Bending the Rules: The Flexibility of Absolutes in Modern Life
Publisher: Oxford University Press | ISBN: 0199218986 | PDF | 279 pages | 2.61 MB

In Bending the Rules Robert Hinde does not follow the much-trodden path of philosophizing about what is right and just. Instead, he uses an approach grounded in the behavioral sciences to explore the nature of morality, what people actually do, what they believe to be right, and what values they hold, and how these positions came to be. Such a deeper understanding of morality, he argues, as a product of biological and cultural evolution, and changing with social environment, holds out hope that we can avoid disaster and steer society towards peace and equity in the twenty-first century.

Robert A. Hinde is Emeritus Professor of Ethology at the University of Cambridge, and former Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. He is Chair of the British Pugwash Group (an organization set up in the 1950s to urge for greater social responsibility in science), President of the Movement for the Abolition of War, Fellow of the Royal Society, Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, Honorary Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His academic career spans ethology, primatology, and developmental and social psychology, and his most recent books include War No More (2003, with Joseph Rotblat); Why good is good (2002); and Why Gods Persist: A Scientific Approach to Religion (1999).