Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony with Professor Kevin Laland

Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for cultural production, from the arts and language to science and technology. How did the human mind―and the uniquely human ability to devise and transmit culture―evolve from its roots in animal behavior? Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony presents a captivating new theory of human cognitive evolution. Professor Kevin Laland shows how the learned and socially transmitted activities of our ancestors shaped our intellects through accelerating cycles of evolutionary feedback. Kevin Laland is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews, UK. After completing his PhD at University College London, Laland held a Human Frontier Science Programme fellowship at UC Berkeley, followed by BBSRC and Royal Society University Research fellowships at the University of Cambridge, before moving to St Andrews in 2002. He has published nearly 250 scientific articles and 11 books on a wide range of topics related to animal behaviour and evolution, particularly social learning, cultural evolution and niche construction. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. To learn more about Provocative Enlightenment Radio, go to http://www.provocativeenlightenment.com