Life History Evolution A Biological Meta-Theory for the Social Sciences [Hardcover]

The social sciences share a mission to shed light on human nature and society. However, there is no widely accepted meta-theory; no foundation from which variables can be linked, causally sequenced, or ultimately explained. This book advances life history evolution as the missing meta-theory for the social sciences. Originally a biological theory for the variation between species, research on life history evolution now encompasses psychological and sociological variation within the human species that has long been the stock and trade of social scientific study. The eighteen chapters of this book review six disciplines, eighteen authors, and eighty-two volumes published between 1734 and 2015re-reading the texts in the light of life history evolution.

1. Life History Theory:  An Overview in Abstract

Part I: Huntington, Crosby, and Baker

2. Ellsworth Huntingtons Victorian Climatic Writings

3. Alfred W. Crosby: Adapting within a Matrix of Flora and Fauna

4. The Historical Geography of Alan R. H. Baker: Scratching Out a Living after the Neolithic Revolution

Part II: Price, Malthus, and Landers

5. Richard Price: The Schedules of Mortality

6. Thomas Robert Malthus, Stratification, and Subjugation: Closing the Commons and Opening the Factory

7. Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death: John Maxwell Landers Four Horseman Spurring Humans Faster Along the Life History Continuum

Part III: Toynbee, McNeill, and Casey

8. Arnold Joseph Toynbee: The Role of Life History in Civilization Cycling

9. William H. MclS™