Changes in foodways were an object of literary reflection on the Roman past in the early empire. They offered a rich set of ingredients with which to characterize social, economie, and cultural change. Varro is prominent in attesting and shaping this tradition, but it is an older, and more broadly based means of narrating Roman social history. Varro developed this material in his treatise, On t...

Many psychologists and philosophers have suggested that religious ideas emerge because they are motivationally attractive. This paper attempts to support a version of the motivational thesis by relying on religious creeds as a source of historical evidence. This simple source of evidence indicates that the cultural evolution of religious ideas is partly a function of the motivational attractive...

Research in cultural evolution has focused on the spread of intuitive or minimally counterintuitive beliefs. However, some very counterintuitive beliefs can also spread successfully, at least in some communities-scientific theories being the most prominent example. We suggest that argumentation could be an important factor in the spread of some very counterintuitive beliefs. A first experiment ...

Article history: Received 17 September 2009 Received in revised form 22 April 2010 Accepted 8 June 2010

Quality in its contemporary incarnation is commonly referred to as organizational excellence, enterprise excellence, business excellence, or performance excellence. While technology may serve as a key enabler of enterprise excellence, enterprise excellence itself is in large enabled by the human dimension both in terms of ideation and effort. The human dimension manifests in many ways, with peo...