I’ve published a second article in Open Behavioral Genetics: “Negotiating the gap. Four academics and the dilemma of human biodiversity.� You can read it as a PDF here or as a caliber ebook here. The foreword is reproduced below. Comments are welcome. ***************************************************** Twenty-five years ago I met a professor from the medical faculty who... Read More

Was the scientific revolution (1540-1700) due to an increase in trade and the discovery of the New World? Or were there just more people around who could understand and appreciate new ideas? (source) The past year has seen the deaths of two scholars who tackled the thorny issue of IQ and race, first Philippe Rushton... Read More

The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, over a million years ago in the Pleistocene. A founding myth of evolutionary psychology. In the future, how will we look at evolution and human behavior? Perhaps we’ll still be looking through the lens of evolutionary psychology, albeit a more “evolved� one than the current variety. Or perhaps there will... Read More

Illustration from Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) Evolution has shaped not only our anatomy but also our behavior. This was recognized by Charles Darwin himself in his work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Not until the early 20th century, however, would evolution and... Read More

In writing the above words, the evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides were denouncing an unwritten agreement that had let researchers study everything about our species in biological terms … except the human mind. Concretely, this modus vivendi denied ‘safe conduct’ to those who wanted to investigate genetic influences on the way the mind... Read More

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss is remembered as one of the leading postwar figures of antiracism. He personally encountered racism in 1940 when his Jewish origins cost him his teaching post. As an anthropologist in Brazil, he saw first-hand the dispossession of native peoples in the name of progress. In a UNESCO booklet, Race and History... Read More