Chapter 4 adds a further theoretical dimension, making connections between the relevance-theoretic notion of interpretive use and the concept of metarepresentation from evolutionary psychology. Metarepresentation is the capacity to represent other representations, for example, to think about thoughts or utterances, and in this sense interpretive use is a public and communicative version of metarepresentation. The ability to understand other minds – known as theory of mind – is a related metarepresentational capacity which humans develop from an early age. Metarepresentation is related to other adaptive cognitive activities such as pretend play and simulation. These activities are decoupled from thoughts held as beliefs and are useful in various ways. The ability to engage in these activities is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation which confers advantage for humans. This chapter argues that the creation of fiction and the creation of narrative and character voices offer exercise for metarepresentational capacities in complex, embedded and extended ways. The chapter is largely theoretical, but the argument is supported with brief reference to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. This novel illustrates the idea of metarepresentation in a number of ways, including the ironic representation of characters’ thoughts and a broader parodic representation of Gothic fiction.

In Chapter 2, the human is defined for the purpose of legally advocating for the needs of humanity. Biological considerations are made, including the history of Social Darwinism and the misuse of selective traits to legally discriminate.

An evolutionary approach to depression seeks to analyze whether similar behavioral patterns that characterize depression in humans also occur in nonhuman animals – and if so, whether the events or circumstances that trigger such behaviors are analogous between humans and nonhuman animals. In nonhuman animals, triggers fvof depression-like behaviors include circumstances like being kept at zoos, being exposed to air pollution, experiencing sleep disturbances, or experiencing various stressors like electric shocks or separation from mother. In humans, evolutionary psychiatrists have criticized the diagnostic methods of depression used in psychiatry, partially because depressed mood is automatically classified as a disorder regardless of what caused it. An evolutionary perspective recognizes the possibility that negative emotions and mood states can be beneficial to the individual under some circumstances. This approach can help clarify the contexts, causes, adaptive functions (if any), and possible maladaptive manifestations of depressive symptoms, providing a framework for more intelligent, personalized, effective treatment strategies. Anthropological evidence indicates that depression is much more common in populations with contemporary western lifestyles than in populations with traditional or ancestral lifestyles. Understanding depression through an evolutionary lens helps clarify its biological roots, environmental triggers, and the reasons for its increasing prevalence in the modern world.

Change isn’t always orderly. Sometimes, it’s messy, emergent, and unpredictable. Chapter 3 introduces an organic perspective – one that sees change as a constant process unfolding through interaction, context, and chance. Instead of controlling change, this approach focuses on sensing, responding, and evolving. Drawing on ideas like complexity theory and informal networks, it reveals a more fluid way of understanding transformation. While it resists neat solutions, this perspective expands how we think about change - and challenges us to embrace uncertainty as part of the process.

The range of methods that courts can use for the interpretation of customary law is in principle no different than that applicable to other sources of international law, and these methods roughly correspond to those enumerated in articles 31-33 VCLT. At the same time, not all these methods are suitable for the interpretation of customary rules of international environmental law (IEL). Most environmental rules have by their inception an inherent constraint with regards to teleological interpretation as they yield to a number of considerations beyond simply the protection of the environment. In light of this, international courts and tribunals have interpreted customary environmental rules in expansive as well as regressive ways, oscillating between these two tendencies. When interpreting expansively, courts take into account developments that appear to affect the rule in question and push it to catch up with these developments. In contrast, regressive interpretation involves а backward looking approach where the courts are content with offering an interpretation that diverges from the standards surrounding the rule and renders a more conservative version of it.

Interpretation is part and parcel of every juridical endeavour. In international law, the law and methods pertaining to the process of interpretation continue to vex international legal theory and practice; in fact, increasingly so. The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) on treaty interpretation reflect three premises which can have broader implications for the practice of interpretation in international law. First, they reinforce the idea that interpretation is, or at least can be, a formal process based on legal rules.Second, this process determines the content of rules that are ‘in force’ and is thus legally and analytically distinct from the processes of identification, modification, amendment, and termination of rules. Third, these legal rules can have a general scope of application in the sense that they can apply regardless of the nature or subject-matter of the rule to be interpreted and irrespective of who performs the interpretation. That is to say, the VCLT envisages the possibility of a law of interpretation that forms essentially ‘a unity’

International law, like any other legal system, must ensure legal certainty. This task is all the more important for international law in light of the constant criticism advanced towards the nature of this legal system. One of the key tools to ensure legal certainty is a consistent and coherent application of rules based on a method of interpretation, where that method serves as the backbone of a judgement. The legal system and an act of application of a specific rule gain persuasiveness and legitimacy where the use of the method of interpretation of a rule is consistent from one case to another. Judges are the guarantors of the resilience of law in the sense that it is in their power to ensure its impartial and uniform application, which in turn counters allegations of inefficiency or bias of that system of law. All these considerations about the systemic features of interpretation and the role of judges as interpreters play toward at least a perception of the rule of law in the legal system. Therefore, the general rule of interpretation of international law is a central element in the international rule of law.

The Introduction explores the concept of the year book and some of its recent iterations. It sets out the major concerns of this work, which is essentially to read texts, events, and lives through the shared medium of 1859. It sets out the relationship between the three key themes of the book, that is, custom and the experience of history, the relationship between the individual and the collective, and the life and writings of George Eliot, and introduces the argument that will shape the work. This concerns the workings of history and of its dominant form in 1859: custom. The Preface also sets out the methodology of the book and draws on Raphael Samuel’s description of history as an ‘organic form of knowledge’ that ideally draws on multiple sources of information, and on accounts of lived experience and emotions too. In this last respect, literature clearly acts as a great resource.

The concept of environmental rule of law plays a pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness of environmental governance by integrating principles of the rule of law into environmental legislation with a nuanced application. Emerging from the recognition of the distinctiveness of environmental law and the stark implementation gap, it seeks to move environmental laws beyond mere legislation to their effective implementation, compliance, and enforcement. Formally acknowledged within the UN system in 2013, the roots of the principles of the rule of law, albeit sporadic, trace back to the 1970s within the realm of environmental law. Gradually, the concept has significantly evolved, gaining global prominence, institutionalization, and ultimately becoming a fundamental guiding pillar in the 2019 Fifth Montevideo Programme for the Development and Periodic Review of Environmental Law. This chapter chronicles the evolution of the concept, delineating its journey from scattered elements to a robust holistic framework. Cognizant that the concept continues to evolve, the chapter underscores critical issues that demand further research to maximize the benefits of the environmental rule of law.

The three editors provide an overview of the book where they describe key issues, summarize progress since Sotaro Kita’s (2004) edited volume on pointing, and situating each contributor(s)’ chapter within the context of the book.

In war we see xenophobic hate, resentment, and violence-triggering anger, coupled with in-group solidarity, love, and altruistic sacrifice. This combination is mirrored in the opponent society. This structure recurs so often that there is an unfortunate tendency to naturalize it as adaptations produced by an ancestral environment characterized by widespread, intense, and frequent war. From this point of view, we are bellicose because our most successful ancestors were; our emotional structure comes from the fact that we are descendants of victors in battle. I don’t agree with this interpretation, which I will call the bellicose adaptationist story. I will sketch an alternative evolutionary story from ongoing anthropological controversies. I don’t deny that humans are violent, but I will try to show that a coherent story can be told in which war qua anonymous inter-group violence was not universal in human history and so could not serve as the selection pressure for altruism. After clearing the ground in this manner, to account for a non-war-based altruism I describe the hypotheses of collective breeding and collaborative foraging put forth by Sarah Hrdy and by Michael Tomasello.

How did language emerge? It has been suggested that language developed through mimicry of the sounds of nature and animals. Some propose that speech arose from grunts and groans, gestures, dance, or music. Others believe that language has more divine origins. A number of scientists speculate that language appeared spontaneously in our species, while opposing theories say that language evolved over a very long period of time. And which was the original language anyway? It makes sense that the question of how language emerged has been called “the hardest problem in science.” All of that being said, researchers don’t always agree as to what constitutes language. It’s generally accepted that communication differs from language in that the latter involves the use of symbols and syntax. For this reason, some argue that language is uniquely human. Others think our hominin relatives may have had speech as well. Animals have their own versions of communication too, while there are always quirky news stories about talking birds, signing chimpanzees, and even monkeys that use grammar. What are we to make of these claims? Let’s look at who has language and how it emerged.

As it traces the emergence of organic life and the gradual transformation of species, Erasmus Darwin’s treaty in verse The Temple of Nature develops a poetics of what eludes our sense of sight, of the viewless and eyeless beings at the radical origins of life. The chapter thus retraces a poetic journey back to a perceptual framework in which sight does not yet exist. Erasmus Darwin tries to apprehend life before the first eye opened, to envision a world so young that sensation itself had just been born. That journey also goes back to the origins of the alliance of poetry and science in Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura and its poetics of corpora caeca, those viewless bodies that create entire worlds through blind contact. It lastly registers some of the aesthetic and epistemic aftershocks of Lucretius’ and Darwin’s poetics of blind bodies in the poetry of William Blake.