Book Review

Evolution Science and Ethics in the Third Millennium is one of the most lucid academic texts on the subject of evolutionary morality to be published in the last decade. While the book does have some problematic aspects, discussed below, it nonetheless provides what is none other than a comprehensive and rational basis to substantiate the notion that evolutionary science can provide a foundation for the understanding of morality. Cliquet and Avramov take a wholly interdisciplinary approach, encroaching within and forming connections between philosophy, biology, anthropology, and sociology among others in their exploration of a rationalized and humanistic approach to moral universalism. They not only take a meta-ethical approach to the investigation of morality in evolutionary science; they provide a thorough speculative project on potential beneficial future pathways that thinkers and policymakers can employ in making decisions, which is something that is typically sidelined in a topic text such as this. The book is wholly organized not only in a logical fashion, exploring the origins of morality, the influence of evolutionary biology, and its implications for sociocultural structures and institutions—the clarity of thought with which the otherwise complex discourses that are implicated are presented is astounding. The text is nothing other than an unprecedented scholarly feat! As such, the book is chock-full of evidence, arguments, and narratives that are designed to not only be read by scholars and graduate students but the general public and policymakers as well. The holistic enterprise that the authors have embarked on is an approach that is hard to undertake and harder still to execute, both of which have been done with a style and prose that makes them seem effortless.