ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the approach based on evolutionary theory, implies that the relevance of biology for understanding the development of human social behaviour and action is far wider and more fundamental than is generally accepted in psychology. A kind of reason for misconceptions in psychology about the value of a biological approach has to do with failure to understand the scope of biology itself as a science. The social environment of the developing human being is more intrusive, all-embracing and complex than that of any other primate. The hypothetico-deductive approach, concerned with the strong meaning of 'function', studies the implications of natural selection for social behaviour. In behavioural biology knowledge about the ecology of a species is of fundamental importance for understanding both the functions and the causation of social behaviour. In ethology and sociobiology the perspective on an animal's relations with its environment is fundamentally an ecological one.
