Albert Einstein once likened the body of scientific knowledge to an ever-expanding circle of light, and made the point that because of the expansion, the frontier of knowledge--the perimeter of the circle--will likewise be ever-expanding. I think that a more important point can be made; Einstein's circle of light has a shadow in the center where we the observers are standing. This shadow is the continuing lack of understanding of human nature in terms that relate back to the hard sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology. Before we can relate it that far back, we must first pass through neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary psychology. Especially evolutionary psychology. Only then will we be able to devise efficient solutions to the problems that still beset humanity, because our solutions will touch the true causes of things.
Countless earnest workers in the humanities and soft sciences have been seeking an understanding of human nature. Why has this not sufficed? I suspect it is because key determinants of human behavior are processed through the unconscious pathways of the brain and are therefore never available for conscious introspection. For example, I strongly suspect that crowding stress is the master variable governing human history. This would simply be humans per hectare. Why are we therefore not acutely aware of it at all times? Because (hypothetically) it is represented in the right amygdala, which is known to be specialized for unconscious emotion processing. (The left amygdala is known to be specialized for conscious emotion processing.) This is an easily tested prediction.
The computations of the amygdala are most usefully understood in terms of the evolutionary selection process that created the human brain. This is why I think it important at this time to devote public funding to evolutionary psychology, the study of evolution as it pertains to explaining human behavior. You may object that generations of research investment will be needed before such an abstruse-sounding discipline will begin to yield practical benefits, but I beg to differ. Evolutionary psychology is a new field, and in new fields, there is still low-hanging fruit. In my theory blog, "Theoretician's Progress," at http://mmmtheory.blogspot.com, I have been scouting some of this low-hanging fruit, and there is plenty. My preliminary conclusions are written up in that blog in posts tagged as containing evolutionary-psychological subject matter.
We have to solve the ancient problems with ourselves before we can hope to solve the new problems such as climate change. Imagine, for example, that a narrowly technological solution to climate change is attempted, such as an orbiting space mirror. Who then decides what the target set point for the global temperature shall be? Temperate countries will want it set higher; equatorial countries will want it set lower. The first country that feels left out of the decision-making process will start a vigorous space program aimed at blowing up the space mirror. Assuming the terrorists or some small, selfish interest group nobody ever heard of before does not get to it first. How can we hope to control the temperature of a whole, damned planet when we can't even control ourselves?
