The editors present a collection of essays dealing with both the life and ideas of Charles Darwin as they relate to human sociobiology. They represent themes coming from evolutionary theory, cultural anthropology, political science, sociology, and psychology and psychiatry. Consistent with E. O. Wilson's Consilience, the compilation also reflects an interest in the humanities and thus offers materials exploring the possibility of a broad synthesis of knowledge relating to human nature.
Beyond the theory and evidence offered in these disciplines is the promise of finding explanations for, and solutions to, current human differences and problems.
About the Author: JOHAN M. G. van der DENNEN, born in Eindhoven (the Netherlands) in 1944, studied behavioral sciences at the University of Groningen, and is at present a researcher at the Section Political Science of the Department of Legal Theory, formerly the Polemological (Peace Institute), University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has published extensively on all aspects of human and animal aggression, sexual violence, neuro- and psychopathology of human violence, political violence, theories of war causation, macroquantitative research on contemporary wars, ethnocentrism, and the politics of peace and war in preindustrial societies. In 1995 he published his dissertation, The Origin of War: The Evolution of a Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy, an evolutionary analysis of the origin of intergroup violence in humans and animals. He is Secretary of the European Sociobiological Society (ESS).
DAVID SMILLIE was trained as a developmental psychologist and taught at New College, University of South Florida for 25 years./e Since retiring, he has been working as a Visiting Professor in Zoology at Duke University. His articles and book chapters have appeared widely in scholarly publications.
DANIEL R. WILSON is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati and Medical Director for Public Psychiatry. He has published widely in both general and evolutionary psychiatry.
