com E. Machery Department of History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA e-mail: machery@pitt.edu [AU1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27