CategoryEvolution
Origin of Language: Still a Mystery, Despite All We Know Now
We aren’t even sure which is the world’s oldest spoken language, though Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese have impressively long histories
The Cancel Culture Mob Comes For the Evolutionary Biologists
A Darwinian Argument for a Global Government
The evolutionary researchers worry that we have not evolved to be worthy of a global government and will face ecological ruin in consequence.
Claim: What consciousness studies needs is more Darwinism
The Darwinian view of the evolution of the human mind is, at best, a ladder with no upper rungs
The Likely Reason the Human Mind Has No History
Our efforts to explain the origin of the human mind fall flat because we are looking for an origin that probably doesn’t exist
New Book Looks at Design in Nature From a Catholic Viewpoint
Catholic thinkers who reject Darwinism don’t focus so much on its claims about universal common descent as on its utter inability to account coherently for the human mind
What Do Bees’ Joy and Pain Really Tell Us About Insect Minds?
If sentience, like intelligence, can be independent of phylogeny (place in Darwin’s tree of life), the conventional picture of evolution might need rethinking
Once a Supporter, Science Writer Airs Doubts About Free Will
ChatGPT has set John Horgan thinking about whether he is just "ChatGPT-Me" himself
Only an Immaterial Mind Can Ask “How Does Life Work?”
Science writer Philip Ball, facing cancer surgery, struggles to find meaning and purpose in a wholly material world. He is looking in the wrong place
Will the Octopus Ever Find Its Way Into a Tidy Evolutionary Tree?
New finds in genetics and neuroscience both shed light and deepen the puzzle of the almost "alien" species
Can Evolution Create Free Will? A Neurologist Says Yes
Could the impersonal natural force of evolution shape hierarchies in the human cerebral cortex so that we have the free will that it does not itself have?
The Human Mind Has No History
There is no good reason to assume that human intelligence evolved from mud to mind via a long slow history
Octopus Intelligence Is Unlike Anything We Know
Could such a different neurology really evolve purely by natural selection acting on random mutations?
Are Plants Cognitive, Intelligent Organisms? A Controversy Brews
Some plant biologists want to see them that way; others continue to insist on a Darwinian view
Octopus Intelligence Shakes Up Darwin’s Tree
There does not seem to be a Tree of Intelligence, which deepens the mystery of intelligence
“Emergence”: The College Level Version of “We Don’t Know How”
The word often permits the improbable to be considered probable for the purposes of sounding like science without providing any
Philosophers: Religion, Not Nature, Made Us Human
Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell argue that many very ancient human types had human minds; religion is the missing ingredientThe philosophers who make this claim are not evangelists. Victor Kumar is director of the Mind and Morality Lab at Boston University and Richmond Campbell is the George Munro professor of philosophy emeritus at Dalhousie University. In an essay at IAI News, adapted from their book, A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made Us Human (Oxford University Press 2022), they argue that “it was the cultural institution of religion, and its ability to create large tribes, that made us into modern humans.” Sometimes there is a story in titles. The official title of this piece is “Nature didn’t make us human, culture did.” The subtitle is “How religion made us a successful species.” But Read More ›