Peter C. Reynolds is developing a new framework for understanding evolution, one that explores the relationship between cultural systems of classification and behavioral biology.

He received his Ph.D. degree in anthropology from Yale University, where he studied ethnoscientific methods under Harold C. Conklin, applying the concepts to the study of primate cognition. In the laboratory of Karl H. Pribram, M.D., at Stanford University, he studied cognition in rhesus moneys and analyzed their nonverbal action for grammatical structure. Subsequently, he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University Medical Center in neuropsychology.

As research fellow at Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, he co-founded one of the first film and video laboratories in anthropology. His field research took him to the rainforests of Malaysia, where he did video studies of one of the few remaining nomadic gathering and hunting societies on earth. In 1980 he received an H. F. Guggenheim Foundation grant to do video analysis of technical skills in four different cultures. His theoretical treatment of  human ethology,  On the Evolution of Human Behavior, was published by the University of California Press.

From the mid-1980’s through the 1990’s, he did participant observation in the computer industry in Silicon Valley, studying the symbolic organization of corporations. His book, Stealing Fire: The Atomic Bomb as Symbolic Body, presents the imagery and mythology of technocratic society.