Of all intellectual activities, none provoke more interest than the discoveries of science. Humans love to imagine, fantasize and compose, but the deepest craving is to know, and know for certain. So, in the modern era science has captured the authority of unimpeachable knowledge, which lends its discoveries a fascination above all others. For instance, humans are curious about life on other worlds and today many stories abound about visits from alien beings, captured spaceships, and so on. People even claim to have met aliens. Yet fascinating as such encounters would be if true, they cannot fire the imagination in the manner a genuine discovery of science, even if science only verified something as limited as the existence of a single cell of once-living matter from another world.

Still, despite other claims, science has not yet confirmed the existence of any recognizable life elsewhere in the universe, so this remains perhaps the greatest discovery of science unrealized. Yet, as humanity enters the Third Millennium science is nevertheless closing in on solutions to two other great mysteries of our existence, which at one time seemed impenetrable to the sober strictures of scientific analysis. So, what are these?

The first riddle concerns the evolution of the universe itself.

All through history, humans have wondered about the universe. Where did it come from? What existed in the beginning? What will happen to the universe in the end? There have been many attempts to answer these questions by myth or religion. But without detracting from these they cannot satisfy curiosity about the universe in a scientific sense. If anything, the evolution of the universe was traditionally once such a colossal scientific conundrum that science itself could not make any start on unraveling it.

Then in 1925 Einstein applied his newly developed theories of general relativity to the structure of the universe. To his amazement the equations showed that the universe was expanding. Einstein at first refused to believe his results. But in 1931 the great astronomer Edwin Hubbell experimentally confirmed that the universe was expanding. Moreover, Hubbell could extrapolate the rate of expansion to a time when all the stars and matter of the universe were concentrated at a single point; effectively the 'beginning' of the universe. From that felicitous marriage of theory and observation the once improbable science of cosmology was born.

Since then cosmology has made enormous progress. Scientists now recognize that the universe began in cataclysmic explosion of space-time know as the 'Big Bang', some fifteen billion years ago. The equations that describe this explosion yield general characteristics of any universe such as its geometrical structure, density, temperature over time, the composition of matter within it, and its rate of expansion. But also intriguing is that while the equations describe any universe, details of how a universe evolves will vary, depending on physical constants like the gravitational constant, or proton-electron mass ratio set at the initial moment of expansion. This leads to something curious. Although mathematically there exist many models of how the universe might evolve there is only one way it could do so - the way that allows for us! A tenable model of the universe must allow fifteen billion years after the Big Bang, on a planet circling a Type II Star that there arise a race of carbon-based life forms intelligent enough to question why the universe evolved the way it did. This is exciting because since Copernicus science has been steadily dethroning man's importance in the universe. Now we might have a role to play after all, as bearers of cosmic witness to which model of the universe evolved. Maybe the mystics and radical philosophers are right. There is a deep connection between the existence of mind on Earth and the very existence of the remainder of the universe.

Yet, although understanding the origins of the universe in scientific terms is exciting intellectually some scientists believe that it is not the greatest challenge we face. Instead, they contend that interesting as the evolution of the universe might be there is a more perilous challenge facing humanity on Earth. It is understanding the evolution of man himself, and why people behave the way they do. If there are two great mysteries today that science is seeking answers for, the evolution of the universe is one, but understanding humanity is the second great scientific endeavor of our age.

As with trying to understand the universe, all through history humans have also tried to understand what people are. First, there were myths and legends. Then came religion. Myth and religion helped explain the ethical nature of man, but it never formed a systematic study, so this first came from philosophy. Philosophy made major contributions to the study of humanity, but especially the theory of the mind. This book will examine how certain problems of mind can only be solved by an organized method of reasoning rather than empirical science. But having said that the great drawback of all earlier philosophy was the that philosophers did not have any scientific understanding of how humans evolved; how they got to be here, how they came to have large brains, or walk upright, and so on. Some philosophers made clever guesses, but philosophers are not researchers of the empirical (experimental) world. If science cannot explain how a thing comes to be, that area of philosophy is reduced to mere conjecture.

Then in 1859 Charles Darwin published his great Theory of Evolution, explaining how living creatures evolved on Earth. Since then there has been exceptional progress on human evolution. Initially, there was skepticism about humans evolving from lower life forms because of a so-called "missing link" between apes and humans, and other gaps in the factual record. Only today the genetic lineage of not only humans but the entire anthropoid taxa, which includes, humans, pre-humans, chimpanzees and apes, but not monkeys, has been worked out in much detail. There has been discovered not one but many "missing links" in the anthropoid record, and we can note an approximate sequence here.

Roughly, there were several phases to human evolution related to major changes in the ecology of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, where the human species first emerged. The first change occurred about 5 million years (myrs) ago though it had been coming for many years. Millions of years earlier the area of the rift valley had been a continuous belt of forestry, but by 5 myrs ago the forests had shrunk to a mosaic of woodland and grassland. With increased population pressure only some primates could stay in the remaining forest. So common ancestors to chimps and humans split into forest dwellers, which would evolve into modern chimps, and a new species of bipedal walking chimp called Ramidus, the first "missing link". Ramidus did not last long or migrate far but 4.5 myrs ago was replaced by a newer species, Australopithecus (southern ape) which left many fossil varieties and spread over large tracts of middle Africa.

Then 2.5 million years ago, global temperatures plunged, and the Rift Valley became drier again. So the Australopithecus species itself now split-up and a new species evolved, Homo habilis (handy man), more human than ape-like, who began using tools. Then about 1.5 million years ago another species evolved, Homo erectus (upright man) who displaced Homo habilis and remaining Australopithecus subspecies, and also migrated from Africa to Asia to become the famous Peking Man, with first evidence of use of fire. Finally, about 500,000 years ago the boiling pot of Africa produced its last anthropoid variation. This was Homo sapiens (wise man) who eventually migrated all over Earth, displacing Homo erectus (and some contemporary subspecies such as the famed Neanderthal man) to become, about 35,000 years ago, modern man. So, in the general sequence of evolution human ancestors walked upright before they developed a large brain. And although ape-like ancestors walked upright over 4-5 million years ago, modern Homo sapiens, with a highly evolved brain only emerged in the last few hundred thousand years.

Yet, detailed unraveling how humans evolved is not the real dispute. The real issue, the second great theory, is not the precise mechanics of how humans evolved but how evolution makes humans what they are today. It is like when the average person wants to know about the universe. It often not a technical issue such as how the stars evolve, but a fundamental one such as how the universe started and how will it end. So when people ask about humanity it is mostly not a detail such as whether humans evolved in Africa or Asia, but a fundamental question such as why do humans have religions, or where do morals come from, or why do humans fight wars.

But can science answer such questions?

Well, three quarters of a century ago science could not begin to explain the origin of the universe, but since then it has made immeasurable progress. And what topic could be more intellectually challenging than that? Even so, applying Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain human behavior has encountered ensconced difficulties, more than any theory of the universe ever faced, so we need to be clear what the problem are.

One difficulty of human behavior is the puzzle of altruism (Italian - concern for others). Darwin's Theory teaches ruthless selfishness in a struggle for survival between individuals, and there is plenty of that among humans. But human behavior is also replete with acts of welfare, charity, concern for others and even self-sacrifice in war, so where did this come from? For decades Darwinists were stumped. Then, in the 1960's a new theory arose in biology called genetic-kinship, which could explain everything. The Darwinian struggle between individuals, it seemed, was only an affect of a deeper rivalry, between the true transmitters of heritable characteristics, the genes. Thus, while an individual had 100% of his own genes, his children and siblings each shared 50% of his gene stock, his first nephews and grandchildren 25% and so on. So there would be calculable cases of genetic advantage for self sacrifice, such as saving five siblings for a net gain of 50% after 100% self sacrifice, and so on. But if the explanation was interesting it was also hard to prove. If a bird in a flock spots a hawk and gives an alarm call is it warning its siblings to save them, or trying to scatter the flock in confusion to save itself? Even biologists were divided about this.

Then came a breakthrough. The reader might be aware of the strange breeding habits of many ant and bee colonies, such that there is queen, and sterile workers. These insects breed by a system known as haplodiploidy, in which fertilized eggs produce only females, while unfertilized eggs produce males. The result is that sisters have a closer genetic relationship, near 75%, than do mothers to daughters of only 50%. When many experiments were applied to such colonies, results proved that it was the survival strategies of the genes, not individuals, which determined the insect behaviors. This was an amazing discovery. It did for genetic theory what the discovery of a residue 3⁰ K background radiation from the original explosion did for the Big Bang theory of cosmology. A result had been predicted and experimental observations had confirmed the theory correct. Once the new genetic-kinship theory had been confirmed moreover, a range of genetically determined social behaviors were discovered among wild species, from slavery in ant colonies, which Darwin mentioned, to prostitution in humming birds and rape among mallard ducks. So, if genes explained social behaviors among others species might genes not also explain incorrigible behaviors in the human species as well? Many scientists felt that the perils of unchecked human behavior were sufficient to warrant investigation, or any knowledge gleaned from a deeper synthesis of natural human motives was worth the effort invested.

Although the ideas had existed since the 1930s two books published in the 1970s brought the scientific, but also the social controversies of the new theories to the public. One was Sociobiology; The New Synthesis by distinguished Harvard biologist E O Wilson, plus his later book On Human Nature. The other milestone book was The Selfish Gene, by famed Cambridge biologist Richard Dawkins, mentioned in the introduction. Both books were published more than a quarter-of-a-century ago and since then both authors have modified their views, plus the debate moved on. But while the books were a milestone at the time and much has been learned since, the grand synthesis of human nature begun by these ideas never bore fruition. If anything, everyone including the two original authors is now more cautious about how much evolutionary theory can explain about human behavior at all. So, what went wrong?

Well, several things did, and we need to understand carefully the original failures, before we can progress to understanding our new theory.

The first difficulty for anyone trying to biologically code human behavior is that the enterprise has a tainted reputation, both scientifically and politically. Anyone not aware of the sensitivities of this issue will quickly learn that debates over whether human behavior is determined by nurture (upbringing) or nature (biology) have raged since antiquity. The term 'nature-nurture debate' comes from Shakespeare's line in The Tempest, but the debate began with Aristotle (384-322 BC), who stated the Nature view in order to defend slavery. The counter views of Nurture also began in antiquity, but were more forcefully stated during the European enlightenment by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679, see opening quote). Since Darwin's time, a pejoratively defined view known as Social Darwinism has become associated with extreme Right wing, racist outlooks. During the 1930s and 40s these views became affiliated with Nazism; politics of the racial state, and the hideous nazi extermination programs. Proponents of the newer theories tried to distance themselves from these older ideas. But impolitic enthusiasm by advocates, including Wilson, for programs to enhance the genetic fitness of the species by cloning or eugenics rekindled bitter memories.

The next major issue was that within the practice of science psychology-based behavior theories were already ensconced, offering solutions to immediate behavioral problems ahead of unproved biological ideas. Plus there was an existing culture to this division of method. Prior to Darwin philosophers such as Hobbes had taught that humans came to the table with a roughly equal set of biological attributes so that it is only how people think which differentiates them. This concept is now so ensconced we hardly register it. Today, if we see people behaving oddly we attempt to understand what is happening inside their minds without considering what genes might be telling them from evolutionary influences long ago. This view is also more practical. When the debate began left-wing critics worried that the new theories would be used to justify so-called capitalist exploitation of workers. Yet, the practical thrust of behavioral theory in this period concerned personality management based on motivational psychology, not theories about genes. This practical concern was at all levels. Parents wanted from science advice on raising children in a competitive world, not to be told that child behavior is fixed by genes. Police or community leaders also needed advice on the culture of the people they had to deal with, not unproven theories about what genes may or may not do. Besides, other than mind-altering drugs or brain surgery not much can be done about genetic make-up apart from abuses like the Nazis practiced. Especially, genes that allegedly determined behaviors to that extent were never isolated, so little was known factually about what to deal with anyway.

These practical concerns over behavior led finally to the scientific issues. Only here too the new theories did not do so well. For example, it is certainly interesting that the genes of some ants cause them to embark on plundering slaver raids to procure slaves for the ants colony. Only what relevant conclusions might we draw from this about human behavior, if we observe no similar slaver genes in near kin species to humans such as great apes, or any mammalian species at all? Even for universal drives such as aggression one group of humans wiping out rivals like in war is not how evolution is supposed to work either. In evolution individuals compete more within a species as individuals than across species for the good of the group. In human society individuals who are warlike or murderous are as likely to perish prematurely and not procure offspring as would quiet a individual who raises a stable family unit. Plus there was a huge debate because one species of duck, the Mallard, engages in behavior that appears morally like rape. But because of the human female's concealed ovulation rape would be a problematic strategy for procuring offspring, even in the wild, where without a loyal partner a lone human female might not survive childbirth. While because the human female's ovulation is concealed the only way a human male could ensure fitness of his own paternity would be by ganging together with other males to kill any rapists. This again does not improve the fitness chances of the individual rapist. So, while nobody doubts scientifically the benefits of rape to the fitness of the male mallard it still does not explain the mechanics of rape or sexual violence in human society, even in those self-same biological terms.

The other scientific problem, which this book will say much about, concerns the total number of behaviors that can be transmitted this way. One controversy was that it became too easy imputing all manner of behaviors to genes. There are 50,000 genes for the entire human neurology, no more for a human than a chimp brain, yet humans have all these extra complex behaviors that a chimp does not. There is a simple explanation of this. Some 75-85% of the human brain is wired after birth by learning, whereas only 35-45 % of the chimp brain is (roughly). Except advocates of the new theories did not focus on the most likely explanation first, but tried to impute every possible human taste, preference and peccadillo to a gene, going to absurd lengths. If somebody did not like spinach there was a gene for that, or someone else preferred a different sexual position there was a gene for that. Dawkins recalls innocently suggesting how to test scientifically for a gene for tying shoelaces, and was surprised when the lecture hall erupted into pandemonium. So, once the theory reduced to a gene for everything it lost scientific credibility. The thesis was controversial already and with fresh doubts of common observation that genes exerted influence to that extent, these deeper scientific flaws were fatal.

Was then, the new synthesis of human behavior a failure?

In the sense of syntheses achieved in other areas of science there were clear difficulties. Atomic theory was able to unify physics and chemistry around the same principles. Understanding the behavior of micro-particles was able to unify all physics around the interactions of fundamental forces. In a similar manner, theories of population genetics should have led to a unity of behavioral and evolutionary theory, as it did in much of biology. However, theories that were sufficient for the biology were not able to move beyond the discipline to provide any unity to sociology or human behavior. And this was despite perplexingly, that humans are products of biology and a long evolutionary history. Neither did a synthesis occur despite that since the end of the Cold War calmer "ideological" times prevailed. Debates about equal opportunities, rights of ethnic minorities, women, and upward mobility now seem settled politically, regardless of anything science will likely further discover. Today the issue is virtually dead. Nobody, even among the original authors, is claiming that they have all the answers. So, why within existing theory was the new synthesis begun so boldly just not possible?

Despite disputes over ideology the inescapable problem was scientific. Calling a study sociobiology and popularizing the view that biology could explain not only individual behavior but also the natural social behavior of groups created great interest. But in the end most scientists conceded that those parts of sociobiology which were true explained nothing different from conventional evolutionary theory, and this had not been able to explain human social behavior all along. Even the "selfish" gene theory, despite that it was ideologically identified with sociobiology was sharply divergent with sociobiology over human development. Dawkins proposed instead that culturally evolving 'memes' took over from genes to explain human sociology, which could not be explained any other way. And although the 'memes' idea gained a limited, if avid following, Dawkins was to later distance himself from the concept as did the scientific mainstream. For all the talk of a new synthesis we only had conventional evolution theory explained in slightly bolder terms. And that, it was agreed from the start, could not explain the human complexity.

This is roughly where we stand today.

Science is making quiet progress, and we are learning why the theories first proposed cannot work. Also, while behavior genes are proving hard to isolate science is learning about the hereditary causes of disease, so genetic counseling is now part of modern medicine. But big debates, over whether behavior is determined by nature or nurture, or the biological basis of morality, have reached as little consensus at the end of the scientific century as they had at the beginning. Just that now everyone is more cautious about how much science can explain. Rebuttal of theories of evolutionary behavior has not stopped people writing books about it, only these now end on a sardonic note. After taking a whole book to explain that genes still do determine behavior, today an author will conclude by conceding that few of us are likely to believe it. The main point is true, few of us are going to believe it, but an unintentional point is also true, that human action ends in choice, including, ironically, choices over which things to believe or which theories of behavior to take seriously. So, until theories which tell us that genes determine behavior can explain how genes provide us free choices over which things to believe, we will always remain in these quandaries and debates.

Yet, why cannot evolution explain what humans are today? Despite all the disputes, humans are a product of biology, and an evolutionary past. While it is now accepted that not all human behavior can be attributed to genes, humans still retain indelible biological drives and attributes, formed by evolutionary fitness needs encoded in genes.

The chapters of this book will provide an explanation, plus a full account of how, arising from blind processes of evolution, we end up with creatures of morality, choice, and intelligence. But to arrive at the correct theory, the debate will be very broad ranging, covering the assumptions we make about evolution, the universe, cause-and-effect, science, knowledge, and of course, the assumptions we make about ourselves.

But before entering these broader debates we must begin with the issue which triggered the whole controversy; the role of genes in determining behavior. Only after explaining first how despite the claims genes cannot determine our behavior to the extent first proposed can we begin to question what role the genes actually do play, and how from human biology, does the full range of human complexity arise.