News
Dying young and living fast
The author of Dying young and living fast, David Nettle, Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Institute of Neuroscience, New Castle University examines maternal behavioral responses across neighborhood environments having different levels of poverty. Dr. Nettle’s evolutionary hypothesis is that mothers should follow faster reproductive and child rearing strategies to adapt to higher rates of mortality and morbidity, giving birth to more offspring at earlier stages of life history and providing less parental investment per child.....
January 29, 2010
EI featured in RSA Journal
The UK's Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) has a history that stretches back to the Enlightenment. Today, it is a progressive policy organization that appreciates the relevance of evolutionary theory and features an article about the EI in its current issue...
January 11, 2010
Parole policy from an evolutionary (and common sense) perspective
The January 8 New York Times magazine features an article titled "Prisoners of Parole", which shows how mild short-term punishment in quick response to parole violations is much more effective than severe long-term punishment after numerous parole violations...
January 11, 2010
Social Class Through the Evolutionary Lens
In an article titled Social class through an evolutionary lens, Dan Nettle of Newcastle University uses an evolutionary approach to explain how social class specific behaviors may be adaptive responses to ecological contexts. For example, the health decisions of individuals resulting in poverty ridden neighborhoods may be adaptive responses to prevailing conditions in the environment rather than....
December 10, 2009
Eco-economics – Could Biology explain the recession?
In a blog titled Eco-economics - Could Biology explain the recession? two Financial Times editors and a science writer explain what financial theorist and practitioners can learn from ecologists and biologists. One thing they can do, according to the authors, to better understand market dynamics is to incorporate into their analysis natural selection and adaptation.
December 7, 2009
Adam Smith vs. Charles Darwin
An article titled Smith vs. Darwin by economist James K. Galbraith contrasts Adam Smith's attempt to explain economics and social progress by means of the "invisible hand" with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution...
December 7, 2009
Multilevel Selection Theory and the EI on bloggingheads.tv
Evolution Institute director David Sloan Wilson was recently interviewed about multilevel selection theory and the EI for a bloggingheads.tv "Science Saturday" segment.
December 6, 2009
Evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics
Douglas Kenrick, an evolutionary social psychologist at Arizona State University, relates behavioral economics to evolutionary social psychology in his blog post titled “Deep Rationality: Evolutionary Psychology Meets Behavioral Economics“. This perspective is one of several that was represented at the EI’s recently concluded conference on “The Nature of Regulation“. Results of the conference will be [...]
November 27, 2009
Economics discovers multilevel selection theory
A new article in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (JEBO) reviews multilevel selection theory and its relevance for economic theory.
October 4, 2009
Matthew Taylor on politics from evolutionary perspective
Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts and prior to this appointment the Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to the Prime Minister of England, has a well-informed article in the Sept 23 issue of PROSPECT magazine on how evolutionary theory and brain and behavior research are changing fundamental assumptions about politics and policy debates.
September 27, 2009