The Paradoxical Primate (Societas) Book

Human beings have an evolved but highly adaptable nature. This book sets out to establish a new framework for understanding human nature, from an evolutionary perspective but drawing on existing social sciences. It seeks to explain how human beings can appear to be so malleable in their nature, yet have an inherited set of behavioural instincts. When the founder of sociobiolgy, E. O. Wilson, made a plea for greater integration of the physical and human sciences in his book Consilience, there was an underlying assumption that the traffic would be mainly one way -- from physical to human science. This book reverses this assumption and draws on a new branch of human sciences, paradoxical systems theory, to reconceptualise some of the most innovative developments from physical sciences -- the related fields of evolutionary psychology, ethology, and behavioural genetics. The new approach is also applied to politics, economic and public policy approaches. Dr Colin Talbot is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Nottingham where he is Director of the Nottingham Policy Centre. He has worked as an advisor to UK and others governments and published over 50 articles and book chapters and has two other books appearing shortly.Read More