New thinking 4 Jul 20124 Jul 2012 Phil Trans has a special issue (‘New thinking: the evolution of human cognition’ compiled and edited by Cecilia Heyes and Uta Frith) on new ways of thinking about thinking, which is a recent response to evolutionary psychology and insistence upon there being modules. One of the essays, by Nicholas Shea, is open access and has links to some papers that allow you access indirectly. The issue is partially instigated by Kim Sterelny’s latest book, The evolved apprentice (London, UK: MIT Press). Sterelny argues that we evolved the ability to do culture by instruction, which changed our learning environment and led to the Olduwan technological revolution. This seems to be the vanguard of a new way to approach cognitive evolution, a kind of post-evopsych general approach. There are disputes of detail within the movement, if it can be called that, but all agree that massive modularity of mind is not a helpful way to deal with human cognition. It also therefore deals with the issue of cultural evolution (post-Dawkinsian, as it were, but also challenging the Boyd and Richerson dual inheritance theory. Cognition Evolution
Creationism and Intelligent Design New work on lateral transfer shows that Darwin was wrong 31 Mar 200918 Sep 2017 A new study into the transfer of genetic material laterally, or across taxonomic divisions, has shown that evolution does not proceed as Darwin thought, and that in fact the present theory of evolution is entirely false. Instead, it transpires that lateral genetic transfer makes new species much more like Empedocles‘… Read More
Biology Godfrey Smith’s book 27 Jul 2009 Peter Godfrey Smith is a leading philosopher of biology, a professor at Harvard. He has recently published an important book on the nature of evolution, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, in which he moves away from the gene centrism of Dawkins to a reproducer view in which objects that form… Read More
Biology The evolution of sex solved 4 May 2010 The reason for sexual reproduction has long been debated. Now at last, the solution: Read More
What a treasure trove of information. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ll have to go away and read it all carefully.