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28 May 2002
How can the scientific study of evolution explain "the extraordinary" -- the human penchant for going beyond expectations and prior standards
of thinking, creativity, and action? The extraordinary in human lives,
including the search to transcend, characterizes not just a handful of
geniuses but is more common than we might at first recognize. Standard
versions of human evolutionary history, which focus on the challenges
of specific habitats such as African savanna or the European ice ages,
have difficulty explaining the transcendent and the uniqueness of human
behavior. An alternative view, which focuses on evolution in unstable
Earth environments, offers a stronger basis for understanding the tendency
of our species to express novelty, alter our surroundings, transcend immediate
time/space conditions, and sense the ineffable and divine as part of human
life. Our complex brains, unique mental faculties, intricate social communities,
and reliance on symbolic communication and imagination, all stem from
a history of adaptation to uncertainty and environmental risk in our ancestral
world.
Keynote speaker:
Respondent:
- Dr. Stephen Post, Center for Biomedical Ethics,
School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University
Coverage:
 Listen to Dr. Richard Potts
Listen to Dr. Stephen Post
 Read the Summary
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