Home > Archive > Volume 45, No. 4 > This paper
Law and the Evolutionary Imperative
John C. Spencer
Published: 2005/06/01
Abstract
The author points to the evolutionary need for cooperation and social order in primate and human societies, viewed as an evolutionary imperative. and suggests that order exists in primate societies as a direct response to the selective pressures inherent in evolution, However, as human societies develop culture, social order comes to be preserved by increasingly complex systems of kinship, until the growing power of the state substitutes replaces simple mores and custom by laws. At this stage, however, the design of laws tend to become influenced by ethico-religious ideologies that pay little attention to evolutionary considerations
