Description: This book offers a radically new approach to historical interpretation and political theorizing. Demonstrating that human history and the history of life can be understood within a common evolutionary framework, it employs that framework to provide fresh insights into major historical events like the scientific revolution, the emergence of revolutionary ideology, and the development of constitutionalism. A variety of other topics such as the centrality of "inclusive fitness" in interpreting political behavior, the relationship of monogamy to constitutional government and the evolutionary trap of "phenocracy" (i.e., the unique human capacity to hijack evolution's adaptive program to serve personally satisfying but non-adaptive purposes) are also examined.
This book will be of great interest to students of evolutionary history and theory, world history, comparative history, culture and cultural evolution, political science and political theory, as well as the history of science and economics. Members of the general public will also find it accessible and fascinating.