David Sloan Wilson

January 30, 2023

A New Economic Paradigm for People and Planet

May 23, 2018

Is There a Universal Morality? Introduction and Overview of Responses

TVOL is pleased to explore the question “Is there a universal morality?” with the help of philosophers and scientists at the forefront of studying morality in light of “this view of life”. Our fifteen essayists provided a surprising diversity of answers to the question.

June 25, 2018

ProWocial World Receives Grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation

June 18, 2018

You're Racist and Sexist, But It’s Not (Entirely) Your Fault

Companies are great at evaluating skills but inconsistent at evaluating temperament due to unconscious bias. These biases are, in part, a natural outcome of the human species evolving in small, homogenous groups. But new tools can help us overcome our innate biases to achieve cultural change.

August 16, 2018

Attention Teachers! How To Turn Your Classes Into Prosocial Groups

ProSocial.World, a project by David Sloan Wilson, is a practical method for improving the efficacy of groups and wellbeing of their members. Why not use the method in our own college classes?

July 15, 2018

Humanizing Corporations: A Nobel Prize for Enlightened Business Leaders

How Per L. Saxegaard's (Business for Peace Foundation) efforts to humanize corporations can be understood from a multilevel evolutionary perspective.

December 3, 2018

Was Darwin A Group Selectionist? A Conversation with Elliott Sober

You can’t talk about religious beliefs and practices as adaptations without addressing the issue of group selection.

October 9, 2018

Saving Social Constructivism

Social constructivism is on trial for being an academic fraud. Can it be rescued and does it have valid points to make about science after all?

July 28, 2023

Can Evolution Be Conscious? Introducing a Collection of Commentaries Published on This View of Life

To make the concept of conscious evolution fully respectable again, TVOL is pleased to feature this collection of commentaries by leading evolutionary scientists and philosophers.

November 28, 2018

Fighting for the Middle Ground: David Sloan Wilson Interviews Holly Dunsworth on the Ethics of Teaching Evolution

In a world that is being ripped apart by polarized views and fake news, scientific discourse might be the last bastion of constructive disagreement based on respect for objective knowledge.

December 21, 2018

A School, Camp, and Retreat Center Informed by Evolutionary Science

December 18, 2018

Was Hamilton a Group Selectionist? A Conversation with Oren Harman

W.D. Hamilton is best known for developing Inclusive Fitness Theory. What is less well known is that Hamilton changed his mind about the relationship between his theory and group selection.

December 27, 2018

Science and Religion Need Not Be At War

My Agreement and Disagreement with Jerry Coyne.

January 18, 2024

Evolutionary Mismatch and What To Do About It

Mismatches are an inevitable consequence of evolution in changing environments, but some mismatches call for preventative measures to preserve what we value.

March 6, 2019

What All Theories of Social Evolution Share In Common

If prosocial behaviors are vulnerable to more self-serving behaviors in every group where both types of behaviors occur, then how can they evolve by natural selection?

May 10, 2019

Group Selection in Every Way Except Using the Words: A Critique of "The Goodness Paradox" by Richard Wrangham

Wrangham's new book on the evolution of cooperation gets many things right. But he errs in thinking that he can develop his thesis without invoking group selection.

June 7, 2019

What Bret Weinstein Gets Wrong About Group Selection

July 22, 2019

Master Class: A Conversation with Jonathan Birch About the Equivalence of Theories of Social Evolution

The controversy over group selection that emerged in the 1960’s seemed as if one theory could be rejected in favor of another, but it was really more like monolingual people declaring each other to be confusing and wrong.

September 25, 2019

New Foundations for Macroeconomics

Ever since Darwin drew upon Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith, economic and evolutionary theory have been entwined throughout their histories. Yet modern macroeconomic theory has yet to incorporate developments in evolutionary theory during the last few decades.

December 22, 2019

Beyond Individualism

The hardest thing for a fish to see is water. This adage aptly expresses the difficulty we have understanding our own cultures. We spot the foibles of other cultures--even our own cultures in the past--but are blind to our current foibles.

February 13, 2020

Evolving a Sustainable Future in the United Kingdom

ProSocial is inherently about equity and co-production starting at the scale of small groups and then applying the same principles at multiple levels.

February 27, 2020

The Cultural Evolution of Social Pathologies: Introduction to a Series of Essays by Anthony Biglan

The fact that evolutionary selection pressures so often result in social pathologies might be hard to accept, but once faced squarely it can lead to an optimistic point of view.

April 3, 2020

To Adapt to Your Current Challenges, Try this Speed Version of ProSocial

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the challenges that the global pandemic has thrust upon you? A positive change method called ProSocial can help you in the space of an hour.

June 15, 2020

Science as a Moral System with Robert T. Pennock

July 13, 2020

Ecosystems are Probably Not What You Think: A Conversation with Tom Whitham

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.

July 20, 2020

Debate: Nothing in Sociology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

It is time for sociologists to engage in a deeper conversation with evolutionary scientists about human origins and human needs.

August 2, 2020

Morality from an Evolutionary Perspective with Simon Blackburn

David discusses morality from an evolutionary perspective with analytic philosopher Simon Blackburn.

August 3, 2023

Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship: A Capstone Conversation with Victor Hwang

Entrepreneurs are not disconnected individuals, they are cooperating in a connected ecosystem.

August 16, 2020

Positive Deviance as the Third Way: A Conversation with David K. Hurst

Positive Deviance has been used to prevent child malnourishment in Vietnam, female circumcision in Egypt, and even improve an American pharmaceutical company's outreach to doctors.

August 16, 2020

A Tale of Two Evolutionary Processes, with Rita Colwell

Rita Colwell pioneered the study of microbial ecology and genetics and served as Director of the National Science Foundation during 1998-2004.

September 2, 2020

[BONUS] Robert Kurzban On the Modular Mind

In this bonus archive episode, David talks with evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban.

March 2, 2023

Advice to an Aspiring Economist: Introduction

This series of essays is a catalyst for change in the economics profession and how it is taught to the next generation of economists.

December 15, 2020

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Introduction

This groundbreaking series of conversations seek to integrate Evolutionary Science and Contextual Behavioral Science with a larger audience.

January 1, 2021

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Development and Adolescence

Are adolescent behaviors innately pathological or are they a result of the environment? Prominent scholars discuss both sides in this groundbreaking series.

January 14, 2021

Atlas Hugged and Catalyzing Positive Change in the Real World, with David Korten

David Korten is the renowned futurist, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning among many other books, founder of YES! Magazine, and a prominent member of the Club of Rome.

January 11, 2021

Learning from Evolution about Free Speech

January 15, 2021

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Organizational Development

Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize by creating a database of common-pool resource groups from a very diffuse literature. Can we do the same for business development?

January 14, 2021

Atlas Hugged and Our Moment of Choice, with Kurt Johnson

Kurt Johnson wears many hats--a distinguished evolutionary biologist, a leader of the Interspiritual Movement, an authority on the scientific career of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov

January 14, 2021

Atlas Hugged and the Nature of Fiction, with Brian Boyd

We discuss Atlas Hugged and Brian's biography-in-progress of the legendary philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pioneered the study of epistemology from an evolutionary perspective.

January 22, 2021

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Behavioral and Physical Health

Many social and personal problems are adaptive in the evolutionary sense of the word, but what if we could manage the process of personal evolution?

February 21, 2021

La Evolución Cultural Consciente se Afianza en América Latina

January 29, 2021

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Small Groups

Prosociality requires not just figuring out what’s prosocial within the group, but also how a group fits into a larger, multigroup social organization that is also prosocial.

February 21, 2021

Uma Evolução Cultural Consciente se Enraíza na América Latina

February 12, 2021

Introducing ProSocial World to the World

Darwin’s 212th birthday is a good time to introduce ProSocial World (PW), a new organization dedicated to achieving rapid positive multilevel cultural change.

April 7, 2021

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Past, Present, and Future

April 7, 2021

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Psychopathology and Behavior Change

March 11, 2021

Greek Democracy as a Major Evolutionary Transition: A Conversation with Josiah Ober

By understanding classical Greece as a Major Evolutionary Transition is that it can place the very concept of democracy on a stronger theoretical foundation.

March 17, 2021

Turning Fiction Into Reality: A Conversation with Stuart Libman

Fiction has a way of communicating a moral ideal better than dry intellectual prose.

May 12, 2021

Agile as a Case Study of Cultural Multilevel Selection: A Conversation with Laurent Alt

October 4, 2021

Stewarding the Cultural Evolution of Complex Systems: The Case of Regenerative Agriculture

A conversation with Prof. Nicholas R. Jordan, founder of Forever Green which is one of the most ambitious efforts to transition from conventional farming practices to regenerative agriculture