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Creativity and computers: what could these possibly have to do with one another? “Nothing!,” many people would say. The two are simply incompatible.” Well, I disagree. Computers and creativity make interesting partners with respect to two different projects. One, which interests me the most, is understanding human creativity. The other is trying to produce machine Continue reading Can computer models help us to understand human creativity? Although humanism itself has often been controversial, until recently there has been a fair amount of consensus about the denotation of “human” among practitioners and critics. This consensus has been notably durable. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the first three senses of “human” distinguish “mankind” from animals, from “mere objects or events,” and from Continue reading Humans and Humanists (and Scientists) I have been studying the same group of monkeys, known as northern muriquis, in a small forest in southeastern Brazil for nearly 28 years. When I began my research they were called Brachyteles arachnoides. Subsequently, and within the lifetimes of many of the individuals in my original study group, they were reclassified as a new Continue reading The Challenge of Comparisons in Primatology Introduction Since Darwin’s time, the human language capacity has been a perennially cited paragon of extreme complexity that defies the explanatory powers of natural selection. And it is not just critics of Darwinism who have argued that this most distinctive human capacity is problematic. Alfred Russel Wallace—the co-discoverer of natural selection theory and in many Continue reading On the Human: Rethinking the natural selection of human language Egbé eja leja ?wè tò, egbé eye leye ?wò lé Fish swim in a school of their own kind; Birds fly in a flock of their own kind. Yoruba Proverb We mention nature and forget ourselves in it. Friedrich Nietzsche So engrained is the trope of the animal in the West that animal Continue reading Animalia: the Natural World, Art, and Theory At odd moments, often when I’m distracted, it occurs to me that a song or a piece of music has been repeatedly running through my head. It’s an experience nearly everyone has. Sometimes it’s invigorating to realize that you have been striding through the day to the chords of Beethoven, but it’s often quite irritating Continue reading Science and the Humanities It is now something of a commonplace that we think about our lives in story form.[1] According to a recent article in the New York Times, psychological research into the personal narratives we tell supports the idea that we are natural storytellers. [2] “The human brain,” the article reports, “has a natural affinity for narrative Continue reading Narrative and Personal Good |
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