Author: Ophelia Benson

What seems like the reasonable compromise position, that human nature is half genes and half upbringing, can still get it wrong, Steven Pinker says. Sometimes it’s 100% one or the other.

Jared Diamond reviews book on evolutionary explanation of religion in which contentious, often oversimplified ideas are treated fairly.

Paul Gross considers the reputation of Stephen Jay Gould among colleagues as well as the general public, and finds some discrepancies.

David Barash reviews S. J. Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.

Robert Wright invites Steven Pinker and Martin Seligman to talk about happiness, genes and psychology on Slate.

Though the process worked and the fraud was exposed, scientists wish the process had worked a bit faster.

Even on the left, even the secular left, criticism of religion is not allowed.

Jeremy Rifkin’s ideas about hydrogen fuel cells may depend too much on starry-eyed hopes for ‘new consciousness’.

John Tooby examines the paradox of Darwin’s celebrity despite widespread skepticism about natural selection.

Study of the psychological effects of inequality attracts thinkers to evolutionary theory, thus beginning to heal the breach between sociobiology and the Left.

Anti-abortion doctor who writes books on “healing power of Jesus” appointed by Bush administration to drug-review panel.

Economists add cognitive psychology, laboratory experiment to the old ‘rational choice’ view.

Studies on jealousy agree on evolutionary origin but differ on how it plays out.

Steven Pinker interview explores why sociobiology is so upsetting to both left and right.

Another skirmish in the long-running debate over how evolution shapes sexual differences.

A Georgia school board, in Postmodern vein, says diversity of opinion is the way to go–at least when it comes to evolution.

Didactic impulses or nationalist piety can shape the work of even the most detached biographer.

Marina Warner on the spiral of duplicity between thoughtful men and women and bogus mediums.

Vulgar Kaelism gets it wrong: she did not think popular movies were automatically art, and she was not a moral relativist.

When scholars actually look at evidence, they find rapists and failing students as pleased with themselves as the next person.