ABSTRACT
Early in the 20th century, thinkers such as William James, John Dewy, and Sigmund Freud embraced Darwinism with enthusiasm. But for the past 75 years, a major activity of those involved in the study of human behavior has been “de-biologising” it. Neobehaviorism, social learning theory, cognitive theory, modern psychoanalysis, and more recently, a variety of postmodernist explanations, as well as politically liberal approaches to the amelioration of social problems, currently dominate the thinking of many academics. Most individuals taking these approaches see little value in ancestral history, human nature, or innate mental mechanisms in developing explanations for human behavior.
