Cultural evolution - In Search of Wisdom

The Great Imperial Hangover: How Empires Have Shaped the World

Posted by Dr Terry Cooke-Davies | Sep 18, 2020 | Books |

For the first time in millennia we live without formal empires. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel their presence rumbling through history. The Great Imperial Hangover examines how the world’s imperial legacies are still shaping the thorniest issues we face today.

From Russia’s incursions in the Ukraine to Brexit; from Trump’s ‘America-first’ policy to China’s forays into Africa; from Modi’s India to the hotbed of the Middle East, Puri provides a bold new framework for understanding the world’s complex rivalries and politics.

Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable and Collaborative Groups.

Posted by Dr Terry Cooke-Davies | Sep 18, 2020 | Books |

A groundbreaking, comprehensive program for designing effective and socially equitable groups of all sizes—from businesses and social justice groups to global organizations.

Whether you work in business or schools, volunteer in neighborhoods or church organizations, or are involved in social justice and activism, you understand the enormous power of groups to enact powerful and lasting change in the world. But how exactly do you design, build, and sustain effective groups?

Natural Born Learners: Our Incredible Capacity to Learn and How We Can Harness It

Posted by Dr Terry Cooke-Davies | Sep 17, 2020 | Books |

Learning is the soul of our species. From our first steps to our last words, we are what we learn. But for all its obvious importance, learning has lost touch with human progress. We live in an information age, work in a knowledge economy, yet our schools are relics of an industrial era. Education insider Alex Beard takes us on a dazzling tour of the future of learning to show how we can – and why we must – do better. Tackling everything from artificial intelligence to our growing understanding of the infant brain, Natural Born Learners is a user’s guide to transforming learning in the twenty-first century and roadmap to accessing our better future selves.

For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts and the End of Slavery

Posted by Dr Terry Cooke-Davies | Sep 3, 2020 | Books |

Rodney Stark’s provocative new book argues that, whether we like it or not, people acting for the glory of God have formed our modern culture. Continuing his project of identifying the widespread consequences of monotheism, Stark shows that the Christian conception of God resulted–almost inevitably and for the same reasons–in the Protestant Reformation, the rise of modern science, the European witch-hunts, and the Western abolition of slavery. In the process, he explains why Christian and Islamic images of God yielded such different cultural results, leading Christians but not Muslims to foster science, burn “witches,” and denounce slavery.

In Gods We Trust

Posted by Dr Terry Cooke-Davies | Aug 1, 2020 | Books |

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

Issue: Cultural evolution

The Great Imperial Hangover: How Empires Have Shaped the World

For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts and the End of Slavery

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