Cecilia Heyes

Cecilia Heyes (born 6 March 1960) is a British psychologist who studies the evolution of the human mind. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College, and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy (psychology and philosophy sections), and President of the Experimental Psychology Society.

Heyes is the author of ''Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking'' (2018), described by Tyler Cowen as "an important book and likely the most thoughtful of the year in the social sciences".

Heyes has argued that the picture presented by some evolutionary psychology of the human mind as a collection of cognitive instinctsorgans of thought shaped by genetic evolution over very long time periodsdoes not fit research results. She posits instead that humans have cognitive gadgets"special-purpose organs of thought" built in the course of development through social interaction. These are products of cultural rather than genetic evolution, and may develop and change much more quickly and flexibly than cognitive instincts.

In 2017, Heyes gave the Chandaria Lectures at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London. She has written for the ''Times Literary Supplement'' and given a number of radio and television interviews. Provided by Wikipedia