About the book
Joseph Henrich, a Harvard professor, draws on cultural evolution and evolutionary psychology in his 2020 account of why Western populations think differently from most of humanity. WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic, and Henrich gathers evidence that such people reason more analytically, trust strangers more readily and identify with voluntary groups rather than clans. He argues that Catholic Church edicts on marriage and family, beginning in the 4th century, broke down kin-based society in Europe. Markets, cities, guilds, charter towns and universities then reshaped psychology further. Henrich rejects the view that modern Western institutions grew from reason defeating religious dogma, and treats them as an accidental byproduct of Church policy. The argument unfolds in four parts.
Marc Andreessen grouped it with reading about who we are and how humans got here. Tyler Cowen included it among his best non-fiction books of 2020.
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This book has 2 recommendations
Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz)
Two more books on who we are and how we got here, one on culture, the other on genetics
Tyler Cowen (Founder/Marginal Revolution University)
On Tyler Cowen’s Best non-fiction books of 2020 (Marginal REVOLUTION, by Tyler Cowen)
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