Paradoxical Primate - Imprint Academic

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Human beings have an evolved but highly adaptable nature. This book sets out to establish a new framework for understanding human nature, from an evolutionary perspective but drawing on existing social sciences. It seeks to explain how human beings can appear to be so malleable in their nature, yet have an inherited set of behavioural instincts. When the founder of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson, made a plea for greater integration of the physical and human sciences in his book Consilience, there was an underlying assumption that the traffic would be mainly one way -- from physical to human science. This book reverses this assumption and draws on a new branch of human sciences, paradoxical systems theory, to reconceptualise some of the most innovative developments from physical sciences -- the related fields of evolutionary psychology, ethology, and behavioural genetics. The new approach is also applied to politics, economic and public policy approaches.
Source: Public

"Talbot's ambition is admirable. He wants to free the study of government from narrowing models of behaviour, especially dessicated 'rational choice' theory promoted by economics; it's not much use, becuase it has no room for the complexities of organisational life. We need a framework that can simultaneously encompass individualism and concern for collective wellbeing -- an impeccable third way ambition, one might observe."

Source: Metapsychology

"Talbot's project in The Paradoxical Primate is admirable and worthy of attention."

Credit: Caspar J.M. Hewitt

"Talbot has taken on a difficult task in pulling together so many different threads in such a short book and as such The Paradoxical Primate is an entertaining and thought-provoking read. Talbot's background in management and policy makes for a refreshingly different take on the subject of human nature ... I hope that The Paradoxical Primate will achieve Talbot's stated aim of stimulating debate on how to bring together the insights of different disciplines on the subject of what it is to be human."
Paperback
- Publication Date: 29 November 2004
- ISBN-13: 9780907845850
- Extent: Main content page count : 96
- Code: 907845851
- Dimensions: 13.5 x 21 x 0.8 cm
- Weight: 200 grams
- List Price: £8.95
- ONIX Version 2.1, Version 3

Details

Title: Paradoxical Primate
Author: Colin Talbot
Collection: Societas
Language: English
Publisher: Imprint Academic
Imprint: Societas

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