Miller, Geoffrey F. 1965-

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MILLER, Geoffrey F. 1965-

PERSONAL: Born 1965, in Cincinnati, OH. Education: Columbia University; 1987; Stanford University, Ph.D., 1993; postdoctoral study at University of Sussex.

ADDRESSES: Home—Surrey, England. Office—Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, Department of Economics, University College London, Gower St., London WC1E 6BT, England.

CAREER: Evolutionary psychologist. Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, University College, London, England, currently senior research fellow. University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, visiting associate professor; Max Planck Institute of Psychological Research, Munich, Germany, research scientist.

WRITINGS:

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped theEvolution of Human Nature, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

(editor)Treatment of Integral Equations by NumericalMethods, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), 1997.

Also contributor to various radio and television series on human biology and evolution.

SIDELIGHTS: Geoffrey F. Miller, an American cognitive psychologist teaching at University College, London. His career is devoted to the study of evolutionary psychology. As Miller said in an Online interview for Edge, "My goal at this point really is to take evolutionary psychology the next step, and to apply standard of evolutionary theory as much as possible to explain the whole gamut of the human mind, human emotions, human social life, human sexual behavior as much as possible." He added, "Another thing I'm interested in at the moment is trying to create more cooperation between evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics, especially for understanding the mind, and distinguishing between parts of the mind that are truly universal, where everybody's got the same structure, versus parts of the mind where there's significant variability between people, and where some of that variability is genetic."

In the interview, Miller also commented, "All of psychology, anthropology, the humanities, political science, economics in the 20th century, developed without any understanding of how sexual selection could have shaped human behavior. It was just not on the table as an idea. Everything that we are, every aspect of human nature, had to be explained through survival selection—natural selection. And that imposed such serious restrictions on what we could explain—it seemed easy to explain tool making; it seemed hard to explain music. It seemed easy to explain parenting, but hard to explain courtship. All that's changed now. We've got from biology some powerful new principals about sexual selection that are just ripe for applying to human nature. That's what I'm trying to do."

Miller did research on evolutionary robotics, genetic algorithms, and simulations of sexual selection and dynamical games between predators and prey while an NationalScienceFedration-NATO postdoctoral student at the University of Sussex. As a research scientist at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at Max Planck Institute in Munich, his concentration was on modeling human judgment and decision-making. His work at the Center for Economic Learning and Social Evolution at University College, London, which is Europe's largest center for game theory and experimental economics, involves applications of sexual-selection theory and signaling theory to understanding human cognition, motivation, communication, and economic behavior.

His book, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, advances the controversial concept that sexual selection, Darwin's "other" idea besides natural selection, explains the evolution of human creativity. According to CogWeb reviewer Timothy Horvath, "Miller has a go at the conundrum of why people devote massive amounts of time, energy, and emotion to endeavors with little obvious survival value. He argues that the explanation has been woefully overlooked: sexual selection theory, the idea that ultimately it doesn't matter who survives, the only survival worth anything in evolutionary time is that which lasts long enough for procreation." Horvath concluded, "Miller's arguments are compelling, and must be reckoned with by any scholar trying to bring evolutionary explanations to bear on the arts."

In his book Miller argues that every human characteristic indicates some kind of fitness for mating. "Miller's main claim to our attention," said New York Times Book Review critic Ian Tattersall, "lies in his assertion that 'the human mind's most distinctive features, such as our capacities for language, art, music, ideology, humor, and creative intelligence,' are due more or less exclusively to mate choice." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called The Mating Mind an "enjoyable book" and noted that "Miller provides an articulate and memorable case for the role of sexual selection in determining human behaviors." Gilbert Taylor reflected in a Booklist review that "the series of scenarios he presents on how sexual selection proclivities may have favored the expressive and self-revealing aptitudes of the human mind prove most thought provoking."