News

VICE-CHANCELLOR'S NEW BOOK RECEIVES FAVOURABLE REVIEWS

Thursday 31 January 2008

Dr Terence Kealey's new book, Sex, Science & Profits: How people evolved to make money, was published on 17 January. It quickly received positive reviews from Richard Davenport-Hines in the Sunday Telegraph and Edward Chancellor in the Sunday Times (20 January). The Sunday Telegraph describes the book as "hugely ambitious, stupendously confident and unrelentingly provocative". According to the Sunday Times, Dr Kealey "has brilliantly extended his hero [Adam] Smith's argument [against state direction of the economy] to the world of science". William Leith in The Guardian (26 January) writes that "this is a fascinating book, whether you agree with it or not".

In the book, Terence Kealey shows that science is not a thing apart but rather, like trade and contract, embedded in human nature, having evolved on the evolutionary principles of natural and sexual selection. The book ranges across human history from neolithic times, through Ancient Egypt and the European explorers of the Renaissance, to the failure of the Soviet economy, to show how an understanding of biology and natural selection can radically transform our view of economics, business, technology and the economic history of our species.

Full publication details: Terence Kealey, Sex, Science & Profits: how people evolved to make money (London: William Heinemann, 2008). ISBN: 978-0-434-00824-7. The book is available at the University Bookshop.

Report by the Web Team