Cultural Evolution Goes Mainstream - Considering “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution”

“The harmony and order that we associate with the word ‘organism’ indeed has a movable boundary that can be expanded to include biological ecosystems, human societies, and conceivably the entire earth. There is no master navigator for our journey. We must be the navigators, consciously evolving our collective future, and without the compass provided by evolutionary theory, we will surely be lost.” – David Sloan Wilson

In this episode, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson’s latest book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, where he challenges mainstream science to broaden its inquiry to include cultural and consciousness evolution, two pillars of integral theory.

While Keith and I agree that Wilson’s thesis remains anchored in materialism, which is probably essential for credibility in the intelligentsia, his book nevertheless represents progress into exciting new territories that are increasingly seen as topics of legitimate scientific study. He writes specifically of worldview integration, the “religious/spiritual imagination” (hey, I’ll take it) and calls upon both individuals and cultures to realize our power to “participate in our own conscious evolution”.

It’s an exciting message with some strong integral currents, and Keith and I enjoyed our conversation fully. We hope you do too!

David Sloan Wilson is a Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University and co-founder of the Evolution Institute.