This View of Life
Magazine

Jonathan Haidt's journey from being an atheist to being a psychologist who thinks that religion was a crucial part of our biological and cultural evolution for morality.

Evolution can provide ultimate explanations for seemingly irrational human behavior.

Scientists have uncovered what they believe is the earliest ancestor of all animals.

Why do fundamentally selfish beings, which is what humans are according to the selfish gene theory, accept cultural norms that contradict their natural strivings?

Some bad ideas get past a mind’s defenses and then hijack the mind’s immune system. These bad ideas recruit the mind’s defenses to protect themselves, even if that recruitment ends up harming the mind that hosts it.

Organizational management is about shaping the norms and institutions of quasi-tribal groups so that they work better. Pete Richerson argues that much of what organizational management amounts to is trying to shape the norms and institutions of quasi-tribal groups so that they work better.

As long as harmful practices result in profits to corporations and income to corporate leaders, harmful practices will continue.

The question of discounting not only moves quickly from economics to ethics, it also leads to the search for the “deep structures” of human society and human reasoning.

The evolutionary paradigm should be consulted by people across the political spectrum.

“We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”There are many criticisms of the evolutionary view of human nature, and most of these have been the subject of ongoing debate and commentary. In this series of posts, of which this is the first installment, I will address one of the most pervasive objections, particularly among secular humanists and even some scientists: the notion that we’re telling “just-so stories” about human nature.

The famed australopithecine “Lucy” might have run into more than just her own species when she roamed Eastern Africa 3.2 million years ago.

After initially accepting the metaphor of mental immunity as a useful gift from a cherished friend, my more deeply ingrained worldview now appears to be casting doubts upon it.