For several hundred years, much of scientific advance was about exploring human beings,

including their actions and choices in terms of mechanism.

Our bodies, our minds, physical processes.

Even the farthest edges of chaos theory and quantum physics have often assumed that in

ways we simply cannot yet fathom, much of what we experience as freedom is in fact determined

by natural forces.

This hour we engage two scientists who are both expanding and questioning these ideas

on an evolving frontier at the intersection of mind and morality.

The universal is a human nature may be difficult to see with the naked eye, but to me what

these advances like the notion that people have human rights, I don't think that is written

in our biology.

That was called an invention if you like, but it's a really good one.

That's a really useful one.

Right, or is it a piece of reality that we only evolve to be able to articulate?

I guess that would be the other idea.

Yeah, that's the other idea.

And the fact is that every individual has that possibility of making that discovery.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being.

Arthur Zion's is a physicist and contemplative and he's the current president of the mind

and life institute, the Dalai Lama's ongoing gathering of scientists and spiritual thinkers.

Michael McCullough is professor of psychology at the University of Miami where he directs

the evolution and human behavior laboratory.

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