This View of Life
Magazine

Over the long history of life on earth, the most consequential events have been those in which organisms came to embody new levels or modalities of existence.

When encountering a person we do not look at their feet, torso, or shoulders; we are compelled to first look at them in the face and instantly judge them.

Robert Paul is one of a very few cultural anthropologists who is contributing his extensive ethnographic knowledge to the modern study of cultural evolution.

In Barbara Oakley's popular MOOC, Learning How to Learn, they used dozens of insights drawn from evolutionary findings to help induce learners to stick with, and learn from, online materials. Knowledge of evolution, in other words, helped them build the world’s most popular course.

cultural practices, just like biological and psychological traits, are incomprehensible unless we understand their evolutionary origins and raisons d’être.

You don’t need much in the way of normative assumptions to convert facts into values. Consider the assertion: "All else being equal, more wellbeing is better than less." Who could object? It’s all but definitionally true.

If you want to think about language and evolution, about language and experience, about language and almost anything, or about almost anything in language, then start, or start all over again, with Daniel Dor’s The Instruction of Imagination.

Properly understood, morality is not a burden; it is an effective means for increasing the benefits of cooperation, especially emotional well-being resulting from sustained cooperation with family, friends, and community.