Human Nature and the Limits of Science

About this book

John Dupr warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. Not just in the academic world but in everyday life we find one set of experts who seek to explain the ends at which humans aim in terms of evolutionary theory while the other set uses economic models to give rules of how we act to achieve those ends. Dupr demonstrates that these theorists explanations do not work and that if taken seriously their theories tend to have dangerous social and political consequences. For these reasons it is important to resist scientism: an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do for us. Dupr restores sanity to the study of human nature by pointing the way to a proper understanding of humans in the societies that are our natural and necessary environments. Anyone interested in science and human life will enjoy this book--unless they are its targets.