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Politics and Biology

A Discussion of Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott's Man Is by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2013

Evan Charney*
Affiliation:
Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and Duke Institute for Genome Science and Policy, Duke University. E-mail: echar@duke.edu

Extract

Man Is by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics. Edited by Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 352p. $80.00 cloth, $27.50 paper.

Peter K. Hatemi and Rose McDermott's Man Is by Nature a Political Animal brings together some of the most important social scientists working at the intersection of political science, psychology, biology, and cognitive neuroscience. Given recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and given the proliferation of work in political science that draws on these advances, we have decided to invite a range of political scientists to comment on the promise and the limits of this line of inquiry. What can scientific developments in psychology, biology, and neuroscience tell us about “human nature”? Can these discourses reckon with the variation in time and space that has traditionally been at the heart of political science, perhaps even going back to the classic text from which Hatemi and McDermott derive their title, Aristotle's Politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Type
Review Symposium: Politics and Biology
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

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