In Search of Human Nature

Mary E. Clark041528659X, 9780415286596, 9780203987131

What are the roots of human nature and what is wrong with the scientific picture of what and who we are? Was Thomas Hobbes right to say that human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?” In this new work, biologist Mary Clark argues that the Western view of human nature is built around a highly atomistic and ideological framework that encourages us to think about the world and ourselves in the wrong way.
Beginning with some of the problems that emerge from building “laws” of human nature upon “laws” of physics, Mary Clark tackles an astonishing array of problems: what role genes play in the development of the brain, how we generated the concepts of mind and meaning we accept today and what is wrong with them, to the way we think about the formation of individual and group identity, conflict resolution and the environment. Throughout the book, she critically scrutinises many widely-held views, whether it is what Darwin actually said about adaptive fitness and survival, received models of human nature such as man the “warrior” or “hunter”, or whether it is right to think of emotions as an unfortunate legacy of our evolutionary heritage. Arguing for a more expansive view of science and human nature, she makes a strong case for the role of culture in constructing what and who we are without falling into the trap of relativism.