The Storytelling Animal

Jonathan Gottschall has a blog at Psychology Today, The Storytelling Animal.

Check out Crappy First Drafts of Great Books.

Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare's Sonnets

Brian Boyd has an exciting new book out: Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Hi folks, here's a notice on a conference integrating evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and studies in the humanities: http://consilienceconference.com/

Grad students and post-docs are invited to submit poster proposals (deadline February 15).

Keynote speaker: E. O. Wilson, author of Consilience and of The Social Conquest of Earth (forthcoming).

SIX SPEAKERS FROM BIOLOGY
Herb Gintis
Henry Harpending
John Hawks
Michael Rose
Peter Turchin
David Sloan Wilson

SIX SPEAKERS FROM THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Christopher Boehm
Pascal Boyer
Robert Frank
David Linden
Dan McAdams
Barb Oakley

SIX SPEAKERS FROM THE HUMANITIES
Brian Boyd
Joseph Carroll
Patricia Churchland
Ellen Dissanayake
Jonathan Gottschall
Massimo Pigliucci

The Brain's Cortex and Emotions

The brain's cortex plays an essential part in emotional processing. This is not surprising, since we first have to have sensory input for the fear-response to take place.

I Got There First

Barbara King could have saved a lot of time in reviewing Michael C. Corballis's The Recursive Mind if she had read my dissertation. Corballis could have saved himself the embarrassment of her review if he had read it. I already discussed in it the presence of recursion in any species that hunts.

Article on E. O. Wilson

Good new article in The Atlantic on E. O. Wilson, who has a new, sure to be controversial, book coming out.

Rhythm and Memory

In my dissertation I argued that the best way for people to learn is for them to have a rhythmic education. It turns out that I was right. In other words, regular rhythmic verse aids in memory. This is important in helping us to understand both the origins of rhythmic poetry, and the reason we continue to be attracted to it (unless one is a postmodernist professor of English, in which case it's not fashionable to like it). If we want students to learn their lessons easily, the textbooks should be in something like blank verse. It doesn't even have to be so obvious -- iambic lines will do.