cooperation, Evolution, Sociology 

IN this short and stimulating book anthropologist Montagu seeks to explicate the Greek text that to be human is to be a social animal. His extended essay borders on the realm of "social biology." The importance of cooperation derives from even the earliest life which was collective in nature. Even the simplest biological organism must cooperate with its fellows to keep its species alive. Cells are necessarily social phenomena since they must band together and work in harmony if life is to be preserved. Most beasts roam together. Few range, solitary, haunted by a drive to make their own individual fortunes. The men who do, like tortured animals, are driven by the burr of a past without love. Citizens Kane, we must deduce, are unnatural creatures, working against the main drift of society. Montagu offers the results of studies of parent-less or unwanted children to show how the drive for personal rather than social welfare has its roots in lovelessness. Only by teaching to a new generation the importance of love in social relations can we keep our civilization from the abyss, Montagu concludes this odd, didactic piece. Somehow, perhaps by the force of his idealism, he overcomes the nagging quality that his suppositions and premises lead him to ignore any evidence to the contrary. This was an intriguing, if flawed adventure in theorizing about Man. 

Hardcopy. Fair condition.

301.1
Social Sciences > Social Sciences, Sociology, Anthropology > Sociology, Anthropology > Social Psychology and Communications

HM106 .M65
Social Sciences: Sociology: