Latest Past Events

Gregory Clark – Nature versus Nurture in the Inheritance of Social Status

Gregory Clark: UC DavisMost work studying the inheritance of aspects of social status across societies suggests two things. The first is that this inheritance is weak. Most social status for people is not determined by inheritance from parents. The second is that the strength of inheritance of status varies markedly across societies, so that status […]

Thom Scott-Phillips – The Evolution of Human Communication and Language

Thom Scott-Phillips: Durham UniversityLanguage is arguably humanity's most distinctive characteristic. What, exactly, is language, and why are we the only species that has it? In this talk, based upon my recent book*, I will argue that the differences between human communication and the communication systems of all other species is probably not a difference of […]

Simone Schnall – Social and Physiological Resources and the Perception of Space

Simone Schnall: University of CambridgeTraditional theories of perception have assumed that visual processing is not influenced by top-down cognitive processes and is thus driven entirely by physical properties of the environment (Pylyshyn, 1984). For example, how a person sees stimuli such as a cup of coffee or a steep hill was thought to be only […]