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David Sloan Wilson: Evolving the City

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation

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Partner:: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Location:: The University of Sydney
Sydney
Event Date:: 09.29.10
Speaker:: David Sloan Wilson
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Summary: Distinguished New York biologist and anthropologist, Professor David Sloan Wilson, has founded the world's first evolutionary think tank, the Evolution Institute. It uses evolutionary theory to address policy issues such as childhood education, risky adolescent behaviour, and the regulation of large-scale human social interactions.

"The most distressing fact about public awareness of evolution," Professor Wilson says, "is not that roughly 50 percent of Americans don't believe the theory but that nearly 100 percent of people worldwide don't appreciate its tremendous relevance to human affairs."

He wants to show how evolutionary theory can help to solve the problems of everyday life, from the quality of life in our cities to rethinking the fundamentals of economic theory and policy. This can be done by incorporating the most accurate conception of human nature possible based on current scientific knowledge.

And, unlike many American evolutionists, Wilson doesn't see evolution and religion at loggerheads. He suggests religion is itself a product of evolution acting at group-level. It's part of his "multi-level selection theory", which argues that natural selection can act on groups as well as individuals.

Bio

David Sloan Wilson

David Sloan Wilson uses evolutionary theory to explain all aspects of humanity in addition to the rest of life, as he recounts for a general audience in Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives (Bantam 2007). He is a distinguished professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York.

He publishes in anthropology, psychology, and philosophy journals in addition to his mainstream biological research. His academic books include Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (with Elliott Sober, Harvard 1998), Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago, 2002), and The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (co-edited with Jonathan Gottschall, Northwestern 2005). Wilson also directs EvoS, a campus-wide program that uses evolutionary theory as a common language for the unification of knowledge.

Chapters

: Watch Full Program

01 hr 20 min 07 sec

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01.: Why Evolution Isn't Applied to Human Activities

03 min 14 sec

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02.: Addressing 'Extreme Disequilibrium' in the Study of Evolution

03 min 40 sec

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03.: The Three Topics of the Talk

02 min 34 sec

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04.: Applying Evolutionary Principles to Human Behavior

02 min 56 sec

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05.: Analyzing Religion from an Evolutionary Perspective

02 min 53 sec

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06.: Studying the Differences Between Conservative and Liberal Religions

02 min 10 sec

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07.: Differences Between Conservative and Liberal Teenagers

05 min 39 sec

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08.: Studying the Link Between Security and Religiosity Globally

01 min 16 sec

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09.: Studying Prosociality Within a Community

04 min 10 sec

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10.: The Results of the Study

05 min 10 sec

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11.: How Changes in Environment Affect Prosociality

05 min 21 sec

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12.: Practical Applications

05 min 56 sec

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13.: Rethinking the Tragedy of the Commons

03 min 40 sec

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14.: Lin Ostrom's Recipe for a Successful Community

07 min 05 sec

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15.: Closing Comments

01 min 08 sec

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16.: Q & A

00 min 38 sec

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17.: Q1: The Benefits and Dangers of Gossip

02 min 44 sec

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18.: Q2: Natural Selection in Modern Society

04 min 29 sec

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19.: Q3: The Role of Genetics in Behavior

04 min 03 sec

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20.: Q4: Overcoming Genetic Differences

03 min 19 sec

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21.: Q5: Current Drivers of Human Evolution

02 min 05 sec

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22.: Q6: The Political Implications of These Studies

01 min 56 sec

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23.: Q7: The Evolutionary Purpose of Math Skills

04 min 03 sec

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01 hr 20 min 07 sec

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Religion from an Evolutionary Perspective

05 min 06 sec

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David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University, discusses the importance of studying religion within a larger cultural environment. Wilson highlights the example of Jain ascetics in India, who at first glimpse may appear to be handicapped by religion, but in fact serve a secular function.
Celebrity Tabloids and the Evolution of Gossip

02 min 13 sec

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Professor David Sloan Wilson says that while gossip may have served a greater purpose in small-scale societies, in large-scale societies our innate hunger for social information has been exploited commercially by celebrity tabloids.

"It's the cultural equivalent of immune system dysfunction," says Wilson. "It's a form of friendly fire."
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01 hr 20 min 07 sec

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Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives [Paperback]
The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (Rethinking Theory) [Paperback]
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society [Paperback]
Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior [Paperback]

Encyclopædia Britannica Article

sociocultural evolution: Development of culture and society from simple to complex forms. Europeans had sought to explain the existence of various “primitive” societies, some believing that such societies represented the lost tribes of Israel, others speculating that primitive peoples had degenerated since the time of Adam from an originally “barbarous” to an even lowlier “savage” state. European society was taken to epitomize the highest state of existence, “civilization.” In the late 19th century, Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan elaborated the theory of unilinear evolution, specifying criteria for categorizing cultures according to their standing within a fixed system of growth of humanity as a whole and examining the modes and mechanisms of this growth. A widespread reaction followed; Franz Boas introduced the “culture history” approach, which concentrated on fieldwork among native peoples to identify actual cultural and historical processes rather than speculative stages of growth. Leslie White, Julian Steward, and others sought to revive aspects of sociocultural evolutionism, positing a progression ranging from bands and tribes at one end to chiefdoms and states at the other. More recently some anthropologists have adopted a general systems approach, examining cultures as emergent systems. Others continue to reject evolutionary thinking and look instead at historical contingencies, contacts with other cultures, and the operation of cultural symbol systems. See also social Darwinism.; sociocultural evolution on britannica.com