''The Moral Animal'' is a 1994 book by journalist
Robert Wright, in which the author explores many aspects of everyday life through
evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...
.
Summary
Wright explores many aspects of everyday life through evolutionary biology. He provides Darwinian explanations for human behavior and psychology, social dynamics and structures, as well as people's relationships with lovers, friends, and family.
Wright borrows extensively from
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's better-known publications, including ''
On the Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'' (1859), but also from his chronicles and personal writings, illustrating behavioral principles with Darwin's own biographical examples.
Reception
''The Moral Animal'' was a national bestseller and has been published in 12 languages; ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'' chose it as one of its eleven Best Books of 1994. The linguist Steven Pinker praised ''The Moral Animal'' as a "fiercely intelligent, beautifully written and engrossingly original book" but "found his
right'slarger ethical arguments problematic." Neurologist
Amy Wax
Amy Laura Wax (born January 19, 1953) is an American lawyer, neurologist, and academic. She is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy, as we ...
wrote: "One measure of his
right'ssuccess is that most of the incoherences in the book can be traced to weaknesses in the body of work he seeks to present, and not in Wright's exposition." The paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould sp ...
wrote that ''The Moral Animal'' presents "pure guesswork" as science, and that the book owes its impact to "good writing and egregiously simplistic argument."
Gould, Stephen Jay. "Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism," ''The New York Review of Books.'' June 26, 1997.
/ref>
See also
* Evolutionary ethics
Evolutionary ethics is a field of inquiry that explores how evolutionary theory might bear on our understanding of ethics or morality. The range of issues investigated by evolutionary ethics is quite broad. Supporters of evolutionary ethics have ...
* Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolv ...
* John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
* Kin selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like Altruism in animals, altruistic behavio ...
* Reciprocal altruism
In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar m ...
* Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...
* Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
* ''The Naked Ape
''The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal'' is a 1967 book by English zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris that looks at humans as a species and compares them to other animals. '' The Human Zoo'', a follow-up book by Morris th ...
''
References
Bibliographical information
*
External links
''Booknotes'' interview with Wright on ''Moral Animal'', January 8, 1995.
1994 non-fiction books
Books by Robert Wright (journalist)
English-language books
Evolutionary biology literature
Moral psychology books
Vintage Books books
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