The Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK) was incorporated in 1969 as a 501c(3) charitable educational organization dedicated to cross-cultural understanding and to bringing important research on human nature to the general public.

Today humanity faces unprecedented challenges. How can we apply advances in science and technology to ensure health and safety for all the world’s people? Can we learn to tolerate and appreciate cultural diversity in an ever-shrinking global community? Can we learn to manage the planet’s dwindling vital resources and basic life-support systems before it’s too late?

Many worthy organizations address these issues in the political, cultural, and humanitarian spheres, but ISHK focuses on the root cause — our very nature as human beings.

What do we know about the way our brains work, about the way we receive and process information from our environment, about how our mental and nervous systems evolved, which create these crises in the first place? What other capacities might be inherent in our nature to help us rise above our narrow-minded reactions, to choose the most appropriate mindset for a given situation? How can we develop these new capacities in ourselves and in our children?

ISHK takes a multi-disciplinary approach to these important questions, highlighting contributions from contemporary psychology, education, anthropology, medicine, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and ecology — as well as from traditional systems of knowledge and learning with ancient roots.

Over a 50-year history, in collaboration with leading thinkers and scholars in their fields, ISHK publishing and education programs have connected with thousands of professionals and the public at large, contributing to important shifts in public attitudes and policies.