Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 2001, Vol 46(5), 512-514. Review of Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson (see record 1999-02538-000). Maps of Meaning is a lengthy and ambitious interdisciplinary work, and most of its five chapters have numerous subsections. Peterson is primarily attempting to understand why people do evil things. As a clinical psychologist, some of his interest is purely psychological; that is, "Why, as an empirical psychological fact, do some people act in an evil way?" However, Peterson also touches on various related philosophical, religious, and ethical questions. The combination of both empirical and philosophical elements is what makes this book unique, valuable, and interesting. Peterson begins with a crucial distinction between viewing the world as a "forum for action" or as a "place of things." Perhaps most important is Peterson's analysis of how human beings respond to novelty. Citing, for example, Luria (1980) and Vinogradova (1975), Peterson attempts to give an account of "the role of novelty in emotion and thought" (p. 21). In Chapter 2 Peterson uses the ancient Mesopotamian creation myth of the Enuma elish to illustrate the psychological function of giving order to chaos and bringing us from the unknown to the known. Mythologies can therefore be viewed as reflecting some of the ways that we organize and represent the world as a forum for action. Peterson also goes so far as proposing that each of the hemispheres in our brains is neurophysiologically "hardwired" differently to deal with the unknown. Overall, the second half of the book has a much more religious and philosophical flavor. For example, there is much discussion of good, evil, and death, often in the context of various religious traditions.