The Evolution of Communication

“The Evolution of Communciation is a definitive overview of an increasingly important interdisciplinary topic. Written with great clarity and insight by a creative researcher with an encyclopedic knowledge of several fields, it is an indispensable guide, and sure to become a classic.”

―Steven Pinker, MIT, author of The Language Instinct

Bound to become a classic and to stimulate debate and research, The Evolution of Communication looks at species in their natural environments as a way to begin to understand what the real units of analysis of communicating systems are, using arguments about design and function to illuminate both the origin and subsequent evolution of each system.

It lights the way for a research program that seriously addresses the problem of how communication systems, including language, have been designed over the course of evolution.

Praise

“Few writers have so far even attempted a general overview of animal communication, so Marc Hauser's book is timely if not overdue. Hauser brings to the task a formidable knowledge of the field (his bibliography contains some 1,500 items) plus a lucid style and an infectious enthusiasm that carry one smoothly through an immense maze of information and make complex biological theories accessible even to the uninitiated. For anyone concerned with the comparative study of communication, this book is likely to remain an indispensable source for some time to come.”

―Derek Bickerton, Nature

“Marc Hauser’s breadth of vision, coupled with his startling experimental ingenuity, add up to a landmark treatment of communication that integrates ethological, evolutionary, comparative psychology and cognitive science perspectives.”

―Susan Carey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Hauser’s book is a tour de force. It achieves the synthesis that the author aims to attain and skillfully exploits the power of the comparative approach. This is a very hard act to follow.”

―Mark Konishi, California Institute of Technology

“This book is highly original and ambitious, attempting as it does to assemble a new synthesis on the evolution of communication in higher vertebrates, including our own species. I know of no other book that makes such an intensive effort to combine coverage of human and non-human communicative behavior. The breath of coverage is stunning..”

―Peter Marler, University of California-Davis

“The study of animal communication is a diverse endeavor encompassing disciplines from physics to chemistry to psychology and linguistics, traversing neurobiology, and evolution on the way. No one treatment could be definitive. Hauser has sampled it, however, to produce a treatment that encompasses both the subject’s richness and subtleties, and that is exquisitely clear in its presentation. This work can serve well as an undergraduate text, an introduction to novice researchers, and a reminder to others of us of the initial excitement that drew us to this area of study.”

―Michael J Ryan, University of Texas-Austin