>in _The Naked Ape_, Desmond Morris has a few pages on religion and
>his take on its biological origins/function. This info might be of use
>to Virus --
Along the same lines, I just received a book I ordered from the Library
of Science book club: "The Moral Animal: Why we are the way we are: The
new science of evolutionary psychology" by Robert Wright. It looks like
it will be very relevant to Virus.
Also in the same shipment: "How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The
evolution of complexity" by Brian Goodwin and "Evolutionary Computation:
Toward a new philosophy of machine intelligence" by David Fogel. I think
I could easily take 3 months off work to get through my reading list now. :-(
Another recent purchase found at the Book Co. in Bankers Hall: "Inevitable
Illusions: How mistakes of reason rule our minds" by Massimo Piattelli-
Palmarini. (I guess I'm attracted to books with subtitles :) "Everyone
knows that optical illusions trick us because of the way we see. Now
scientists have discovered that cognitive illusions, a set of biases
deeply embedded in the human mind [hmm, sound familiar?] distort the way
we think." (from the back cover)
If anyone wants to borrow one of these, let me know because I still have
to get through "Atheism: a philosophical justification" by Michael Martin,
"Out of Control" by Kevin Kelly, and "Being Digital" by Nicholas Negroponte
before I can start the new Dawkins book and "Diamond Age", let alone my
new books.
-- David McFadzean dbm@merak.com Memetic Engineer http://www.merak.com/~dbm/ Merak Projects Ltd.