This View of Life
Magazine

What if we could wave a magic wand and change the approach used in many schools today?

What Darwin called “this view of life” has indisputably transformed the way we think about the living world.A renewed effort to rethink humanity from an evolutionary perspective didn’t gather steam until late in the 20th century. At first the enterprise was regarded as controversial but by now it has become part of mainstream science, which can be seen by perusing the academic literature.

The project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence.

Male Eurasian Jays in committed relationships are able to share food with their female partner according to her current desire.

We seem to be unable to punish bankers for their scandalous behaviour.

An intellectual debate about the nature of religious belief and violence. Anthropologist Scott Atran responds to New Atheist Sam Harris.Harris’s views on religion ignore the considerable progress in cognitive studies on the subject over the last two decades, which show that core religious beliefs do not have fixed propositional content .

A newly-discovered ancient horse species lived about 4.4 million years ago.

Critics charge 'academic freedom' legislation in Colorado, Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma is just creationism in disguise.

Why our moral psychology makes it difficult to teach ethics.I give a brief overview of an evolutionary approach to moral psychology in which people are mostly concerned about appearances and reputation, rather than actually doing the right thing. I explain why this complex psychology makes it difficult to teach ethics to anyone. Yet an understanding of the origins and mechanisms of moral cognition open the way for us to do (and teach) “<a href="http://www.ethicalsystems.org/">ethical systems design</a>,” a way of working with human nature and setting up environments that lead to better ethical behavior.