This View of Life (This View of Life)

Socialism and Capitalism will be among the hot words thrown around during the 2020 US presidential elections. Geoffrey Hodgson, a great scholar of economics and the social sciences, helps me explain how both forms of national governance fail in their pure forms but how they can be—and even have already been– blended together into the Third Way.

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

One of the high points of David's professional life has been to work with Elliott Sober, Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. Elliott has made foundational contributions to many topics in evolutionary science, including his and David's collaboration on multilevel selection (MLS) theory.

In this conversation, they discuss the roots of MLS theory and more, including the subtlety of Darwin, what Bret Weinstein misses about group selection, the problem of the averaging fallacy, and path dependency in scholarship.

Links from the Episode

1:05- Upcoming Debate with David Sloan Wilson (video) and also see "What Bret Weinstein Gets Wrong About Group Selection" (TVOL article)
1:42- Elliott Sober's 1993 book, The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus
1:50-1:57- "Reviving the Superorganism" (Wilson & Sober 1989), "Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences" (Wilson & Sober 1994), and their book, Unto Others (1998).
2:12- Elliott Sober's 2010 book, Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards? Philosophical Essays on Darwin's Theory 
22:58- "Altruism in Mendelian Populations Derived from Sibling Groups: The Haystack Model Revisited" (Wilson 1987)
31:20- Michael Gilpin's 1975 book, Group Selection in Predator-Prey Communities

Also see "The Mathematics of Kindness" (TVOL article)

Max Beilby and Mark van Vugt discuss the science of evolutionary mismatch how it can help us understand human behavior in modern novel environments such as the workplace.

Mark van Vugt is a professor in Evolutionary and Organizational Psychology at VU Amsterdam and is also a research associate at the University of Oxford. His latest book is, "Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day (and What We Can Do About It)".

Meet Toby Shannan--the son of hippy parents growing up in rural Canada, high school jock, college dropout, construction worker--and Chief Support Officer of Shopify, the world's second largest online retail platform. Toby and Shopify have always had a long-term and holistic mission to be part of a thriving ecosystem into the far future.  Now he is teaming up with scientists such as Jonathan Haidt and myself to help Shopify achieve its laudable goals and provide a model for other corporations.

Announcing the latest major TVOL series, Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship

Toby's "Ideas at Work" podcast: https://ideasatworkpodcast.com

EthicalSystems.org, an organization founded on the conviction that in the long run, good ethics is good business.

Prosocial, the first change method based on evolutionary science
to enhance cooperation and collaboration for groups of all types and sizes.

Evonomics article, "Evolving the New Economy: Tim O’Reilly and David Sloan Wilson"

Other Related Materials (pdfs available upon request)

"Why Norwegians Don't have Their Pigs in the Forest: Illuminating Nordic 'Co-Operation" - Carsta Simon [Open Access]

"The ontogenetic evolution of verbal behavior" - Carsta Simon [Open Access]

"Selection as a domain-general evolutionary process" - Carsta Simon and Dag O. Hessen

"Group selection in behavioral evolution", Rachlin H

---

Again and again—including some of the previous episodes—the Nordic countries are identified as exemplars of good governance and the Third Way. In this episode, we hear directly about the so-called Nordic model from Nina Witoszek, Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment, and Atle Midttun, a professor of Norway’s largest Business School, BI. Nina and Atle have become thoroughly familiar with viewing Norway through an evolutionary lens as participants of the Evolution Institute’s Norway Project.

Nina and Atle's Sustainable Modernity (open access)

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

Guru Madhavan is Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar, Senior Director of Programs, and Director of the Forum on Complex Unifiable Systems (FOCUS) at the US National Academy of Engineering. His new book is on how to solve wicked problems anywhere, but it is also rooted in a particular place--Binghamton, New York--where Guru did his graduate training at Binghamton University and where we first met and started working with each other. Join me as we discuss the general nature of wicked problems and how Binghamton and Binghamton University can become a city and university that is adept at solving them.

Links:

Guru's first book: Applied Minds: How Engineers Think

Guru's new book: Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

My earlier print conversation with Guru: Systems Engineering as Cultural Group Selection

My short essay with Guru titled Complex Maladaptive Systems

Originally published on February 29, 2024

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/wicked-problems-and-how-to-solve-them

J. Arvid Agren's book The Gene's Eye View of Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2021), is a highly praised scholarly account of the concept of selfish genes, which Richard Dawkins made hugely popular in 1976. Dawkins himself calls Agren's book "the most thorough reading of the relevant literature that I have ever encountered...he gets it right." But what does this mean? In this nearly two hour conversation, I take a deep dive with Agren into the history and current status of the selfish gene concept. You might be surprised by how much we agree upon and how much the concept of selfish genes has been scaled down, compared to its original pretensions. 

Evolution education is often considered solely the domain of the biology classroom, with evolutionary explanations centered largely on genetic change over generations. In this TVOL Podcast, David Sloan Wilson talks with education researchers Susan Hanisch and Dustin Eirdosh about emerging approaches in evolution education that challenge this view and embrace an interdisciplinary conceptualization of evolutionary change more suitable to understanding the human condition. By drawing on perspectives in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Cultural Evolution Science, and Contextual Behavioral Science, Hanisch and Eirdosh have advanced a collection of teaching tools and materials that can be used across subject areas in general education to help students understand the evolutionary change dynamics within our species, our communities, and ourselves. Discussing core conceptual challenges in current gene-centric evolution education provides a window into the opportunities created by focusing the human traits at the center of our everyday experience. 

Bios

Susan Hanisch and Dustin Eirdosh are the co-founders of the non-profit organization Global ESD (www.GlobalESD.org) and education researchers in the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Dustin and Susi work across the disciplines of education and human sciences to advance interdisciplinary teaching materials and teacher development supports to understand global sustainability issues through the lens of evolution and human behavior. 

EEO Article:

Can the science of Prosocial be a part of evolution education?

Hanisch & Eirdosh Preprints:

Conceptual clarification of evolution as an interdisciplinary science

Educational potential of teaching evolution as an interdisciplinary science

Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution

Other articles mentioned in the Podcast:

Regardless of students' belief systems (creationist, theistic, non-theistic) students tend to view evolution has having negative personal and social implications. 
Brem, S. K., Ranney, M., & Schindel, J. (2003). Perceived consequences of evolution: College students perceive negative personal and social impact in evolutionary theory.Science Education,87(2), 181-206.

A biology teacher encourages students to "boo" other students for any reference to "need" in evolutionary explanations as opposed to helping students resolve the role of behavioral responses to need in evolutionary processes (see Hanisch & Eirdosh preprint: Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution)
Bravo, P., & Cofré, H. (2016). Developing biology teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through learning study: the case of teaching human evolution. International Journal of Science Education,38(16), 2500-2527.

Modern life has been transformed by electronic communication, starting with the telegraph and now in full force with the Internet Age. There are many blessings but also many curses associate with the Internet Age. Can the thesis of the Third Way explain both and forge a path to an electronically connected future designed for the common good? Tim O’Reilly, Internet pioneer and founder of O’Reilly Media, is our perfect guide.

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

During our discussion group exploring TVOL's Third Way Series, What is Positive Deviance? There's a small chance that you know all about it and a larger chance that you've never heard of it at all. That's because successful cultural change methods have a way of emerging at a particular time and place, spreading to a degree on the basis of their success, but then coming up against boundaries, beyond which they remain unknown. So it is with Positive Deviance, which has been used to prevent child malnourishment in Vietnam, female circumcision in Egypt, and even improve an American pharmaceutical company's outreach to doctors. Our guide to this effective change method is David K. Hurst, a Management educator and author of The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World among other books.  Sage Gibbons, budding evolutionist and TVOL's Marketing and Development Strategist, joins me as guest host as we explore what Positive Deviance teaches us about the Third Way and how a formal articulation of the Third Way can add value to Positive Deviance. 

Referenced Materials:

• "Of Boxes, Bubbles, and Effective Management", David K. Hurst
• "From Life Cycle to Ecocycle: A New Perspective on the Growth, Maturity, Destruction, and Renewal of Complex Systems", David K. Hurst and Brenda J. Zimmerman
• "Enquire within: cultural evolution and cognitive science", Celia Hayes
• Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and Influencing Human Behavior, David Sloan Wilson and Steven C. Hayes
• The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems, Richard Pascale , Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin 

---

Increasingly, policymakers, investors, and advocates recognize that the neoliberal theory of economic organization – laissez faire – is a failed experiment. However, certain areas of law – particularly antitrust law are still beholden to false econometric notions about how markets operate, which influences legal interpretation, case precedent, and ongoing debates about reviving antitrust’s role in the political economy. Can Multilevel Cultural Evolution provide a new paradigm for anti-trust law, along with the rest of economics?

Who is Barry-Wehmiller (BW)? Not a person, but a manufacturing corporation and star attraction of the Conscious Capitalism movement. If you are familiar with this movement, you might have read Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, by CEO Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Or perhaps a Harvard Business School case report titled Truly Human Leadership at Barry-Wehmiller.

But BW deserves to become known far beyond its current circle of fame. Not only has it created an extraordinary culture of caring for itself, but it has replicated its culture in over 140 other companies that it has acquired--or rather adopted, to use its preferred word. Stated in scientific terms that can be understood beyond the business world, BW has conducted a bold experiment in prosocial cultural evolution and replicated it 140 times.

An earlier podcast with Chapman and Sisodia views BW through a distinctively evolutionary lens. This podcast covers the same ground in more detail with three senior staff members—Rhonda Spencer, Brian Wellinghof, and David Pickersgill. We are also joined by Michael Pirson, James A.F. Stoner Chair for Global Sustainability at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, who works closely with BW staff to promote the relevance of BW  throughout the business world.

Originally published on September 16, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/barry-wehmillers-bold-experiment-in-prosocial-cultural-evolution

The economics profession includes many schools of thought–some that emphasize laissez faire, others that emphasize centralized planning, with many admixtures in between. David Colander, an acute observer of economics who is sometimes described as the profession’s court jester, helps me identify the economic schools of thought that best exemplify the Third Way.

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

References from the Show:

12:00- Why aren't Economists as Important as Garbagemen? by David Colander

23:30- Chaos by James Gleick

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

David discusses morality from an evolutionary perspective with analytic philosopher Peter J. Richerson.

Peter is best known for his seminal work on cultural evolution with his frequent collaborator Robert Boyd. Their book, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, remains a pivotal work in the study of humanity from a full-bodied evolutionary perspective.

This is the second episode of a two-part series on morality out of the TVOL archives. Listen to the first episode with philosopher Simon Blackburn. Dive deeper with our special publication asking scientists and philosophers if there is a universal morality.

---

In my writing on generalized Darwinism as a new paradigm for economics and public policy, I stress that it doesn't fall into any current ideological camp. It isn't left, right, or libertarian and draws upon the valid elements of all three. This conversation with the political economist and social philosopher Paul Dragos Aligica illustrates what I mean. Paul is KPMG Professor of Governance at the University of Bucharest and Senior Research Fellow in the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Most people associate the Mercatus Center with free market fundamentalism--after all, mercatus is the latin word for market--but the real situation is far more complex and consilient with new paradigm thinking. My conversation with Paul therefore contributes to the depolarization of economic theory and practice--putting the ideas to work across all social contexts and scales.

Originally released on February 21, 2025.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/depolarizing-economic-theory-and-practice-with-paul-dragos-aligica

Michael Muthukrishna's new book A Theory of Everyone is the latest in a lineage of authors that include Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (Culture and the Evolutionary Process, Not By Genes Alone) and Joseph Henrich (Secret of Our Success, WEIRDest People in the World). All of them illustrate what I call completing the Darwinian revolution in my own book This View of Life. In this podcast, Michael and I discuss the paradigmatic nature of generalized Darwinism and how it can improve our ability to accomplish positive change in the real world.

Originally published on May 10, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/a-theory-of-everyone-as-a-new-paradigm-with-michael-muthukrishna

Originally published on September 9, 2024

The idea that nature, left to itself, reaches some sort of harmonious balance is still widespread in the lay public and some public policy circles. "This View of Life" leads to a different conclusion; that "niceness" can evolve, but only when special conditions are met. Otherwise, evolution results in organisms that impose suffering on each other. David explores this theme for primate societies with the pre-eminent primatologist and evolutionary behavioral ecologist, Joan Silk. 

---

What are ecosystems? Do they achieve some kind of balance in their natural state? Do they evolve in a way that can't be explained by the evolution of their component species? I take a deep dive with Tom Whitham into territory that is controversial even among the experts. 

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

In 1992, the evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby predicted, "Just as one can now flip open Gray's Anatomy to any page and find an intricately detailed depiction of some part of our evolved species-typical morphology, we anticipate that in 50 or 100 years one will be able to pick up an equivalent reference work for psychology and find in it detailed information-processing descriptions of the multitude of evolved species-typical adaptations of the human mind...”

Finding it unnecessary to wait until 2042 or 2092, Niruban Balachandran first proposed and published a classification table of human evolved psychological adaptations in 2011. He then teamed up with Daniel Glass in 2012 to co-found and co-publish a research paper announcing PsychTable.org, an open-science taxonomy devoted to uncovering the richness and complexity of our evolved human behavior. In addition to these two peer-reviewed research papers, Niruban and Daniel have also written a This View of Life article to accompany this podcast episode.

Hunter-gatherer societies are fascinating in their own right and--with appropriate caution--a major source of insight about our ancestral past, stretching back to our origin as a species. Remarkably, hunter-gatherer societies also have much to teach us about modern Democratic governance. Vivek Venkataraman is an idea guide to this subject, with a background in philosophy, primatology, and human evolutionary biology, along with direct experience living with and researching indigenous people in Malaysia.

Originally published January 29, 2025.

What was the study of nature like before Darwin? It was an integral part of the Enlightenment and was avidly pursued by early Americans such as Thomas Jefferson and the portrait artist Charles Willson Peale, who created the most famous museum of the Revolutionary era. Lee Dugatkin is both an historical scholar of the period and an eminent evolutionary scientist. His newest book on Peale’s museum, Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale’s Museum, helps to situate “this view of life” against the background of centuries of intellectual thought. 

---

As part of TVOL's "Third Way" series of conversations, I explore the concept of "Development" as a type of cultural change effort with Scott Peters, Professor of Developmental Sociology at Cornell University. While many development efforts fail due to centralized planning, disruptive special interests, or having the wrong systemic goals, other development efforts have converged upon the Third Way. 

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

Since the Third Way series is centered on entrepreneurship, even though it also applies to all forms of positive social change, it is only fitting for the capstone episode to be a conversation with Victor Hwang. Victor developed an evolutionary and ecosystem approach to entrepreneurship in his private consulting practice and served as Vice President for Entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation between 2016-2019. Few people have played a larger role or have a more comprehensive knowledge of entrepreneurship in the 21^st century and the need for it to follow the Third Way.

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

Few people know more about cities than Jonathan Rose, author of The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life.

Jonathan is a practitioner in addition to a scholar. His urban development company is at the forefront of "building wellbeing through communities of opportunity". In our conversation, we discuss how two bodies of knowledge that are new within the last 50 years--complex systems science and generalized Darwinism--can help to catalyze prosocial cultural evolution at the scale of whole cities.

Originally published on August 10, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/evolving-prosocial-cities-with-jonathan-rose 

In the last 30 years, evolutionary theory has undergone explosive growth in studying humans as a fundamentally cultural species.

David talks with Alex Mesoudi about this field of cultural evolution and how it is bringing a full view of humanity into inquiry and building bridges across disparate fields of science.

Alex's book, "Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences"

---

This interview was recorded almost 10 years ago at a workshop entitled, "Evolutionary Thinking and Its Policy Implications for Modern Capitalism". We have revived it from the TVOL archives for your enjoyment and think you will find its contents as relevant as ever.

Geoffrey is a specialist in institutional and evolutionary economics, with a background in economics, philosophy and mathematics. His research has applications to the understanding of organizations, organizational change, innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development. Hodgson is also the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics and has published 18 academic books and over 150 academic articles, which he is the winner of the Schumpeter Prize 2014 for his book on "Conceptualizing Capitalism".

Geoffrey also participated in our series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". You can read the in-depth written conversation or listen to his other podcast conversation inspired by the same theme.

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

Conscious capitalism is well known as a business movement that goes against almost everything that is taught in business school. However, the same movement makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of a new paradigm for economics and business based on a combination of complex systems science and evolutionary science. I discuss this paradigm shift with two leaders of the Conscious Capitalism movement Raj Sisodia and Bob Chapman.

Originally published May 10, 2024.

www.prosocial.world/posts/conscious-capitalism-viewed-through-the-lens-of-a-new-paradigm-with-raj-sisodia-and-bob-chapman 

TVOL guest host Max Beilby talks with Andrew O'Keeffe about his work helping leaders make better sense of the human dimension of their role, so that they can work with, rather than against, human nature. Max and Andrew also discuss the coronavirus pandemic, and its potential long-term impacts on working practices. 

Andrew O’Keeffe is director of Hardwired Humans, a consulting firm that helps organizations design their people strategies to fit human instincts. He is the author of Hardwired Humans and The Boss.

Andrew’s background is in senior HR roles with IBM , Cable & Wireless Optus and in professional services. He began his career in industrial relations in the mining and manufacturing industries. He holds a Bachelor of Economics from The University of Sydney.

Andrew has a close connection with Dr Jane Goodall and the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). When Andrew runs leadership programs at zoos, he does so in collaboration with JGI. And over the last decade when Jane Goodall has visited Australia, she and Andrew have joined forces to speak to business leaders about the importance of our social instincts (Dr Goodall talking about chimps, and Andrew talking about humans).  

---

In 1831, two youths embarked upon voyages that would change the way that we view the world today. The first was Charles Darwin and the second was Alexis de Tocqueville. Both addressed the nature of competition, cooperation, and community in ways that are highly relevant to the social dilemmas facing us today. Join the legendary Robert Putnam and me as we update these pioneers on what Tocqueville called "self interest, rightly understood."

Originally published May 20, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/updating-darwin-and-tocqueville-on-self-interest-rightly-understood-with-robert-putnam 

The economic and political school of thought known as Libertarianism is most closely associated with laissez faire as a public policy prescription. George Mason University’s Mercatus (which means “market” in Latin) Center might seem like a bastion of Libertarianism, but think again. My conversation with Peter Boettke, who directs the center’s F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, provides a far more nuanced view that is consilient with the Third Way.

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

TVOL's first podcast with Michele Gelfand explored an axis of cultural variation from "tight" (strong norms, strongly enforced) to "loose" (tolerant of individual differences). In this new podcast, we explore the distinctive blend of tightness and looseness needed to adapt to the pandemic. 

Related Material

Michele's book: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World

Institutional and Cultural Factors Predicting Infection Rates and Mortality of COVID-19. (OSF pre-print). Contributors: Michele Gelfand, Joshua Conrad Jackson, Xinyue Pan, Dana Nau, Chi Yue Chiu

---

Science is often imagined as limited to the "facts" and deliberately set apart from "values". But the pursuit of objective reality requires its own set of values, norms, and ideal character of the individual scientist. I explore this fascinating topic with Professor Robert T. Pennock, University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and co-director of BEACON, a NSF-funded center for the study of evolution in action. 

Robert's book: An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral Character of Science

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

David discusses morality from an evolutionary perspective with analytic philosopher Simon Blackburn. Along the way they cover whether functionality discredits altruism, the two sides of morality (thou shall not and thou shall), and the importance of intent for moral outrage.

This is the first episode of a two-part series on morality out of the TVOL archives. Dive deeper with our special publication asking scientists and philosophers if there is a universal morality.

---

Max Beilby and Steve Colarelli discuss the application of evolutionary psychology to Human Resource Management. They cover Steve’s academic career, and his books No Best Way: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Resource Management and The Biological Foundations of Organizational Behavior (which Steve co-edited with his colleague Richard Arvey). They also explore the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the world of work.

Stephen Colarelli is professor of psychology at Central Michigan University. His research is concerned with how evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology can influence how we think about, conduct research on, and manage behavior in organizations.

Max Beilby is a professional organizational psychologist as well as a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology.

Max has written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and is a member of TVOL’s Business Action Group, which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective. Anyone is free to join and take part of our networking events, discussions, and collaborative projects.

Max Beilby and Nigel Nicholson discuss the application of evolutionary psychology to the world of business and management. They cover Nigel Nicholson’s academic career, his books Managing the Human Animal (marketed in the United States as The Executive Instinct), Family Wars, and The “I” of Leadership. They also explore the impacts of the pandemic on the world of work. Also mentioned is Nigel's Harvard Business Review article, "How Hardwired Is Human Behavior?"

Nigel Nicholson is an Emeritus Professor at London Business School, where he has had wide-ranging involvements in research, executive education and business. Nigel writes, teaches, speaks and advises on leadership, family business, biography and legacy, executive development, management in finance, and interpersonal skills.

Max Beilby is a professional organizational psychologist as well as a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology.

Max has written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and is a member of TVOL’s Business Action Group, which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective. Anyone is free to join and take part of our networking events, discussions, and collaborative projects.

---

The first book-length articulation of an economic paradigm based on complex systems science and evolutionary science was Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth, published in 2006. He is currently Professor of Public Policy Practice at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government and Executive Director of INET Oxford. Eric joins me to assess progress during the last 18 years and prospects for the future. One of Eric's recent essays that we discuss is titled Toward a New Ontological Framework for the Economic Good.

Originally published on August 7, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/assessing-the-complexity-evolution-paradigm-with-eric-beihocker 

Urban planning represents one kind of positive change effort that has suffered from excessive reliance on laissez-faire in some instances and centralized planning in other instances. The Smart Cities movement is a new breed of urban planning that makes use of technology. Daniel T. Obrien, who directs the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), helps me explain how the Smart Cities Movement can avoid the mistakes of the past by traveling the Third Way.

This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".

Dan's book: The Urban Commons: How Data and Technology Can Rebuild Our Communities

---

Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution

In this bonus archive episode, David talks with evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban about his book, "Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind" which shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind's modular design. Modularity suggests that there is no "I." Instead, each of us is a contentious "we"—a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world.

---

Originally published on January 8, 2025.

Hunter-gatherer societies are fascinating in their own right and--with appropriate caution--a major source of insight about our ancestral past, stretching back to our origin as a species. Remarkably, hunter-gatherer societies also have much to teach us about modern Democratic governance. Vivek Venkataraman is an idea guide to this subject, with a background in philosophy, primatology, and human evolutionary biology, along with direct experience living with and researching indigenous people in Malaysia. 

Check out the resources, articles, and more mentioned in this conversation!

4:21 
A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
By Robert M. Sapolsky ·2007

12:37
The Goodness Paradox
The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution
By Richard Wrangham · 2019

14:30 
Hierarchy in the Forest
The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
By Christopher BOEHM · 2009

14:35 and 22:41 
Moral Origins
The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame
By Christopher Boehm · 2012

17:52
A Story of Us
A New Look at Human Evolution
By Lesley Newson, Peter J. Richerson · 2021

22:51
Morality from an Evolutionary Perspective with Simon Blackburn: https://www.prosocial.world/posts/morality-from-an-evolutionary-perspective-with-simon-blackburn

29:06 and 40:56
Man the Hunter Symposium

33:31
Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard Borshay Lee

37:23
Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure Kim R. Hill , et al.

44:43 
Variability in the organization and size of hunter-gatherer groups: Foragers do not live in small-scale societies

46:28 
The Evolution of Subjective Commitment to Groups: A
Tribal Instincts Hypothesis Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, 2011

48:23 
Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model Manvir Singh and Luke Glowacki, 2022

50:20
The Dawn of Everything
A New History of Humanity
By David Graeber, David Wengrow · 2021

57:19
Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology by Pierre Clastres, 1987