Kim Sterelny

Deputy Director

Kim Sterelny is a philosopher who has spent his professional career in Australia and New Zealand, working mostly at the interface between philosophy and science. In the last fifteen years or so, his focus has been on the evolution of human social life and the cognitive capacities that support that life, with his interests ranging from the lifeways of the first bipedal hominins of the Pliocene to the Neolithic transformations of the last years of the Pleistocene and the Holocene. He is currently in the earliest stage of a collaborative project with Peter Hiscock, on a new synthesis of the archaeology of Sahul, aimed at replacing Hiscock’s earlier Archaeology of Ancient Australia. He has just completed a monograph on the transition to hierarchical societies (beginning late in the Pleistocene), and another, jointly with Ron Planer, on the evolution of language.

Prof Sterelny can be contacted via email.

Research area/theme
Narrative – lead
Peopling Sahul
Holocene revolutions – lead
Media coverage
Relevant publications

Books

Sterelny, K. & Planer, R. 2021. From Signal to Symbol, MIT Press, ISBN 9780262045971

Sterelny, K. 2021. The Pleistocene Social Contract: Culture and Cooperation in Human Evolution. Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780197531389

Journal Articles

Sterelny, K. 2022. Ethnography, Archaeology and The Late Pleistocene. Philosophy of Science, 1-39. https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2021.42 

Sterelny, K. 2021. Foragers and their tools: Risk, technology and complexity. Topics in cognitive science. 0: 1-22. 10.1111/tops.12559

Sterelny, K. 2021. Veiled agency? Children, innovation and the archaeological record”; Evolutionary Human Sciences, 3 (e12): 1-9. doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.9

Sterelny, K. 2020. Demography and Cultural Complexity”; Synthese, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02587-2

Sterelny, K. 2019. Religion: Costs, Signals, and the Neolithic Transition, Religion, Brain and Behavior

Sterelny, K. 2019. The Origins of Multi-Level Society, Topoi. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09666-1

Sterelny, K. 2019. Innovation, Life History and Social Networks in Human Evolution, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, https://doi.10.1098/rstb.2019.0497

Sterelny, K. & Currie, A. 2017. In defence of story-telling, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

Sterelny, K. 2017. Artifacts, Symbols, Thoughts, Biological Theory, 12(4), 236-247, DOI 10.1007/s13752-017-0277-3

Sterelny, K. 2017. Cultural Evolution in California and Paris, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C, 62, pp 42-50

Sterelny, K. 2017. Religion re-explained, Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1-20

Sterelny, K. 2017. From Code to Speaker Meaning, Biology and Philosophy, Volume 32, 6, pp 819–838

Sterelny, K. 2016. Cumulative Cultural Evolution and the Origins of Language, Biological Theory, DOI 10.1007/s13752-016-0247-1

Sterelny, K. 2016. Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 67, 1, pp 31-58

Sterelny, K. 2015. Optimizing Engines: Rational Choice in The Neolithic?, Philosophy of Science, 82 (July) pp. 402–423

Sterelny, K. & Watkins, T. 2015. Neolithization in Southwest Asia in a Context of Niche Construction Theory, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25:3, 673–691, together with a “Response to Critics” pp 700 – 705

Laland KN, Uller T, Feldman MW, Sterelny K, Muller GB, Moczek A, Jablonka, E, Odling-Smee J. 2015. The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions, Proceedings of the Royal Society, B,  282: 1019; doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.1019

Sterelny, K. 2014. A Paleolithic Reciprocation Crisis: Symbols, Signals, and Norms, Biological Theory, 9, 1, pp 65-77

Book Chapters

Sterelny, K. 2020. Michael Devitt, Cultural Evolution and the Division of Linguistic Labour” In Bianchi, A. (ed) Language and reality from a Naturalistic perspective. pp. 173-189. Philosophical Studies Series, 143. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47641-0_9

Sterelny, K. 2019. Norms and Their Evolution. In T. Henley, E. Kardas, & M. J. Rossano (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology: A Psychological Framework. London: Routledge

Sterelny, K. 2019. The Archaeology of the Extended Mind. In Matteo Columbo, Elizabeth Irvine and Mog Stapleton (eds) Andy Clark and His Critics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 143-160

Sterelny, K. 2018. Language: From How-Possibly to How-Probably?” In Richard Joyce (ed) Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, Routledge, Oxford, pp 120-135

Sterelny, K. 2018. Culture and the Extended Phenotype: Cognition and Material Culture in Deep Time. In Albert Newen, Leon de Bruin and Shaun Gallagher (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Cognition: Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended, pp 773-792

Sterelny, K. 2018. Adaptation without Insight? In Robert Boyd’s A different kind of animal? How culture made humans exceptionally adaptable and cooperative. With responses from Ruth Mace, Paul Seabright, Kim Sterelny and Allen Orr. Princeton University Press, pp 135-151

Reviews

Sterelny, K. 2020. Review of Billy Griffiths’ Deep Time Dreaming; Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 3, pp 163-166

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