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War and Human Nature and Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2006

Larry Arnhart
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University

Extract

War and Human Nature. By Stephen Peter Rosen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 211p. $29.95.

Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. By Bradley A. Thayer. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. 425p. $40.00.

Any general theory of politics assumes a theory of human nature. A small but growing number of political scientists have been applying a Darwinian theory of human biological nature to various topics in political science. The final aim of such work would be to turn political science into a biopolitical science. These two books contribute to that end by showing how research in human biology and Darwinian theory can illuminate the study of international relations.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Copyright
© 2006 American Political Science Association

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