Over at Edge.org, Harvard University physician and social scientist Nicholas A. Christakis discusses transformative changes in the social sciences in the 21st Century: These three things—a biological hurricane, computational social science, and the rediscovery of experimentation—are going to change the social sciences in the 21st century. With that change will come, in my judgment, a…
A new analysis of complex interactions between humans and the environment preceding the 9th century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula points to a series of events — some natural, like climate change; some human-made, including large-scale landscape alterations and shifts in trade routes — that have lessons for…
The implication that religion is basically malevolent is a standard assertion of the New Atheists. Their argument isn’t just that there probably is no God, or that intelligent design is laughable bunk, or that the Bible is far from inerrant. It’s that religion is obviously bad for human beings, condemning them to ignorance, subservience, and…
Religiosity is on the decline in the U.S. and atheism is on the rise, according to a new worldwide poll. The poll, called “The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism,” found that the number of Americans who say they are “religious” dropped from 73% in 2005 (the last time the poll was conducted) to 60%….
Humans could be the only animals that are sensitive to fairness, suggests a new Royal Society Biology Letters study. It’s not that other animals are unfair. They just don’t seem to care as much about fairness as we do, or so this and other research concludes. Ingrid Kaiser of the University of Heidelberg and colleagues…
During the Neolithic Age (approximately 10000 BCE), early man evolved from hunter-gatherer to farmer and agriculturalist, living in larger, permanent settlements with a variety of domesticated animals and plant life. This transition brought about significant changes in terms of the economy, architecture, man’s relationship to the environment, and more. Now Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel…
Wives in dual-career academic relationships — in which both partners work in academia — are more likely than husbands to downplay the importance of their careers, new research finds. A survey of 30,000 professors and researchers at 13 major research universities finds that in academic couples, 50% of husbands say their career comes first compared…
Talk about the pursuit of happiness. Several cities and states are are already looking into citizen well-being or floating happiness initiatives as a measure of true prosperity. Yet defining, let alone measuring, happiness (and its counterpoint, misery) is no simple matter. Critics scoff at the idea, suggesting that it’s a fool’s errand.
In the 1600s, Europeans exploring the American southeast wrote of a purification ritual practiced by the native people, involving dancing, vomiting, and large amounts of what the travelers called black drink. Served from shell cups, the highly caffeinated tea was brewed from the shrub Ilex vomitoria, a species of holly. In a new study, researchers…
How do violence, holy spaces, and diversity intersect in America? Terror in holy spaces is not a new facet of American religious history. Church and synagogue bombings occurred during the civil rights movement, including the notorious 1963 attack that took the lives of four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama. Sikh Americans have been targeted and…