Paradoxical Primate (Paperback)

This book seeks to explain how human beings can appear to be so malleable, yet have an inherited set of behavioural instincts. When the founder of sociobiolgy, 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 re-conceptualise some of the most innovative developments from evolutionary psychology, ethology and behavioural genetics. The approach is also applied to politics, economics and public policy. The author is Professor of Public Policy at Nottingham University.