Social Practices as Biological Niche Construction

A broad, synthetic philosophy of nature focused on human sociality. In this book, Joseph Rouse takes his innovative work to the next level by articulating an integrated philosophy of society as part of nature.He shows how and why we ought to unite our biological conception of human beings as animals with our sociocultural and psychological conceptions of human beings as persons and acculturated agents.Rouse’s philosophy engages with biological understandings of human bodies and their environments as well as the diverse practices and institutions through which people live and engage with one another.Familiar conceptual separations of natural, social, and mental “worlds” did not arise by happenstance, he argues, but often for principled reasons that have left those divisions deeply entrenched in contemporary intellectual life.Those reasons are eroding in light of new developments across the disciplines, but that erosion has not been sufficient to produce more adequately integrated concep