This blog post examines how Victor Hugo’s life—transforming from a royalist poet to a republican writer—infused his literary world, including works like Les Misérables. Born in 1802 in Besançon, eastern France, he was the third son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Victor Hugo, a soldier under Napoleon. His father’s frequent postings abroad, including Spain and Italy, meant Victor...
How far can evolutionary psychology explain human behavior?
This blog post examines how much evolutionary psychology can explain human behavior, critically exploring the tension between innate and environmental factors. Through this, it considers both the explanatory limitations and potential of evolutionary psychology. Recently in Korea, social controversy has arisen over claims that high school textbooks should delete or reduce content related to...
Could rape be an adaptive behavior in human evolution?
This blog post explores whether rape could be an adaptive behavior for survival and reproduction during human evolution, from scientific and evolutionary psychological perspectives. To answer any question, one must first understand it clearly. “Is rape adaptive?” is no exception. While we need not debate what rape is, we must first clearly define what an adaptation is to answer this...
Is science interconnected, or is it fragmented into independent pieces of knowledge?
This blog post explores whether scientific knowledge is closely interconnected by examining the process of solving the Poincaré Conjecture. In ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,’ author Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific theories are not continuous, do not develop gradually, and their direction is not the pursuit of truth. This caused significant ripples among many scientists...
The Speed and Direction of Evolution: Why Did Dawkins and Gould Hold Different Perspectives?
This blog post compares the evolutionary approaches of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, exploring why they held differing views on the speed and direction of evolution. This book creates a fictional debate using the opposing views of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould on Darwin’s theory of evolution. Richard Dawkins wields the powerful weapon of ‘The Selfish Gene’ to explain...
Hester and Dimmesdale: What is the true meaning of sin and atonement?
In this blog post, we explore the true meaning of sin and atonement through the two protagonists of The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale, examining their suffering and journey of growth. Hester’s Shameful Yet Proud ‘A’ In 17th-century Boston, Hester Prynne violated the Seventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” As punishment for her sin, she was sentenced to wear the...
Selfish Genes and Evolution: Gradual or Stochastic Equilibrium?
In this blog post, we’ll look at Richard Dawkins’ theory of the selfish gene and discuss whether evolution is driven by gradual selection or has a stochastic equilibrium nature. In his perhaps most famous book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins argued that natural selection takes place in units called “selfish genes.” In his other book, The Blind Watchman, Dawkins states that...
Can plants, microbes, and inanimate objects be treated with respect?
This blog post draws on Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus to discuss the subjective needs of plants, microbes, and inanimate objects and whether they deserve respect. In Homo Deus, author Yuval Harari takes a critical view of animal husbandry, arguing that it is an act of providing animals with what they need to survive and reproduce, while failing to fulfill their subjective needs. He argues...
Does evolution happen gradually or can it happen abruptly?
In this blog post, we’ll compare Dawkins’ and Gould’s arguments for evolution, and explore whether evolution happens gradually or abruptly. Darwin’s Table is a fierce debate between two of the biggest names in evolutionary theory, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. After a half-century of being criticized by creationism, evolutionary theory has become the...
Could advances in science and technology lead to the extinction of the human species?
In this blog post, we explore the impact of scientific and technological advances on the future of the human species and the possibility of extinction, based on the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. In the movie The Matrix (1999), humans in the future are grown like commercial crops by machines and artificial intelligence. As soon as they are born, they are placed in tiny tanks where they...