Fundamentals of Developmental Psychobiology: A Brief Account of an Interdisciplinary Science demonstrates how the science of Developmental Psychobiology (DBP) improves our understanding of non-human and human behavioral and psychological development, with consequences for better health care, animal husbandry, ecological conservation, and education.
The fundamentals of DPB include the natural history orientation in research and a historical stance to investigating development. The interests/aims of the researcher of natural history reflect four questions that may be asked about any behavioral pattern: about its phylogeny, adaptiveness, proximate causes, and development. The book provides the reader with a solid understanding of how physiological, biomechanical, and experiential processes are united in the organization of the developmental trajectories that create behavioral and psychological abilities and traits. These fundamentals distinguish DPB from other developmental disciplines that integrate biological and psychological information.
With the world facing human-generated climate change, a sixth major extinction of species, widespread human famine, poverty, disease, wars of tribalism, nationalism, religion, and politics, why write a book on some esoteric topic about psychological development? We live in a world with about a third of the human population living in medieval-like conditions, while the rest struggle with the current fear de jour of the Literati (e.g., a rebellious Artificial Intelligence).
The continued accumulation of scientific knowledge about how the universe works (and that includes how organisms develop their traits and abilities) is the greatest accomplishment of human thinking and curiosity. DPB and understanding how traits develop will become an important aspect of any solution that humans manage to apply to the world's problems. It provides a perspective on development that is under-appreciated, but which can lead to important advancements in developmental science. Developmental Psychobiology is about DPB as a science for understanding psychological development that could serve as another perspective from which to examine humanity's problems.
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