Apparently it’s Eric Michael Johnson week here at Neuron Culture. Last Friday Johnson, who studies evolutionary anthropology and the history of science, wrote about the Allure of Gay Caveman. Today he published a magnificent cover story at Times Higher Education, “Ariel Casts Out Caliban,” that explores the long-running argument over whether humans are more like […]
Continue reading →Is sharing a technology? These may seem an odd question. But over at John Hawks’s Weblog, of all places, John Hawks is spinning an intriguing argument that the social context supporting behaviors such as sharing and counting plays such a vital role that it amounts to a sort of technological infrastructure — and its outcome […]
Continue reading →Maps can tell surprising stories. About a year ago, Northwestern University psychologist Joan Chiao pondered a set of global maps that confounded conventional notions of what depression is, why we get it, and how genes — the so-called “depression gene” in particular — interact with environment and culture.
Continue reading →A week ago, evo biologist heavyweight E.O. Wilson and others published a paper in which they challenged the standard explanation for why animals do nice things for one another. Nice behavior is a big deal, so the paper raised a big flap. Let’s say you want to read just two things about this paper. Though my own […]
Continue reading →Having reciprocated the attack the young bonobo I had come to know as Aaron then calmly moved away, leaving Jumanji to rub his shoulder and stare at the ground in a way that, should he have been human, would probably be interpreted as nursing a bruised ego.
…Responding to inequities: gorillas try to maintain their competitive advantage during play fights Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0482 __ Related at Neuron Culture: Chimpanzee hunting tactics – an aerial view The Science of Gossip, in Scientific American Williams Syndrome, or why are we so social?
Continue reading →Carr has stronger arguments, and I think he needs to set this one aside. For the most vital part of the “genetic heritage” he cites is the very adaptability or plasticity he likes to emphasize.
Continue reading →In which David Sloan Wilson and Richard Dawkins lose a race with snails.
Continue reading →have trouble understanding talk of eliminating religion because it would make the world a more rational place. Eliminate religion? Good luck. It’s odd to hear people sworn to empircal reasoning indulge in hopes so wildly unrealistic.
Continue reading →Our greatest distinction is that we’re highly social. Yet in that we’ve got a lot of company.
Continue reading →Ed Yong , Mo Costandi , Scientific American , and others have covered nicely a new paper finding that people with WIlliams syndrome (a condition I’ve been interested in since writing a long feature about it for the Times Magazine a few years back) show little or no racial bias.
… After I wrote in my Atlantic article about getting my serotonin transporter gene assayed (which revealed that I carry that gene’s apparently more plastic short-short form), I started getting a lot of email — several a week — from readers asking how to have their SERT gene tested.