Evolution and Individual Behavior : An Introduction to Human Sociobiology

Type: Book This book is an account of the nature and significance of human sociobiology. Assuming no prior knowledge, it explains the basic concepts of the subject in simple, accessible language, and illustrates them by numerous examples from the everyday experience of past and present times. Christopher Badcock argues that, properly understood, modern Darwinian insights into reproductive success, natural selection and social behaviour are wholly consistent with the idea and existence of free will, self-consciousness and sacrifice, and with individual and group morality. He reveals the surprising extent to which evolutionary theory can explain aspects not only of male-female relations and of the interaction between parents and children, but characteristically female behaviour in relation to fertility, abortion, concealed ovulation and menstrual synchronation. He also presents a challenging new theory of male homosexuality in the context of the wider question of masculinity and sexual conflict. Sociobiology is a controversial field and its practitioners have been accused of reducing human beings to packages of programmed genes. Christopher Badcocok shows by contrast, that it has much to offer students of human behaviour at every stage of cultural and individual development. 303pp. N.B. Some HIGHLIGHTING and annotation throughout. Reading crease to spine. Slant to book.…