Category:
Culture
Sep 8, 2021
New Funding Opportunities to Address Hot Topics in Cultural Evolution
Researchers of cultural evolution may leverage this understanding to enable them to predict (and potentially intervene) in key domains of great global concern.
May 25, 2020
Cooperation Through Cultural Group Selection
Cultural forces are far greater than genetic predisposition or geographic proximity in promoting cooperation with nonkin.
Mar 7, 2020
Evolving a Major Transition in the Internet Age
The theory of major transitions provides an all-encompassing framework to explore both the opportunities and challenges facing humanity in the Internet Age.
Feb 27, 2020
The Cultural Evolution of Social Pathologies: Introduction to a Series of Essays by Anthony Biglan
The fact that evolutionary selection pressures so often result in social pathologies might be hard to accept, but once faced squarely it can lead to an optimistic point of view.
Sep 10, 2019
Blurring the Line Between “Others” – A Practical Application of Cultural Multilevel Selection Theory
Through a cultural multilevel selection perspective, seeing an individual “other” as human can shift the level of selection from within subgroups at a lower level to between groups at a higher level.
Dec 10, 2018
Cultural Evolution, Insight, and Fundamental Theories of Consciousness
Since cultural evolution is fueled by the creative efforts of human minds which, by anyone’s definition, are conscious, it would seem that consciousness plays a central role in cultural evolution.
Jun 18, 2018
You're Racist and Sexist, But It’s Not (Entirely) Your Fault
Companies are great at evaluating skills but inconsistent at evaluating temperament due to unconscious bias. These biases are, in part, a natural outcome of the human species evolving in small, homogenous groups. But new tools can help us overcome our innate biases to achieve cultural change.
Jan 19, 2018
Constructing Our Niches: Introducing the Importance of Cooperation and Ultimate Vs. Proximate Design Features
Collective and sustainable behavior is partially dependent on maintaining higher levels of cooperation among those involved, from the boardroom to the global stage.
Dec 6, 2017
Solving Friction with Fiction: Cooperation, Co-ordination, and the Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Storytelling
Storytelling may help to solve problems of co-ordination in hunter-gatherer societies in order to promote cooperation.
Oct 10, 2017
Completing Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: A Conversation with Kevin Laland
At the heart of Kevin Laland's new book is a “cultural drive” mechanism, whereby selection for accurate, efficient information transmission shaped the evolution of the primate brain and intelligence.
Sep 26, 2017
Unspeakable, Forbidden, Taboo: Teaching Evolution in the South with Dr. Amanda Glaze
Join Dr. Amanda Glaze in this insightful and engaging webinar as she discusses her research on teaching and learning evolution in the South and hear the insightful stories she has collected along the way.
Aug 16, 2017
Addressing White Supremacy, Hate and Inequities in our Global Village
Creating a truly functional, equitable, stable and sustainable nation certainly won’t be easy but a “blueprint,” can be found in our evolutionary past. What will it take? Those with the most power recognizing the realities of white supremacy, finding what’s needed to upscale this blueprint, and having the courage and vision to do so.
Jun 19, 2017
Deconstructing Niche Construction: A Conversation between Gordon Burghardt and Kevin Laland
The concept of niche construction stresses a dialectical relationship between organisms and their environments, rather than one being passively shaped by the other. It has deep roots in evolutionary thought but only now is resulting in a systematic research program. Join Gordon Burghardt and Kevin Laland as they take a deep dive into the subject.
Apr 27, 2017
This View of History Webinar: A Conversation With Peter Turchin
Peter Turchin discusses his new book "Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth". Ultrasociety chronicles 10,000 years of human history from an evolutionary perspective, shows how warfare paradoxically caused us to become the greatest cooperators on earth, and begins to point the way toward a future without war.
Sep 6, 2016
Excerpt from Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction
Citizen science is about regular people contributing to scientific discovery. Today’s burgeoning citizen science movement is aided and abetted by smartphone apps that precisely geolocate species observations. This “big data” citizen science is at the forefront of scientific methodologies today, but the roots of citizen science, and its basic purpose, hail back to Enlightenment impulses to understand God’s creation.
Jul 21, 2016
Religion through an Evolutionary Lens: A Conversation about Dominic Johnson’s “God is Watching You”
Dominic Johnson's new book present an new look at religion by suggesting that the same underlying scientific perspective—evolution and natural selection—can lead to a very different stance on religion from Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists.
Feb 2, 2016
Review of "Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth"
Professor Turchin’s new book Ultrasociety identifies the causal mechanisms hidden in the twists and turns of human civilisation by quantifying the rise and fall of empires.
