Invisible Forces and Powerful Beliefs: Gravity, Gods, and Minds

From selfish genes to social brains

The Chicago Social Brain Network was established to examine how science might inform us about our fundamental human nature, including the apparently irrepressible quest for connection with a higher understanding and organization. Science can describe what religion does in rigorous ways that benefit religion, and religion can serve a meaning-making function that science itself disclaims. This is not to say that science can address the existence of God. Our Network instead focuses on the consequences of believing in such a mind and of seeing into that mind.

In the next chapter, “The social nature of humankind,” John Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist, draws on work on evolutionary theory, sociobiology, and evolutionary ...