Category Archives: Evolution

Rare Earth updates: recent research on why complex & intelligent life are rare in the Universe

Preface. I think that Ward & Brownlee’s 2000 book “Rare Earth : Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe” is one of the most important books ever written. There’s a good case to be made that our planet hosts … Continue reading

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Prime movers of human evolution

Preface. The human brain and culture evolved at an astonishing rate, making scientists wonder what conditions and ecological pressures drove it, why we became homo sapiens so quickly. This is a post that will grow over time as I find … Continue reading

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The myriad ways females play a role in evolution

Preface. This is a review of Cooke’s book “Bitch: On the female of the species”. I’ve been reading about evolution for a long time, but there was a great deal of new research on the role females play in evolution … Continue reading

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Review of Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue & Violence in Human Evolution

Preface. This is a fantastic, must read book if you’re at all interested in how we evolved to be who we are today, how we domesticated ourselves, gossip, conformity, violence and more.  It reminds me of why I don’t read … Continue reading

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Why some people are conservative and others liberal

Preface. Although I thought Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican Brain” was brilliant, I couldn’t help but thinking that these conservative and liberal viewpoints must be embedded in our psychology from how we evolved over the last 300,000 years.  What follows … Continue reading

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Where do we come from, who are we, and where are we going?

Preface.  This is a book of review of The Social Conquest of Earth, in which E. O. Wilson answers these questions.  Although tribes have invented thousands of creation myths since paleolithic times, Wilson finally has written a book explaining our … Continue reading

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Rare Earth: Why complex life is uncommon in the universe

Preface. So much research on why complex life is rare in the universe since this book came out that I’ve created another post, coming out on in March 15, 2022 titled: Rare Earth updates: recent research on why intelligent life … Continue reading

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How burning biomass made us human

[ This is a book review of Wrangham’s “Catching Fire: How cooking made us human”. Fire enabled us to have larger brains from the increased calories in cooked food, held carnivores at bay, killed bacteria, and gave us many other … Continue reading

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Republicans Brains are wired to deny science & reality

Preface. This is my book review of Chris Mooney’s 2012 “The Republican Brain. The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality”. This is a mishmash of a review of this book, way below other articles about this topic as well … Continue reading

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Book Review of Paleofantasy: What Evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live

Alice Friedemann’s review of: Marlene Zuk. 2013. Paleofantasy: What Evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live. My first introduction to Evolutionary Psychology was “The Adapted Mind” which posited we’re unhappy because of the tremendous difference between … Continue reading

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