The
Templeton Research Fellows each deliver four lectures, advise faculty
and students on research projects, and participate in an on-going
faculty seminar “Being Human: Science, Religion, Technology, and Law."
Each year the Templeton Research Fellow produces a book manuscript to
be submitted to an academic press for publication.
2006 - 2007: Transhumanism and the Concept of Human Nature
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Leda Cosmides
Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology
University of California, Santa Barbara
John Tooby
Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology
University of California, Santa Barbara |
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby,
named Templeton Research co-Fellows for 2006-07, are best known for
their work in pioneering the new field of evolutionary psychology.
This multidisciplinary new approach weaves together evolutionary
biology, cognitive science, human evolution, hunter gatherer studies,
neuroscience, and psychology into a new approach to discovering the
mechanisms of the human mind and brain. According to this new
view, by understanding the adaptive problems our hunter-gatherer
ancestors faced during their evolution, researchers can uncover the
detailed functional designs of the emotions, reasoning “instincts” and
motivations that human evolution produced.
Cosmides
and Tooby both developed their interest in rebuilding psychology along
evolutionary lines while undergraduates at Harvard, which is where they
met, married, and began their 26 year collaboration. Tooby’s A.B. was
in experimental psychology and his Ph.D. in biological anthropology;
Cosmides’ A.B. was in biology and her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology.
They did postdoctoral work with Roger Shepard, a cognitive psychologist
at Stanford, and were then made Fellows at the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where they formed the Special Project
on Evolutionary Psychology with three other researchers. In 1990 they
moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where they are
professors of psychology and anthropology. Cosmides and Tooby co-direct
the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology. In 1992, they published The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, an edited volume designed to be a state of the art survey of the new field.
They have published research in cognitive psychology, evolutionary
biology, cultural and biological anthropology, genetics, and economics,
on topics such as how humans have “cognitive instincts” specialized for
reasoning about cooperation, on the adaptive design of the emotions, on
the evolution of sexual reproduction as a defense against parasites, on
conflict in the genome, and on the cognitive foundations of cultural
transmission.
They
have both won awards for their foundational work in the field of
evolutionary psychology. In 1991, Tooby won a Presidential Young
Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. Cosmides won
the 1988 American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for
Behavioral Science Research, and the 1993 American Psychological
Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career
Contribution to Psychology. They both received J. S. Guggenheim
Fellowships, and Tooby has served as President of the Human Behavior
and Evolution Society. They are currently working on a number of
projects, including the exploration of the evolved psychology
underlying coalitions and intergroup conflict, the evolutionary
psychology of anger, the motivational basis of the aversion to incest
and within family altruism, and the cross-cultural validation of human
psychological universals.
2007 - 2008: Transhumanism, Technology, and Culture
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Brad Allenby
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Ira K. Fulton School of Engineering
Arizona State University |
Brad Allenby joined ASU in 2004 after spending
over twenty years working for AT&T as counsel, senior environmental
counsel, research vice president for technology and environment,
and environment, health and safety vice president. During that
period he also served for two years as Director of Energy and
Environmental Systems at Lawrence Livermore National Labs,
and as the J. Herbert Holloman Fellow at the National Academy
of Engineering. He also taught as an adjunct professor at Yale
University School of Forestry, Columbia University ’s
School of International and Public Affairs, Princeton Theological
Seminary, and the University of Virginia ’s School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences.
His principal areas of research and teaching include: design
for environment; earth systems engineering and management;
industrial
ecology;
NBIC
(nanotechnology,
biotechnology,
information
and communication technology, and cognitive sciences) convergence
and technological evolution.
He has received a number of honors and distinctions such as
being named the Herbert Holloman Fellow with the National Academy
of Engineering, 1991-1992, a Fellow with the Royal Society
of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, 1999-present, and the President
for the International Society for Industrial Ecology, 2004-present.
Some of his most recent publications include: Reconstructing
Earth (2005); Industrial Ecology, 2nd
ed. (2004, Co-authored with T.E. Graedel and has been published
in Russian and Chinese); and Industrial Ecology: Policy
Framework and Implementation (1999).
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Daniel Sarewitz
Professor in the School of Life Sciences
and Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and
Outcomes
Arizona State University
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Can Technology Make Us Better?
Monday, April 21, 2008, 7:30pm
College of Law Great Hall
Free and open to the public. No tickets required.
Daniel Sarewitz is the director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO) and professor of science and society at Arizona State University. His work focuses on understanding the connections between scientific research and social benefit, and on developing methods and policies to strengthen such connections. His most recent books are Shaping Science and Technology Policy: The Next Generation of Research (with David H. Guston, 2006) and Living with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery (with Alan Lightman and Christina Desser, 2003).
Before joining ASU, Sarewitz directed the Geological Society of America's Institute for Environmental Education and worked on Capitol Hill, first as a congressional science fellow, then as a science consultant to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He has written numerous articles, speeches, and reports about the relationship between science and social progress, including Prediction: Science, Decision-Making, and the Future of Nature (2000) and Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress (1996), and has done field work in the Philippines, Argentina, and Tajikistan.
In 2007, he was named a Templeton Research Fellow, along with Brad Allenby, for their project, “Transhumanism, Nature, and Technology: Reinventing the Enlightenment.”
To learn more or to join the discussion, read Sarewitz’s essay in the online forum >>
2008 - 2009: The Social and Legal Implications of Transhumanism
Fellows TBA
2009 - 2010: Transhumanism as Secularized Eschatology
Fellows TBA
