For those elements, patterns, traits, and institutions that are common to all human cultures worldwide, see Cultural universals.
Human Universals
Cover of the first edition
Author
Donald Brown
Language
English
Subject
Cultural anthropology
Publisher
McGraw Hill
Publication date
1991
Publication place
United States
Media type
Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages
220
ISBN
0-87722-841-8
OCLC
22860694
Human Universals is a book by Donald Brown, an American professor of anthropology (emeritus) who worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was published by McGraw Hill in 1991. Brown says human universals, "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception."
According to Brown, there are many universals common to all human societies.[1][2]
Steven Pinker lists all Brown's universals in the appendix of his book The Blank Slate.[3] The list includes several hundred universals, and notes Brown's later article on human universals in The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences
The list is seen by Brown (and Pinker) to be evidence of mental adaptations to communal life in our species' evolutionary history.[3]p53 The issues raised by Brown's list are essentially darwinian. They occur in Darwin's Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), and in Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863). The list gives little emphasis to the issues of aggression, physical conflict and warfare, which have an extensive literature in ethology.[4] Brown's list does have conflict and its mediation as items. He also makes note of the fact that human males are more prone to violence and aggression than females.
^Brown, Donald E. (1991). Human Universals. New York City: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-87722-841-8.
^As quoted by Pinker
^ abPinker, Steven 2002. The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking. Appendix: Donald E. Brown's list of human universals.
^Lorenz, Konrad 1966. On Aggression. London: Methuen.
relativist perspective may deny the existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are "cultural" in the narrow sense, or in fact biologically...
Brown, HumanUniversals (1991) HumanUniversals. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991 List of Universals from the book. Chapter by Brown Introduction to Human Universals...
original text related to this article: Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document...
small, etc. Philosophers agree that human beings can talk and think about universals, but disagree on whether universals exist in reality beyond mere thought...
linguistic universals, instead promoting these similarities as simply strong tendencies. Linguists distinguish between two kinds of universals: absolute...
of human rights has in some sense existed for centuries, although peoples have not always thought of universalhuman rights in the same way humans do...
S2CID 4149862. Fichtel, C.; Kappeler, P. M. (2010). "Chapter 19: Humanuniversals and primate symplesiomorphies: Establishing the lemur baseline". In...
sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, and theories about humanuniversals such as gender differences, incest avoidance, mourning, hierarchy and...
HumanUniversal Load Carrier, or HULC, is an un-tethered, hydraulic-powered anthropomorphic exoskeleton developed by Professor H. Kazerooni and his team...
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted between early 1947 and late 1948 by a committee formed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights...
Donald Brown Cartesian linguistics Noam Chomsky Evolutionary psychology HumanUniversals A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation Imprinting John...
modern human behavior, it is necessary to define behaviors that are universal among living human groups. Some examples of these humanuniversals are abstract...
unification of all human beings across geographic and other boundaries under Western values, or the application of really universal or universalist constructs...
Donald E. (1991). HumanUniversals. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. ISBN 0-07-008209-X. Gribbin, Mary; Gribbin, John (1993). Being Human: Putting People in...
interested in both human variation and in the possibility of humanuniversals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures). They...
Greenberg's linguistic universals. Chomsky defined universal grammar as "the study of the conditions that must be met by the grammars of all human languages" or...
psychology. Brown, Donald E. (1991) HumanUniversals. New York: McGraw-Hill. Symons, D. (1979). The evolution of human sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University...
incompatibilists; for they think that if causal determinism were true of human action, people would not have free will. Accordingly, some libertarians...
Humans (Homo sapiens) or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus Homo. They are...
judgment and a distinction "right and wrong, good and bad" are cultural universals. Although the history of the origin of the use of the concept and meaning...
(2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1451673135. Brown DE (1991). HumanUniversals. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0877228417...
position on the problem of universals. It is opposed to realist philosophies, such as Platonic realism, which assert that universals do exist over and above...
traditions state that there was once a single universal language among all people, or shared by humans and supernatural beings. In other traditions, there...
South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia. Donald Brown, HumanUniversals, 1991. Kahn, J.; London, K. (1991). "Premarital Sex and the Risk of...
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