The Science of Good and Evil is a book by Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members...

 on ethics and evolutionary psychology. The book was published in 2004 by Henry Holt and Company

Henry Holt and Company

Henry Holt and Company is an American book publishing company. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt...

 under the full title The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule.

Chapters

• Prologue: One Long Argument (read an excerpt)

Part 1: The Origins of Morality

1. Transcendent Morality: How Evolution Ennobles Ethics

   Argues that morality

   Morality

   Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

   
    can be transcendent in the sense that all humans share common feeling

   Feeling

   Feeling is the nominalization of the verb to feel. The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of...

   
   s and behaviors.

2. Why We Are Moral: The Evolutionary Origins of Morality

   Offers an explanation of morality in light of the history of human evolution

   Evolution

   Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

   
   .

3. Why We Are Immoral: War, Violence, and the Ignoble Savage Within

   Discusses the problem of evil

   Problem of evil

   In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...

   
    and argues against the idea of the noble savage

   Noble savage

   The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...

   
   .

4. Master of My Fate: Making Moral Choices in a Determined Universe

   Relates the problem of free will

   Free will

   "To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...

   
    to moral behavior and accountability.

Part 2: A Science of Provisional Ethics

5. Can We Be Good Without God?: Science, Religion, and Morality

   Discusses the idea that belief in God

   God

   God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

   
    is necessary for moral behavior.



6. How We Are Moral: Absolute, Relative, and Provisional Ethics

   Covers various ethical systems

   Ethics

   Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

   
    and their strengths and weaknesses.



7. How We Are Immoral: Right and Wrong and How to Tell the Difference

   Introduces principles by which specific actions can be judged.



8. Rise Above: Tolerance, Freedom, and the Prospects for Humanity

   Looks to the future as a time of greater liberty

   Liberty

   Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...

   
    and friendship for all of humankind.

Reviews

In discussing Shermer's approach to ethics, a review by Ian Mason in the National Post

National Post

The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...

said that he "makes a persuasive case for the Golden Rule as the foundation of morality" but "severely weakens his case by applying the 'scientific' label to all sorts of assertions and concepts that don't warrant it." Mason also said that "This stretching of the proper scope of scientific reasoning is symptomatic of Shermer's approach to systems he wishes to debunk."

In the College Quarterly, Howard Doughty wrote:

Shermer does not offer a very satisfactory definition of either good or evil. . . . He does, however, occasionally speak eloquently about the ways in which human beings are challenged by moral notions and have generated forceful moral codes . . . He fails, however, to locate morality in any kind of conceptual framework that would allow us to treat moral ideas as anything more than human judgments. There is nothing wrong with this, but such a view is inconsistent with the implication of the book's title, which at least suggests that good and evil are actual axiological categories that exist independent of human opinion.

Doughty concludes that the book is a "very good effort in the popularization of scientific exploration into an inherently contentious subject".

External links

• The Science of Good and Evil excerpt of the book on author's website