So, I'm teaching a graduate-level class in evolutionary theory this quarter. Given my druthers, I would have run a rather technical class in which we would discuss quantitative genetics, optimality models, game theory, multi-level evolution... Stuff like that. Well, we've done a bit of that but, due to popular demand, I actually took out two weeks on game theory and optimality models, and instead we are reading Gregory Clark's new book, A Farewell to Alms, in which argues that the Industrial Revolution may have its roots in quite recent biological evolution. Nicholas Wade wrote a review of the book in the New York Times that a number of students and I found intriguing. In this review, Wade quotes Clark as saying,

Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution, man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world.

We'll see... Regardless of what I think of the book (which I've not yet read, but will do so along side the students starting next week), it seemed like an interesting case on which to bring to bear our new-found analytical skills in evolutionary theory. More later...