We review a selective history of the literature on related concepts such as belongingness, selective associations, and constraints on learning, as well as evidence for general learning processes. We then review the more recent and nascent literature on adaptive memory specializations in humans, vis-a-vis general models of memory. Following this introduction, we propose two insights that resolve the tension between general processes of learning and memory, on the one hand, and adaptive specializations, on the other. In the first insight, we use the analogy of how the general processes of DNA transcription and translation produce adaptively specialized proteins that are cell- and tissue-specific to serve as a model for understanding how learning and memory processes can reflect a common process at one level of analysis (e.g., cell-molecular) and adaptive specializations at another level of analysis (e.g., neural circuitry). The second insight comes from understanding how similarities in behavioral phenomena can arise due to shared ancestry (homology) or convergent evolution (homoplasy). These insights promise to unite psychological explanations of behavior with the rest of biology.