I have, however, steered clear of many strong claims that have been made in recent years about the
direct relevance of evolutionary biology. I have no doubt that the human brain evolved by natural
selection, but available evidence does not particularly well support claims commonly made by
proponents of evolutionary psychology that the brain is a collection of special-purpose innate
modules such as ones for language and social behavior. Given the current lack of evidence about just
how brains evolved, it is at least as plausible that the major effect of natural selection has been to
allow the development of powerful methods of individual and social learning. The brain clearly has a
built-in architecture of areas such as the dopamine-based reward system, but it functions more in the
direction of flexible learning strategies than in the direction of fixed modules. The Brain Revolution
does not condemn us to using patterns of thinking fixed in the Stone Age by biological wiring.
Rather, cultural developments such as literacy, mathematics, argument, and scientific experiments
have opened rich possibilities for developing human societies in ways that can immensely enrich the
lives of people. I argued in chapter 5 for a multilevel approach to explaining the mind that is neither
reductionist nor antireductionist. We should draw on all the insights about mental processes that the
Brain Revolution is providing, while acknowledging the continuing relevance of psychological and
social explanations to understanding how things are and how they can be improved.