Sublime

A century ago Europeans took it for granted that some races—most notably the white race—were inherently superior to others. After 1945 such views increasingly became anathema. Racism was seen not only as morally abysmal but also as scientifically bankrupt. Life scientists, and in particular geneticists, have produced very strong scientific evidence

Advocates often play games with the demographics in order to support their agenda-driven conclusions. In estimating the Arab population of Palestine at the time of the U.N. partition of 1947, advocates of the Arab cause sometimes include the population of what is now Jordan, as well as what is now the West Bank and Gaza. In assessing the fairness o

While there are several candidates for the most important equation in evolutionary biology, I would pick Price’s Equation, which in its simplest formulation reads: ▵cov(vi, zi) change in average characteristic = covariance(relative fitness, characteristic). This is a very powerful and general formula. For example, a particular gene for height can b

The fact that 115 million persons gave their lives fighting for nation-states in the twentieth century is stark evidence of the power of epigenesis.71 It shows that many did consider the survival of their nations to be matters of life-and-death importance. The question is whether that attitude will carry over into a new age with different megapolit

In 2010, researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that the effects of oxytocin seem limited to one’s own group.2 The hormone not only enhances affection for friends, it can also intensify aversion to strangers. Turns out oxytocin doesn’t fuel universal fraternity. It powers feelings of ‘my people first’.

Instead of being fed from above a limited diet of standardized cultural products, everyone — not just a minority of highly educated omnivores — can now craft a varied and customized cultural diet from the digital cornucopia. People create these customized diets by sharing the work of “curation” in differentiated niche taste communities. This colle