Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas 342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind
126 snips
Jan 26, 2026 
Rachell Powell, philosopher and Boston University professor who studies evolution, cognition, and social norms. She explores convergence versus contingency in evolution. She discusses repeated evolution of brains and surprising cognition in bees. She examines cumulative culture as a rare bottleneck, convergent social norms (even in ants), and moral fragility amid technological and extinction risks.
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Cumulative Culture As A Contingent Breakthrough
- Human cumulative culture is rare and required many interacting preconditions across biology and ecology.
- Our long delay before cultural explosion underscores contingency in achieving cumulative culture.
Multilevel Origins Of Evolutionary Contingency
- Macroevolutionary contingency often arises from interactions across genetic, developmental, and ecological levels.
- Innovations typically require many background conditions, making outcomes unpredictable.
Norms Are Multiply Realizable
- Treat social norms as multiply realizable functions rather than human-unique mechanisms.
- That reframing lets us find norm-like institutions in distant lineages and revise our concepts.
