Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless

What is true for the emotions may also be true for the intellect. Some of our perplexities may come from a mismatch between the purposes for which our cognitive faculties evolved and the purposes to which we put them today.

Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.

... people notice differences and expect every difference in form to convey some difference in meaning.

The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise