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The approach to the evolution of human culture and mind suggested in this article represents transactional naturalism combined with methodological relationalism. In transactions, the organism changes the environment and vice versa. Transactional naturalism conceptualizes the human mind and awareness in a relational vein, as coevolving with the human socio-cultural niche, much like enactive and extensive theories of mind. The approach is in stark contrast with gene-centered and psychologizing nativist naturalism which views consciousness and language faculty as innate. The origin of the concept of transaction is in classical American pragmatism, in particular in Dewey's theory of action according to which one can learn only in action and in action one cannot but learn. Apprentice learning setup, emphasized by Kim Sterelny in particular, has been pivotal for the development of human community since the Pleistocene era. Coevolving with social institutions, human learning has played an exceptional role in cultural innovations when useful knowing-how and skilled habits have been transferred from generation to generation. Therefore humans deserve the epithet Homo discens, learning man., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Abstract: This article takes an evolutionary “reverse engineering” standpoint on Homo discens, learning man, to track down the (learning) mechanisms that played a pivotal role in the natural selection of human being. The approach is “evolutionary sociological”—as opposed to gene‐centred or psychologising—and utilises notions of co‐evolutionary organism–environment transactions and niche construction. These are compatible with a Deweyan theory of action, which entails that in action one cannot but learn and one can only learn in action. Special attention is paid to apprentice‐like learning‐by‐doing peculiar to human socio‐cultural niches since the Pleistocene, which has permitted each subsequent generation to learn the many habits and skills needed in utilising the affordances of action that constitute their ecological niche. Affordances and actions have changed over the history of human–environment transactions, but the core mechanisms of human learning have not changed much. It is increasingly important to appreciate these mechanisms now in the global age “knowledge society,” which is in a way similar to the Pleistocene era: characterised by uncertainty and life‐determining problem‐situations without any ready‐made solutions, it calls for capacities to adapt to changing circumstances, and thus apprentice‐like learning in action supported by savvy epistemological engineering of learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article starts out from the postmodern critique on higher education, which presents a challenge to discard the contemplative conception of knowledge and promotes a pragmatic conception of inquiry, knowing how and higher learning. Experimental everyday inquiry and scientific research do not differ from each other in this respect: both entail learning by doing as the experience accumulating through action shapes both the actor's habits and the knowing how on which they are based. Under the conditions in which the special nature of traditional scientific knowledge is questioned, students should be acquainted with unprejudiced action that experiments with and questions everything we are used to, and yet is based on consideration even in doubtful situations. The article offers a starting point for embedding learning that is achieved by inquiring, experimenting and doing in the higher education curriculum. Although questioning conventional production of contemplative knowledge, the article calls for a strong academic community which allows researchers themselves to decide in their scientific discussions what is science and what is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]