"We'd certainly be better off if everyone sampled the fabulous Edge symposium, which, like the best in science, is modest and daring all at once." — David Brooks, New York Times column

The Edge Master Class 2011

"WHAT'S NEW IN HUMAN NATURE?"

LEDA COSMIDES - MICHAEL GAZZANIGA - MARTIN NOWAK -
ELAINE PAGELS - STEVEN PINKER - VILAYANUR RAMACHANDRAN

DANIEL KAHNEMAN, CHAIRMAN

Spring Mountain Vineyard, St. Helena, Napa, CA (Map)

4pm Friday July 15th to 1pm Sunday, July 17th

DANIEL KAHNEMAN

Meeting Chairman

Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Princeton University; Recipient, the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences; Author, Thinking Fast and Slow.

LEDA COSMIDES

Recent research concerning the welfare of others, etc. affects not only how to think about certain emotions, but also overturns how most models of reciprocity and exchange, with implications about how people think about modern markets, political systems, and societies. What are these new approaches to human motivation?

Why has cooperation, not competition, always been the key to the evolution of complexity?

Mathematical Biologist, Game Theorist; Professor of Biology and Mathematics, Director, Center for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University; Author, SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed.

ELAINE PAGELS

Why is religion still alive? Why are peope stil engaged in old folk takes and mythological stories — even those without rational and ethical foundations?

Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion, Princeton University; Author The Gnostic Gospels; Beyond Belief; and Revelation.

STEVEN PINKER

What may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history is that violence has gone down, by dramatic degrees, and in many dimensions all over the world and in many spheres of behavior: genocide, war, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, and the treatment of racial minorities, women, children, and animals.



Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology; Harvard University. Author, The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels Of Our Nature: How Violence Has Declined.

VILAYANUR RAMACHANDRAN

Baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about normal brain function and how it evolved.

Neuroscientist; Director, Center for Brain and Cognition; Professor Psychology Department & Neurosciences Program, University of California, San Diego; Author, Phantoms in the Brain; The Tell-Tale Brain.

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"Open-minded, free ranging, intellectually playful ... an unadorned pleasure in curiosity, a collective expression of wonder at the living and inanimate world ... an ongoing and thrilling colloquium."— Ian McEwan in The Telegraph

SCHEDULE

Friday, July 15th
4pm Check-in at Harvest Inn
6pm Cocktails and Dinner at Spring Mountain Vineyard

Saturday July 16th

Harvest Inn
7-8 am Breakfast

Spring Mountain Vineyard
8:30am Session One
10:00am Break
10:30am Session Two
12:00pm Lunch
1:30pm Session Three
3:00pm Break
3:30pm Session Four
5:00pm Sessions end for day

Harvest Inn
5:15 Free Time

Tra Vigne Restaurant
7:30pm Coctails and Dinner

Sunday, July 17th

Harvest Inn
7-8 am Breakfast

Spring Mountain Vineyard
8:30am Session One
10:00am Break
10:30am Session Two
12:00pm Lunch
1:30 Meeting Ends (Tours of Spring Mountain Vineyard are arranged for participants that want to linger and explore)

San Francisco
7:00pm The Edge Science Dinner (Restaurant to be announced)

"Edge is the greatest virtual research university in the world." — Denis Dutton, Arts & Letters Daily