Author: O'Hear, Anthony.
Title: Beyond evolution. Human nature and the limits of evolutionary explanation.
Description: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999 (repr.); ix+220pp., index, bibliography, footnotes, 8vo, paper. As new. ¶ the author, a professor of philosophy, "takes a stand against the fashion for explaining human behaviour in terms of evolution. He maintains, controversially, that while the theory of evolution is successful in explaining the development of the natural world in general, it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and our rationality we take on goals and ideals which cannot be justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage. (...) [E]volutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins." This is more the traditional Human Pedestal-work and contra-sociobiology stand in the nature-nurture controversy than working out Darwin's revolutionary theory for human behaviour, but informative it is.

Keywords: evolutie, mens human nature sociobiologie