The Human Natures project: assessing and understanding transdisciplinary approaches to Culture, Biology and Human uniqueness

This project aims to integrate and synthesize disciplinary interpretations of how culture and biology cooperate to impact the nature of being human. Diverse academic disciplines investigate these topics, but few collaborate to integrate their findings. This project will collect, compare, and analyze major perspectives on the role(s) of culture and biology in interaction from the core disciplines of Philosophy, Biology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Theology. Via quantitative and qualitative assessments we will address aspects of three major questions: Can faith, philosophy, and science agree on anything about human nature? Can faith, philosophy and science participate in a definition of human nature? Is the interface of culture and biology the nexus where faith, philosophy and science can successfully meet? The project will answer the following: 1) in an overview survey of dominant literature and prominent individuals in these core disciplines are there overt elements of similarity in the discourse on human nature? 2) Are there specific overlaps in the definitions of human nature? 3) Are emerging theoretical perspectives in social sciences and evolutionary theory valuable points of interface for these core disciplines? In addition to publication of these results, the project will also include a working group and a conference. The working group will endeavor to refine the broad comparative dataset and define aspects relevant to the possibility of a synthesis across disciplinary boundaries. This process will set the stage for the conference, which will be a broader exploration of the topic with prominent theoreticians from the main disciplines of interest. I will use the results of the project and the conference as the foundation for the creation a center that will monitor, support, and disseminate our findings and foster trans-disciplinary engagement with Culture, Biology and Human uniqueness.