is an online general interest magazine in which all of the content is from an evolutionary perspective. It includes content filtered from the internet, as well as new content generated by our staff of editors and contributing authors in eleven subject areas:
In addition to progress within the biological sciences, evolutionary science is expanding beyond biology to include all human-related subjects.
provides a way for the general public to grasp what Darwin meant when he said that “there is grandeur in this view of life.” It is a view that encompasses “endless forms most beautiful and wonderful,” a theoretical framework that explains how such abundant diversity could have emerged from the simplest beginnings.
The magazine provides an intellectual forum at the professional level. We will strive to portray science as it actually happens: not as a monolithic collection of facts, but as an ongoing process of constructive disagreement that gradually converts hypotheses into durable knowledge. Because our staff of editors consists largely of practicing evolutionists, we aim to achieve a higher level of discourse than most other science media outlets.
, a campus-wide evolutionary studies program that started at Binghamton University in 2003 and expanded into a multi-institution
, founded in 2007 as the first think tank to approach public policy from an evolutionary perspective. We thank Binghamton University, the National Science Foundation, the Evolution Institute, and a number of private donors for providing the support to create
There is no doubt that evolution will eventually play the same role for the basic and applied human-related sciences that it already plays for the biological sciences, but how fast this happens and how well the public will be informed are more uncertain. We view
as a catalyst of change, a way to accomplish in a matter of years what might otherwise require decades.
David Sloan Wilson is a distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. David is an evolutionist who studies all aspects of humanity in addition to the biological world. He manages a number of programs designed to expand the influence of evolutionary theory in higher education (EvoS), public policy (The Evolution Institute), community-based research (The Binghamton Neighborhood Project), and religion (Evolutionary Religious Studies).
Robert is hopeful that Evolution: This View of Life serves as a teaching tool for the public understanding of evolutionary science. He envisions the magazine as a bridge to unify academic disciplines within an evolutionary framework. He also served as Executive Assistant of The Evolution Institute, the first non-profit think tank that connects the world of evolutionary science to the world of public policy formulation.
Jiro Tanaka received his Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton (2002) and his bachelor’s degree from Harvard (1993). He has taught at Clark University and Vassar College, where he served as Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities. In 2008, he was a Visiting Scholar in UCLA’s program for Human Complex Systems. Dr. Tanaka has published widely on topics in literary theory, German intellectual history, second language acquisition, and “bio-cultural” approaches to the humanities.
Hadassah Head completed her Master's in System Science and a graduate certificate in Evolutionary Studies at Binghamton University. She also attended Binghamton as an undergraduate. She attained her Bachelors in Mathematics and a minor in Russian and Eastern European Studies. She studied Jewish studies at Pardes Institute of Jewish Learning. Her interests include community development, human factors, complexity, sustainability, organizational and group behavior, religion, networks and evolution. In addition to her work with the magazine she is also the Evolutionary Studies Coordinator at Binghamton University. She tweets as @Haddie.
Section Editors
Daniel Blumstein is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, and a Professor in UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He received his PhD at UC Davis in animal behavior, and had postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Marburg (Germany), The University of Kansas, and Macquarie University (Australia). He is a behavioral ecologist broadly interested in the evolution of behavior and the application of behavioral and evolutionary principles to policy, health, and defense. He has studied the behavior and ecology of mammals (including humans), birds, fish, lizards, hermit crabs, and sea anenome and runs the 50+ year project studying the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of yellow-bellied marmots at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. The author of over 200 scholarly works and five books, his most recent books include: "A Primer of Conservation Behavior" (Sinauer Associates, 2010, with Esteban Fernandez-Juricic), "The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It)" (University of California Press, 2011, with Charles Saylan), and "Eating Our Way to Civility: A Dinner Party Guide" (a Kindle and Apple e-book, 2011).
Michael Blume was born in 1976 in Filderstadt, Germany. He lectured Religious Studies at the universities of Tübingen, Heidelberg, Leipzig and currently in Jena. His doctoral thesis focused on theories on religion in the brain sciences (the so-called "neurotheologies”). Dr. Blume then specialized on the reproductive potentials of religiosity - the complex workings of religious communities augmenting cooperation, birth and survival rates (and thus: evolutionary success) of religious people in comparison to their (more) secular neighbors.
Eva van den Broek received her MSc in Artificial Intelligence from Utrecht University and is completing her PhD in experimental economics and theoretical biology at the University of Amsterdam. She has been working on the evolution of reputation, group competition and social norms at the University of Munich and Vienna. Currently Eva is at Wageningen UR, running field experiments on consumer behavior and sustainability.
Dominic Johnson is Alistair Buchan Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He received a D.Phil. from Oxford in evolutionary biology, and a Ph.D. from Geneva University in political science. Drawing on both disciplines, he is interested in how new research on evolution and human biology is challenging theories of international relations, conflict, and cooperation. For the 2012-2013 academic year, he is co-leading a project on evolution and human nature at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton.
Lesley Newson's main interest is learning about out how Darwinian theory can provide insight into human behaviour. It has proven very powerful in explaining the behaviour of other animals but we need to develop and test hypotheses about the evolution of the behaviours that are unique to our species.
Guru Madhaven is a Program officer at the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council—collectively known as the National Academies—in Washington, DC. Madhavan received his doctorate in biomedical engineering. He is co-editor of "Career Development in Bioengineering and Biotechnology" (Springer, 2008), "Pathological Altruism" (Oxford University Press, 2011), and "Practicing Sustainability" (Springer, 2012).
Rafe Sagarin marine ecologist at the Institute of the Environment at University of Arizona. Rafe's research includes everything from the historical and current sizes of intertidal gastropods (snails) to developing better ideas for national security, based on natural security systems. He is particularly interested in the Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California, its ecological history, and the fascinating people past and present who have lived, worked, researched and journeyed there.
Gabrielle Principe is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Ursinus College. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. Her research has been federally funded by the National Institutes of Health and she has published her research in numerous scientific journals including Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, and Cognition and Development. She has a lifelong fascination with the implications of evolutionary ideas on cognitive development and a serious interest in translating the latest scientific research about human development into information that parents and teachers can use to better rear and educate children. She is the author of Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan (Prometheus, 2011)..
Joon Yun received his A.B. at Harvard and medical degree at Duke. After completing his residency and fellowship in radiology at Stanford, he remained on the clinical faculty at Stanford in the department of radiology through 2005. Joon has served on the board of medical companies, is the president of Palo Alto Investors and has authored over 30 patents. In addition, Joon founded the Palo Alto Institute, a non-profit think tank.
The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York, was founded in 1932 as an establishment committed to furthering basic research in paleontology. Over the past 80 plus years, PRI staff members have contributed new findings in the fields of evolutionary paleobiology, conservation, and macroevolution, focusing mainly on the faunas and formations of the United States, Caribbean, and Latin America. Today, PRI has expanded to include a vast research collection of fossil and Recent specimens, books and scientific journals under it’s own publishing brand, advanced research and educational facilities, a formal affiliation with nearby Cornell University, and two public venues: the Cayuga Nature Center and the Museum of the Earth, which offer exhibitions and educational programs for visitors of all ages. As Editor of Evolution – This View of Life: Paleontology, PRI strives to bring our message “Everything is Paleontology” to a broad audience, using our unique combination of scientists, educators, students, and assets. Dr. Paula Mikkelsen, Associate Director for Science, oversees PRI’s contributions to ETVoL.
Associate Editors
Kathryn Bowers writes about health, evolution, and biology. She’s the author (with Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D.) of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing (Knopf, 2012). She began her career in journalism as a staff editor of the Atlantic Monthly. She also worked with James Fallows, the Washington Editor of the Atlantic, and for CNN-International in London. Kathryn holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and teaches a course on medical narrative at UCLA. She tweets as @kathrynsbowers and @zoobiquity.
Benjamin James Bush is a Systems Science PhD candidate and research assistant at the Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems (CoCo) Research Group at Binghamton University. He recieved his M.S. in mathematics from CSU Los Angeles and joined the Evolutionary Studies Program at Binghamton in 2009. Benjamin's research is on the evolution of ideas and its technological applications, which include electronic brainstorming and interactive evolutionary computation. He is currently developing an agent based adaptive network model to better understand how social networks change as individuals and ideas co-evolve. He tweets as @BenJamesBush.
Anthony C. Lopez received a Ph.D. from Brown University in Political Science and is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Political Psychology at Washington State University. His research investigates war as the product of an evolved coalitional psychology, and examines the relationship between inter-group conflict and intra-group cooperation from an adaptationist perspective. Anthony received training as a Research Affiliate with the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and he also maintains a blog that catalogues and discusses current research in these areas:
www.evolutionary-politics.blogspot.com
