罗伯特·赖特

罗伯特·赖特（英语：Robert Wright，1957年1月15日—）是一位美国记者和作家，现为哥伦比亚大学纽约协和神学院访问教授。

代表作

《道德的动物——我们为什么如此》（The Moral Animalk）

《非零和博弈——人类命运的逻辑》（Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny）

Robert Wright (born January 15, 1957) is an American author and journalist known for his wide-ranging interests in philosophy, society, science (especially evolutionary psychology), history, politics, international relations, and religion. He has published five books: Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information (1988), The Moral Animal (1994), Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (1999), The Evolution of God (2009), and Why Buddhism is True (2017). Wright has taught at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania; more recently, in 2019 he was Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

In addition to teaching, lecturing, books, and journalism, Wright has been an innovator in the development of content on the Internet. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads.tv, the founder and editor-in-chief of Meaningoflife.tv, the founder and chief correspondent of the Nonzero Newsletter and Nonzero Podcast, and the creator of the Nonzero Foundation.

Early life and education

Wright was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, into a Southern Baptist family and attended public secondary schools in San Francisco, California, and San Antonio, Texas. A self-described "Army brat", Wright attended Texas Christian University for a year in the late 1970s, before transferring to Princeton University, where he studied sociobiology, a precursor to evolutionary psychology. His teachers at Princeton included author John McPhee, whose style influenced Wright's first book, Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information.

Career

Journalism

Wright was employed as Senior Editor at The Sciences and The New Republic, and as an editor at The Wilson Quarterly. As a contributing editor at The New Republic, he co-authored the "TRB" column. He has also worked at Time, and Slate, and has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He has occasionally contributed to The New York Times, putting in a stint as guest columnist in April 2007 and in 2010 acting as a contributor to The Opinionator, a web-only opinion page. Wright assumed the title of senior editor of The Atlantic on January 1, 2012. In February 2015 the magazine's author page describes him as "a former senior editor at The Atlantic."

University teaching and research

In early 2000s, Wright taught occasionally at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, leading a graduate seminar called "Religion and Human Nature" and teaching an undergraduate course called "The Evolution of Religion." At Princeton, Wright was a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow and co-taught a graduate seminar with Peter Singer on the biological basis of moral intuition. In 2014, Wright taught a six-week Coursera MOOC on "Buddhism and Modern Psychology". In 2019, Wright was a Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York. Also in 2019, Wright was a Senior Fellow at the think tank New America.

Meaningoflife.tv

In 2002, Wright ventured into video-on-Internet with his MeaningofLife.tv website, developed by Greg Dingle, where he interviewed a range of thinkers on their ideas about science, philosophy, meditation, spirituality, and other topics. Meaningoflife.tv is sponsored by Slate magazine, and made possible through funding by the Templeton Foundation. Other hosts include John Horgan, Daniel Kaufman, Nikita Petrov, and Aryeh Cohen-Wade.

Bloggingheads.tv

On November 1, 2005, Wright, blogger Mickey Kaus, and Greg Dingle launched Bloggingheads.tv, a current-events diavlog. Bloggingheads diavlogs are conducted via webcam, and can be viewed online or downloaded either as WMV or MP4 video files or as MP3 sound files. New diavlogs are posted approximately 5-10 times a week and are archived. While many diavlogs feature Wright, other hosts at Bloggingheads.tv include Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Bill Scher, Matt Lewis, Kat Rosenfield, Phoebe Maltz-Bovy, and Aryeh Cohen-Wade.