Darwin’s lost theory of love

Back in the year 2000, I interviewed psychologist, evolution theorist, and systems scientist David Loye about his book Darwin’s Lost Theory Of Love: A Healing Vision For The New Century. The interview appeared in Magical Blend magazine. I recently came across it, and decided that it deserved more attention than it had received. David Loye published the book via iUniverse.com. I don’t know whether it is still available. I hope so.

Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love

During his research into evolutionary theory and scientific foundations of morality, David Loye found that whereas in The Origin Of Species, natural selection theorist Charles Darwin did focus on pre-human evolution, in The Descent Of Man, he concluded that morality and conscience are “by far the most important” elements in human evolution. In Descent, Darwin says he “perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or survival of the fittest.” Yet this crucial information was neglected by scientists over the past 100 years who chose instead to focus only on Darwin’s theory of evolution, which did not include God or religion as a prime motivator beyond natural selection. Two reasons this material has been overlooked for so long, says Loye, is, first the dominating effect of the prevailing paradigm, and second, that Darwin was seeing at a level not reached by scientists until the last part of the 20th century.

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