TU HomeTU PortalText Only Version

Leonard O. Greenfield, Ph.D.

Email: green@temple.edu
Office telephone: 215-204-1489

Over the past several years my interests have shifted from paleoanthropology and primatology to natural philosophy which includes inputs from functional (molecular) biology and the epistemology of human thought. Currently the primary goal of my research is to provide a non-Darwinian scientific explanation of human behavior that can be applied, by anthropologists, to the behavior of living humans. This explanatory model is based solely on a cybernetic perspective of functional biology and excludes adaptive explanations derived from evolutionary biology because the latter, although providing true and useful concepts, are non-empirical and statistical, rather than empirical and causal. Unlike the Darwinian view, the model explains the many human behaviors that make no sense from an evolutionary (adaptational) perspective as well as behaviors that do conform to fitness expectations. It is hoped that the causal model will also help to prevent the growing rift in anthropology between cultural anthropologists and physical anthropologists.
