TOWARDS BIOPOLITICS: A NATURALISTIC PERSPECTIVE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

Abstract

The humanities and social sciences, including political science, have largely ignored the expanding knowledge of a man as a biological being offered by evolutionary biology, neuroscience or evolutionary psychology, whereas applying this knowledge could help explain the origin and function of political behavior and institutions (ultimate, evolutionary explanation), as well as their physiological, individual underpinnings (proximate, biobehavioral explanation). The paper aims to demonstrate that some of the most important social and political institutions have developed in response to the fundamental problem of within-group cooperation; and to demarcate the research area for biopolitical science as a biologically informed study of politics.