''The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution'' is a book by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

Richard Wrangham Richard Walter Wrangham (born 1948) is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking. ...

.Wrangham R., ''The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution'', Pantheon, 2019. Wrangham argues that humans have

domesticated Domestication is a multi-generational mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a steady supply of reso ...

themselves by a process of self-selection similar to the selective breeding of foxes described by Dmitry Belyayev, a theory first proposed by

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He has be ...

in the early 1800s.

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

disagreed, as have most evolutionary biologists since. According to

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and biological anthropology, anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as wikt:hominization, hominization, throug ...

John D. Hawks John Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He also maintains a paleoanthropology blog. Contrary to the common view that cultural evolution has made human biological evolution insignificant, Hawks belie ...

, Wrangham follows scholars including Kenneth A. Dodge in dividing human

aggression Aggression is behavior aimed at opposing or attacking something or someone. Though often done with the intent to cause harm, some might channel it into creative and practical outlets. It may occur either reactively or without provocation. In h ...

into two types. The first type, "reactive aggression", is when individuals attack in response to provocation. The second type, "proactive aggression", is planned, premeditated, and involves deliberate tactical strikes. To explain his idea, Wrangham invited readers to imagine a commercial airline flight. Other primates crowded into such a space would react by, in Hawks' words, "ripping one another limb from limb". Humans do not because they have a comparatively very low tendency to reactive aggression. Proactive aggression, by contrast, is so highly developed in humans that we must put elaborate security measures in place to prevent others from carrying out plans to bring the plane down. Wrangham offers a new perspective on a topic that has been investigated notably by

Konrad Lorenz Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (Austrian ; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoology, zoologist, ethology, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von ...

and

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and set ...

,Fromm E., (1973) ''The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness'' whose research is briefly acknowledged.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodness Paradox Books about violence 2019 non-fiction books English-language non-fiction books Books about men Evolutionary biology literature Biology books Human evolution books Profile Books books

See also

References