ABSTRACT
Historians of science have identified a list of radical scientific theories that have profoundly altered the manner by which we view the world (cf. Sulloway, 1996, for a survey of these). Four revolutionary thinkers who are ubiquitous on any such list are Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and Darwin. Going against the prevailing theological orthodoxy, Copernicus demonstrated that the earth was not at the center of the universe. Newton developed his formulae of celestial mechanics, which could among other things, explain the orbital path of the moon around the earth. Einstein proposed a framework that challenged the manner in which we intuitively view the world. Through his theory of special relativity, he showed that both time elapsed and the length of an object are relative metrics (i.e., they are not invariant properties). Finally, Darwin’s theories of natural and sexual selection explain the process that gives rise to the unimaginable biological diversity found in both the fauna and flora kingdoms. Each of the latter four theories has served as a building block within its field, be it in astrophysics, mechanics, theoretical physics, or biology. The success with which the natural sciences have been able to identify and develop such overarching frameworks has alas been lacking in the social sciences. One
of the key contentions of this book is to demonstrate how Darwinian theory, specifically evolutionary psychology, can be used to unify the disparate frameworks within the field of consumer behavior.
