Culture: A scientific idea “ready for retirement”?
Every year the website edge.org asks their panel a general question on science and/or society. The 2014 question was: “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?“ I did not read…
Every year the website edge.org asks their panel a general question on science and/or society. The 2014 question was: “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?“ I did not read…
An ambitious article: “Increased Affluence Explains the Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms and Moralizing Religions”, by Nicolas Baumard, Alexandre Hyafil, Ian Morris, and Pascal Bo…
A new, interesting, and original book by Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt: A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. MIT…
PhD studentships are available for the doctoral program in Cognitive Science at Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary. Application deadline: February 1, 2015. The Department of Cogn…
An interesting paper by Laura Fontanari, Michel Gonzalez, Giorgio Vallortigara, and Vittorio Girotto: “Probabilistic cognition in two indigenous Mayan groups“, forthcoming in PNAS….
Apperly and Butterfill (2009) and Butterfill and Apperly (2013) have proposed a two-systems model of mindreading. According to this model, humans make use of two distinct psychological syste…
The deadline for submissions to this symposium has been extended to November the 1st. A symposium on ‘Reciprocity and social cognition’ organized by Anna Strasser, Stephen Butterfill, Richard Moor…
Last May, Daniel Dennett gathered, at the Santa Fe Institute, a handful of people who have written about cultural evolution. The general impression was that (as he tweeted…
These are Daniel Dennett’s introductory remarks on the workshop on cultural evolution he conveyed in Santa Fe in May 2014. Click to see the summaries and comments by Blackmore, Boyd, Cl…
The Berlin School of Mind and Brain organizes a symposium on “Reciprocity and Social Cognition”, from the 23rd to the 25th of March, 2015. Keynote speakers will be…
A great cultural epidemiology story by Ole Bjørn Rekdal, “Academic urban legends,” in Social Studies of Science (2014, 44(4)) freely available here Abstract: Many of the me…
An excellent post by Michael Schulson at Aeon magazine entitled “How to choose? When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the…
Alberto Acerbi’s excellent blog hosts a noteworthy discussion of Claidière, Scott-Phillips and Sperber’s recent PTRS paper on cultural attraction. Alex Mesoudi, Thom Scott-Phillips and Dan Speber join…
A very interesting comparison between crows and humans in a new (free access) paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B entitled “Of babies and birds: complex tool…
One of the most salient paradoxes in the study of kinship systems is their sheer analytical complexity, from the point of view of an external observer, and simultaneously…
Applications are invited for a Departmental Lectureship in Cognitive Anthropology, effective from 1 September 2014, tenable until 30 September 2015. The post is based at the School of…
Silvia Lindtner Amelia Guimarin Editor’s Note: Silvia Lindtner (@yunnia) and Amelia Guimarin (@femhacktweets) round out the March-April theme on makers, hackers, and engineers with this post tha…
Here is a challenge to standard views about the evolution of linguistic generativity: ““Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity” by Thomas…
Marisa Cohn Editor’s Note: Marisa Leavitt Cohn writes to us from Stockholm, where she is a postdoctoral scholar studying the politics of software systems and computing work practices. In…
A new article by Dan Fessler, Anne Pisor,& David Navarrete, highly relevant to cultural epidemiology in PLoS ONE 9(4): e95167. doi:10.1371 Abstract: The functions of cultural beliefs are often…
Lilly U. Nguyen Editor’s Note: Lilly U. Nguyen (@deuxlits) tells us how in her own work on the ethnography of software in Vietnam, she both studies and embodies “diaspora” –…
Katie Pine Max Liboiron Editor’s Note: Katie Pine and Max Liboiron continue this week’s theme of makers, hackers, and engineers with a post about the politics and performativity…
Nick Seaver Editor’s Note: Nick Seaver (@npseaver) kicks off the March-April special edition of Ethnography Matters, which will feature a number of researchers at the Intel Science and Technolog…
The Vilnius Experimental Philosophy Lab, the Departments of General Psychology and of Logic and History of Philosophy organize a conference on: The Moral Domain: Conceptual Issues…