Category Archives: Evolution

Just in case you missed it the first ten times: E.O. Wilson likes group selection, Jerry Coyne does not

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Chris Jensen

Why Evolution is True “E. O. Wilson mistakenly touts group selection (again) as a key factor in human evolution“

Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolution, Group Selection, Kin Selection, Reciprocity | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Allen MacNeill predicts resolution of Ev-Coop debates

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Chris Jensen

The Cornell Daily Sun “Darwin Days Lecture: “Can Cooperation Evolve by Natural Selection?”“

Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Kin Selection | Tagged | Leave a comment

Martin Nowak to lecture on the compatibility of god and the evolutionary process

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Chris Jensen

College of the Holy Cross “Harvard Scientist to Lecture at Holy Cross on God and Evolution” It is amazing to hear someone like Nowak say “God uses evolution to unfold the living world around us”. This is radical stuff for … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolution, Religion | Tagged | Leave a comment

Understanding kin selection and reciprocity when strategies are culturally propagated

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Chris Jensen

arXiv “Self-Organization Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation with Cultural Propagation“

Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Kin Selection, Reciprocity | Leave a comment

Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Chris Jensen

Do everyday people have any sense of their place in the world? Human beings live in incredibly complex societies undergirded by convoluted economies and overwhelmingly diverse cultures. Do we have a sense of how these societies came to be, or … Continue reading →

Posted in A Major Post, Behavior, Cooperation, Economic sustainability, Ethics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Social Diversity | Leave a comment

“Earth Hour” seeks to re-focus our attention on all the earth provides

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Chris Jensen

World Wildlife Fund Earth Hour Will an hour of darkness give us the time to contemplate both the importance of ecosystem services and how our voracious energy consumption threatens those services? It is certainly worth a try.

Posted in A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Cooperation, Environmental Justice, Public Policy, Sustainable Energy | Leave a comment

Forward on Climate Rally seeks to shift the national dialogue on anthropogenic climate change

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Chris Jensen

The Sierra Club / 350.org / Hip Hop Caucus — Forward on Climate Rally

Posted in A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Cooperation, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Political Science | Leave a comment

Dog license dataset opens up huge potential for understanding the dog-human mutualism

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Chris Jensen

WNYC “NYC’s Top Dogs: Mapping Names & Breeds in the City” WNYC “Dogs of NYC” Data sets like these, even flawed by their incompleteness (only 20% of dogs in New York City are registered) are fascinating. The human relationship with dogs has … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Canids, Coevolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Geography, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Mutualism, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Web | Leave a comment

Brief NYT article on empathy in children

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Chris Jensen

The New York Times “Understanding How Children Develop Empathy“

Posted in A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Empathy | Leave a comment

Is selective rejection of science really a problem?

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Chris Jensen

In a recent short opinion piece (Scientific American “Creation, Evolution and Indisputable Facts“), Jacob Tanenbaum argues that selectively rejecting evolutionary biology is dangerous to the scientific culture of America. He rightly points out that our populace does not reject science … Continue reading →

Posted in A Major Post, Adaptation, Altruism, Articles, Belief, Cooperation, Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Religion, System Stability | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Roberts Publishing releases an iPad version of their majors Evolution textbook

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Chris Jensen

iTunes “Evolution: Making Sense of Life” I don’t own an iPad so I won’t be playing with this anytime soon, but I am very curious about the impact of this first-of-its-kind majors Evolution textbook for tablet. I am not sure … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Educational Software and Apps, Evolution, Evolution Education, Teaching Tools | Leave a comment

Montreal art installation rewards cooperative play with musical novelty

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Chris Jensen

I really appreciate the combination of social play and music that went into this very simple but very rich piece of public art.

Posted in A Minor Post, Art & Design, Cooperation, Installation Art, Play, Public Art, Web | 1 Comment

If your “free will” is questionable, feel free to exercise your “free won’t”

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Chris Jensen

Scientific American “Free Won’t“

Posted in A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Consciousness, Emotion, Neuroscience | 1 Comment

Do our brains require endurance activity in order to function?

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Chris Jensen

The New York Times “Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain” While I think that the finding that brain size and capacity for endurance are linked is interesting and important, I am a bit baffled by this article’s take on the … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Brain size, Development, Evolution, Gene by Environment Interactions, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Mismatch Theory, Neuroscience, Phenotypic Plasticity | Leave a comment

Barash not so enlightening on the paradox of human homosexuality

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Chris Jensen

The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality” It is interesting that Barash focuses so heavily in this article on traditional population genetic explanations for the “paradox” of homosexuality, especially when it is becoming so clear that single-gene … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Articles, Evolution, Gene by Environment Interactions, Genetics, Group Selection, Kin Selection, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction | Tagged | Leave a comment

Multiple Intelligences theory gets some neuroscientific support

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Chris Jensen

Neuron “Fractionating Human Intelligence” What is crazy about these findings is that they are novel. Is this really the first time that anyone decided to tackle the question of what different “intelligence tests” measure? The first time that anyone has … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Development, Epigenetics, Evolutionary Psychology, Fluidity of Knowledge, Gene by Environment Interactions, Genetics, Human Evolution, Intelligences, Neuroscience, Phenotypic Plasticity | Leave a comment

Freeman Dyson wins the contest, and then says the contest is stupid

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Chris Jensen

Institute for Advanced Study “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” One of my favorite skateboarders when I was young was Natas Kaupas, an innovative skater who pioneered a lot of modern streetstyle. Natas was one of those skaters who could do things that … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Modeling (General), Multilevel Selection, Reciprocity | Tagged | Leave a comment

NPR provides a quick overview of the human drive to reciprocate

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Chris Jensen

National Public Radio Shots “Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us” I appreciate the far-ranging nature of this piece, and how it applies a basic understanding of reciprocity to larger social phenomena. There is not much here … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Behavior, Cooperation, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Emotion, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Reciprocity, Reputation, Social Norms, Sociology | Leave a comment

Freakonomics takes the quantitative knife to how we produce and consume food

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Chris Jensen

Freakonomics Radio “You Eat What You Are” This piece delivers a much needed kick in the self-righteous pants to the locavore movement. It systematically disassembles the assumptions of the local food movement, ending by discussing the minimal quantitative ecological benefits … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Belief, Carrying Capacity, Climate Change, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Ecological Footprinting, Economics, Ethics, Food, Greenwashing, Hunger, Hypothesis Testing, Life Cycle Analysis, Philosophy, Population Growth, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Radio & Podcasts, Resource Consumption, Subsistence, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Vegetarianism | Leave a comment

New evidence that economic cooperation existed between Vikings and Inuit

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Chris Jensen

The November 2012 issue of National Geographic features an interesting article entitles “Vikings and Native Americans” that suggests that Viking settlers and Native Americans enjoyed a cooperative relationship. Archaeological evidence suggests that Europeans were depicted positively in Native American artifacts, and the pattern of … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Archaeology, Articles, Cooperation, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Human Evolution, Memetic Fitness | Leave a comment