Title:	Life History Evolution
Authors:	Steven C. Hertler Aurelio José Figueredo Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre Heitor B. F. Fernandes Michael A. Woodley of Menie
Keywords:	Evolution
Issue Date:	2018
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	As defned by the Cambridge Dictionary, the social sciences are a federation of disciplines dedicated to the “study of the customs and culture of a society, or a particular part of this subject, such as history, politics, or economics.”1 Oxford Dictionaries2 identify the “scientifc study of human society and social relationships” as the unifying principle around which the social sciences are organized. Merriam Webster3 expands on this defnition without changing its substance: “A branch of science that deals with the institutions and functioning of human society and with the interpersonal relationships of individuals as members of society.” As can be seen in these and other defnitions, the social sciences are bound together under one banner by virtue of their shared mission to explain human nature and society. Equally important to note, the social sciences have unity of purpose even as they have no meta-theory; no foundation from which variables can be connected, causally sequenced, or ultimately explained. Many social scientists feel the absence of such a meta-theory. Take the celebrated sociologist Charles Murray, who, as previously described (Hertler 2017), intuited the biological unity underpinning the divisions of class about which he wrote in Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010. At one point, Murray explicitly predicted that “advances in evolutionary psychology are going to be conjoined with advances in genetic understanding, leading to a scientifc consensus…” This is actually part of a longer quote that Murray originally wrote as a contributor to Culture and Civilization: Volume 2: Beyond Positivism and Historicism. 4 In both works, Murray continues describing his intuition thus:
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/55287
ISBN:	978-3-319-90125-1
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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