ABSTRACT
The previous five chapters of this book have traced out a complex perspective on human nature. In arriving at the final statements of chapter five which claimed simultaneously that individual reasoning may be irrational and that rationality itself may be frequently alienating, the reader has been requested to consider the findings of research from a variety of fields, from biochemistry to the philosophy of human nature. This may at times have appeared to be an unnecessary task, or at least one which could have been simplified, with much technical detail omitted. After all, it may be claimed, it would be possible to argue for an adaptive stance on human nature without having first to consider the neurophysiological genesis of the brain. This, surely, can be left to biologists and medical scientists? Well, if that was all I set out to do, to present a theory of human nature based upon natural selection, then such claims could be held to be reasonable. But, although this is clearly one of the aims of this current book – to offer a contribution to current work in the social sciences seeking to discover and unfold the presence of Darwinian phenomena in the social world – there is an additional task towards which this book is directed. This second focus is concerned with uncertainty.
