55. Dr. David Sloan Wilson — This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2019

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this dialogue Dr. Shermer speaks with Dr. David Sloan Wilson, the renowned evolutionary biologist and Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. His previous books include Evolution for Everyone, The Neighborhood Project, Does Altruism Exist? and Darwin’s Cathedral. He is the president of the Evolution Institute and editor in chief of its online magazine, This View of Life. His new book, out this week, is This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution. He and Shermer discuss…

what it means to complete the Darwinian Revolution
solving the “is-ought” and “naturalistic fallacy” through proper science and philosophy
why evolutionary psychology is an equal opportunity offender for liberals and conservatives
why both laissez faire and command economies fail
what is morality?
dispelling the myth of social darwinism
policy as a branch of biology
solving the tragedy of the commons through game theory
the evolutionary origins of good and evil
natural selection, group selection, multi-level selection and the debate with Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins over selfish genes
why nationalism is like religion
how a biologist thinks about immigration, nuclear deterrence and other policy issues
the rise of nationalism and what to do about it.

Listen to Science Salon via iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Soundcloud.

This Science Salon was recorded on February 1, 2019. We apologize for the quality of this episode; it was recorded before Michael moved to the new recording studio. We still have a couple episodes to release from the old studio. Quality of subsequent episodes will be better.

You play a vital part in our commitment to promote science and reason. If you enjoy the Science Salon Podcast, please show your support by making a donation, or by becoming a patron.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Science Salon Podcast. I'm your host Michael Schirmer. We post these conversations
0:06.4	on average once a week as part of the larger mission of the Skeptic Society and Skeptic magazine,
0:12.0	a 501c3 nonprofit educational organization devoted to promoting
0:16.6	science and reason.
0:19.6	As usual, we depend upon your support and appreciate your donations which you can do through
0:25.6	numerous channels we're on PayPal and
0:28.6	Patreon you can go to skeptic.com slash donate and see all the different options there and of course
0:34.8	we always encourage you to just send us a check or call the office or any of
0:40.6	the different avenues that are available there.
0:43.5	And I really appreciate your support.
0:46.6	We are a primarily membership supported organization.
0:50.8	And the podcast is our latest project to try to reach as many people as we can.
0:59.0	My guest this week is a long-time friend and colleague David Sloane Wilson, his book is called This View of Life, completing the Darwinian Revolution.
1:09.3	David is the Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Bingenham University.
1:15.1	His books include Evolution for Everyone, The Neighborhood Project.
1:19.2	Does Altruism exist?
1:21.2	And Darwin's Cathedral. He is the president of the Evolution Institute and
1:26.2	editor-in-chief of its online magazine, This View of Life. I've known
1:31.9	David for a long time. I always like his work because he looks for practical
1:37.0	applications of science in general and evolutionary theory in particular which he does
1:42.3	definitely in this book are one beef
1:44.6	of of contention here that I push back on a little bit is his idea of group selection
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Shermer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Shermer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.