(1994). Charles Darwin, Paul MacLean, and the lost origins of “the moral sense”: Some implications for general evolution theory. World Futures: Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 187-196.

This paper presented during the Physis: Inhabiting the Earth conference, Florence, Italy, October 28?31,1986 examines how new brain research, by radically expanding our knowledge of the physiological foundation for empirical social science, makes possible a new understanding of the nature of higher mind and the place of the human being in evolution. It reports research supporting a model of right, left and frontal brain interaction in forecasting. It also describes development of measures and methods indicating a primarily frontal brain guidance (...) system for higher mind consisting of futures, systems, social, moral, and managerial sensitivities. Driving and shaping this guidance system, and thereby human cultural evolution, appears to be the function of our dialectical construction of the Image of the Future. (shrink)

Illustrates how the theory of evolution can be expanded into a source of social guidance.

(1995). Prediction in chaotic social, economic, and political conditions: The conflict between traditional chaos theory and the psychology of prediction, and some implications for general evolution theory. World Futures: Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 15-31.

(1997). Scientific foundations for a global ethic at a time of evolutionary crisis. World Futures: Vol. 49, The Dialatic of Evolution: Essays in Honor of David Loye, pp. 3-17.

The authors discuss the idea that sexual inequality may be a key to the world problematique. New findings from the social sciences, history, and prehistory are presented indicating a correlation between social violence and male?dominated culture.

Among scientists today a matter that many had assumed was long laid to rest is moving from the background to the foreground in the minds of the broad-gauged and the discerning. It is that what we call evolution theory requires a massive updating, integrating, and streamlining if it is to meet the needs of the 21st century. On one hand here is a planet with threats to the survival of ourselves and all species everywhere on the rise. On the other (...) hand are the sciences, to which we look for answers on how to meet the threats, in disarray. Evolution theory, for example, supposedly provides the grounding for all science. Yet behind an outdated and dangerously constricted assumption of unity, instead of any useful cohesion it offers a bewilderingly disparate and unfocused sprawl. How then are we to move toward the evolutionary gestalt or framework needed to pull together science into some new intelligibility? But of more immediate urgency, how are we to build an evolution theory that can provide the practical guidance-or road map to the future-to our species at a time of exponentially escalating confusion and need? (shrink)

During the 20th century two major ventures were launched to advance Darwinian evolution theory. Both involved historic visions and were vital steps for science and society, but then something happened on the way to the millennium. By mid-century the first venture had become a virtual scientific monopoly governed by the biology of the neoDarwinian paradigm. The second venture then set out in the 1980s to remedy the inadequacies of the neoDarwinian paradigm by widening the prospects for evolution theory. But overwhelmed (...) by the underlying mismatch between scientific abstraction and evolutionary reality the first venture established, it soon settled into a fierce attempt to further expand the territory for the neoDarwinian monopoly into what became a militant ideology for sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. This special issue of World Futures contains the papers of a small "task force" of the General Evolution Research Group that set out in the summer of 2000 to try to put behind us what increasingly looms as the "old" paradigm, as well as the "old" story, of evolution. (shrink)

If we take a careful look at what happened to our species scientifically and socially during the 20th century a rather unsettling fact quickly becomes apparent. It is that we are entering this awesome 21st century laden with immense challenges and the most serious kind of questions bearing on the human future with a scientific theory of evolution based almost entirely on the study of the past and the prehuman and the subhuman. Is this really true? What about the books (...) one can think of that deal with human evolution and the future? But how many of these books have become part of the established or mainstream paradigm for evolution theory? By this I mean what is generally taught in schools and generally thought of-even by most scientists-as evolution theory. After a moment's thought, I believe anyone sensitized to the problem I am getting at will conclude I am not over-stating the case: that for the whole of science today supposedly bearing on evolution an emphasis on the human and the future still remains a mere fraction of a whole in which the central tendency is as I have stated it. This is the crux of the crisis in the evolution of our species and the crisis in the development of evolution theory that lies behind the Toronto papers. Here, we look at the 15 foundations and 12 guidelines these papers identify for building the fully human theory of evolution needed to end or resolve this closely interwoven pair of crises. (shrink)

Increasingly gaining the attention of evolution theorists and other scientists is the new quantum?vacuum?interactive, or QVI?field theory of Ervin Laszlo. Among other prospective advancements, this theory would add a fifth primary field to the four already identified by physics to account for the existence of the universe and our lives within it. As the physics and other matters involved make this new theory difficult for those other than physicists to understand, this account is written to provide a guide for the (...) generalist and lay person. (shrink)

This article probes the evolutionary origins ofmoral capacities and moral agency. From thisit develops a theory of the guidancesystem of higher mind (GSHM). The GSHM is ageneral model of intelligence whereby moralfunctioning is integrated with cognitive,affective, and conative functioning, resultingin a flow of information between eight brainlevels functioning as an evaluative unitbetween stimulus and response.The foundation of this view of morality and ofcaring behavior is Charles Darwin's theory,largely ignored until recently, of thegrounding of morality in sexual instincts whichlater expand into (...) parental love. Also, PaulMacLean made these same connections in hisdevelopment of the triune brain theory, whichwas founded on observations of both sexual andaffectionate responses from stimulation oflimbic and paleocortical areas (that is, notthe most primitive areas) of monkey brains. This article relates the revolutionary areas ofDarwin and of MacLean together for the firsttime in an way intended to be accessible to arange of social and natural scientists. TheGSHM builds on and expands both of their workto develop a theory of the processing withinour brains of information screened by asequence of systems, social, future, moral,developmental, and managerial ``sensitivities.''Darwin's and MacLean's observations and theGSHM theory developed here argue against theold strict distinction between ``lower''emotional processes and ``higher'' rationalprocesses. In fact, MacLean, Karl Pribram, andothers have found that emotional responses areclosely tied to reason through the functions ofthe prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal function isclosely related to the development of moralsensibility and judgment. In particular, it isthe connections between prefrontal cortex andother brain areas that allow us to makedeliberate choices to be or not to be caring. These same connections allow us to learnculturally sensitive signals for when torelease or inhibit our cooperative oraggressive tendencies (both of which can beelicited by sexual displays in monkeys as wellas humans). These are closely tied to thesocial instinct in animals, and to thesocialization that children receive from theirparents (whom the clinical psychologist AlanSchore has described as providing a ``substituteprefrontal cortex'' for their very youngchildren). Higher levels of the GSHM modelsuch capabilities as thinking beyond thecurrent social situation to ``what could be'' anddialectical synthesis of apparent opposites,which are what allow humans the freedom todesign social realities to fit our moralsensibilities. (shrink)

Within the past century there were two major ventures to advance the building of a scientific theory of evolution. The first was the building of the neoDarwinian paradigm during the early part of the century. The second was the sociobiological paradigm late in the century. Both made important contributions to science, but at the same time both shared the same monumental blind side. Claiming the Darwinian heritage exclusively for themselves, they rigorously excluded everything that both in Darwin earlier and throughout (...) the 20th century in the whole of science-particularly among creative evolution theorists across the full spectrum of science, that is in many fields linked together by a meeting ground in systems science-sought to expand evolution theory to capture the heights as well as the depths embraced by the actuality of humanity, as our species' potential, and of nature. (shrink)

(1991). Evolutionary Systems and Society, Vilmos Csányi, Professor of Ethology and Behavior Genetics, Lorand Eotvos University, Budapest, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989. 304 pp. $49.50 (cloth). World Futures: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 191-206.