Evolution, social behavior, and ethics

Richard D. Alexander

pp. 307-338

in: Daniel Callahan, Tristram Engelhardt (eds), The roots of ethics, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

Nothing seems likely to influence analyses of the relationship between science and ethics as much as would a significant revision of our view of either science or ethics. Yet refinements of evolutionary theory within biology during the past twenty years seem to me to have provided a compelling new model of culture and human sociality which dramatically alters our interpretations of all human activities, including both science and ethics. This model has been developed elsewhere and the findings responsible for it described;¹ here I shall only summarize the attributes of the model, and the way in which it departs from earlier views, before discussing its apparent meaning for the current confrontation, or interaction, between science and ethics.