Database Planning
On November 14-15 the database working group, consisting of Edward Slingerland, Harvey Whitehouse, Peter Turchin, Mark Collard, and Pieter Francois met on the U Conn campus in Storrs, CT, for an intense, 2-day meeting to finalize the database structure and prioritize goals for the first year. UBC’s database expert, Maria Robinson, flew in to […]
Ara Norenzayan on NPR
Ara was recently featured in a piece on National Public Radio.
The Evolution of Religion, Morality, and Cooperation Lecture Series 2012/13
Ongoing – The evolutionary and cognitive sciences have recently experienced an explosion of work on religion, cooperation, and morality, and in particular on their interrelationships. The emerging framework promises to re-energize these long-languishing topics by bringing a fully interdisciplinary approach to these topics that synthesizes the integrative rigor and precision of the evolutionary sciences with the depth of history and ethnography. The series will feature both leading researchers on these topics from Vancouver and experts from across the globe.
Back to the Future – A Response to Martin and Wiebe
(This piece is a response to Martin and Wiebe’s Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion, with both the original piece and this response published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The full discussion is currently online here.) A Response to Martin and Wiebe Edward Slingerland Canada Research […]
Too Late – Models of Cultural Evolution and Group Selection Have Already Proved Useful
Joseph Henrich Anthropologist and Professor of Psychology and Economics. Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Coevolution. University of British Columbia. Apprehending the place of “group selection” in evolutionary thinking requires understanding the use of formal mathematical models. Many scientific disciplines, ranging from engineering to ecology, develop mathematical models to study, analyze and understand complex […]
The Cognitive Science of Morality Lecture Series 2011/12
There is a near universal interest in morality that has sparked thought-provoking inquiry for thousands of years. Much of that inquiry proceeded without the benefit of modern cognitive science, but that is now changing. And the change promises to shed new light on morality, particularly its practices, development, and the psychology behind ethical thought. In […]
The Emerging Science of Culture Lecture Series 2010/11
September 13th, 2010 Robert Boyd UCLA “How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.” Humans are a paradoxical species. On the one hand we are exceptionally good at adapting. Humans occupy a wider ecological and geographic range than any other species using a much greater range of subsistence strategies and social organizations. On the other hand, much of […]
Early HECC Lecture Series – 2009/10
September 16th, 2009 Yoel Rak Tel Aviv “Lucy’s Place in Nature.” October 19th, 2009 Ben Marwick University of Washington “Pleistocene Exchange Networks as Evidence for Hominin Language Evolution.” November 23rd, 2009 Jessica Tracy UBC “The Nature of Pride.” One of the major findings in the behavioral and social sciences is the discovery that a small […]