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£83.99

Naturalizing History

A Biocultural Theory of Human Progress
Stephen H. Balch

£83.99

A new evolutionary framework for understanding our past. This book offers a radical approach to history and political theory, revealing fresh insights into the scientific revolution, revolutionary ideology, and the rise of constitutional government.

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…
£83.99
£83.99
1-0364-6709-0 , , , ,
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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.

Stephen H. Balch holds a PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, USA and taught for twelve years at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, USA. He was the founding president of the National Association of Science and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization at Texas Tech University, USA. He has authored a variety of articles and essays on the application of evolutionary theory to history and social science in such publications as Society, The Journal of Social and Biological Structures, and Politics and the Life Sciences. He co-edited with Benjamin Power: “Economic and Political Change after Crisis: Prospects for Government, Liberty and the Rule of Law” (2016). In 2007, he received the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony.

Hardback

  • ISBN: 1-0364-6709-0
  • ISBN13: 978-1-0364-6709-8
  • Date of Publication: 2026-04-29

Subject Codes:

  • BIC: PSAJ, HBA, JPA
  • BISAC: HIS016000, HIS037000, HIS054000, POL010000, POL009000, POL042000
  • THEMA: PSAJ, NHA, JPA
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  • "A work of biohistory that goes beyond merely applying established biological principles to the social sciences. This is truly a work of synthesis that introduces several creative new concepts describing the novel insights revealed by a systematic examination of the interpenetration of human history and evolutionary science."
    - Aurelio José Figueredo, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona, USA
  • "[The author’s] biocultural interpretation of history integrates the history of life and the history of humanity into a universal evolutionary history of all life. It is an exhilarating display of expansive multidisciplinary scholarship that weaves insights from the life sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities into a dazzling intellectual tapestry that will forever change the way you think about life."
    - Larry Arnhart, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, USA

Meet The Author

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