This book presents a new perspective on the origins of language, and highlights the key role of social and cultural dynamics in driving language evolution. It considers, among other questions, the role of gesture in communication, mimesis, play, dance, and song in extant hunter-…
In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history'and discerning where history will lead us …
"At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded - and has mounted a powerful cha…
Scaffolding is a concept that is becoming widely used across disciplines. This book investigates common threads in diverse applications of scaffolding, including theoretical biology, cognitive science, social theory, science and technology studies, and human development. Despite…
A noted anthropologist explains how our sense of ethics has changed over the course of human evolution.
With 80% of the world's population profesing religious faith, religious belief is a common human characteristic. The sacred texts of each of the world's major religions exhort believers to live a righteous life, including responding to poverty and assisting those with less. This…
