Life History Evolution: A Biological Meta-Theory for the Social Sciences

by Steven C. Hertler, Aurelio Josï Figueredo, Mateo Peïaherrera-Aguirre, Heitor B. F. Fernandes, Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Overview

The social sciences share a mission to shed light on human nature and society. However, there is no widely accepted meta-theory; no foundation from which variables can be linked, causally sequenced, or ultimately explained. This book advances “life history evolution” as the missing meta-theory for the social sciences. Originally a biological theory for the variation between species, research on life history evolution now encompasses psychological and sociological variation within the human species that has long been the sk and trade of social scientific study. The eighteen chapters of this book review six disciplines, eighteen authors, and eighty-two volumes published between 1734 and 2015—re-reading the texts in the light of life history evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319901244
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	07/04/2018
Edition description:	1st ed. 2018
Pages:	417
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steven C. Hertler is a licensed examining psychologist and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the College of Saint Elizabeth, USA.

Aurelio José Figueredo is Professor of Psychology, Family Studies and Human Development, and serves as Director of the Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Laboratory within the Graduate Program in Cognition and Neural Systems at the University of Arizona, USA.

Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre is a PhD student in the Cognitive and Neural Systems Program, and a researcher in the Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Laboratory at the University of Arizona, USA.

Heitor B. F. Fernandes is a PhD student at the University of Arizona, USA, where he functions as part of the Anxiety Research Group, and the Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Lab.

Michael A. Woodley of Menie is Fellow with the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

Table of Contents

1. Life History Theory: An Overview in Abstract

Part I: Huntington, Crosby, and Baker

2. Ellsworth Huntington’s Victorian Climatic Writings
3. Alfred W. Crosby: Adapting within a Matrix of Flora and Fauna
4. The Historical Geography of Alan R. H. Baker: Scratching Out a Living after the Neolithic Revolution

Part II: Price, Malthus, and Landers

5. Richard Price: The Schedules of Mortality
6. Thomas Robert Malthus, Stratification, and Subjugation: Closing the Commons and Opening the Factory
7. Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death: John Maxwell Landers’ Four Horseman Spurring Humans Faster Along the Life History Continuum

Part III: Toynbee, McNeill, and Casey

8. Arnold Joseph Toynbee: The Role of Life History in Civilization Cycling
9. William H. McNeill: Epidemiological and Biogeographical Perspectives on Civilization
10. James Casey: Extrapolating from Early Modern Iberia

Part IV: Murdock, Keeley, and Harris

11. George Peter Murdock: Stemming the Tide of Sterility with an Atlas of World Cultures
12. Lawrence H. Keeley: Pre-State Societies in the Hobbesian Trap
13. Marvin Harris: Ecological Anthropology and Cultural Materialism

Part V: Montesquieu, Mann, and Goldthorpe

14. The Baron de Montesquieu: Towards a Geography of Political Culture
15. Michael Mann and Societal Aggregation: From Tribe, to Fief, to City-State, to Nation, to Empire
16. John Harry Goldthorpe: Weighing the Biological Ballast Informing Class Structure and Class Mobility

Part VI: Cattell, Bowlby, and Bronfenbrenner

17. Raymond B. Cattell: Bequeathing a Dual Inheritance to Life History Theory
18. Edward John Mostyn Bowlby: Reframing Parental Investment and Offspring Attachment
19. Uri Bronfenbrenner: Towards an Evolutionary Ecological Systems Theory