For over a generation, Robin Fox has illuminated human behavior and social theory with a steady flow of original and insightful writing. This collection of his essays is particularly welcome now that reflective ideological hostility to evolutionary approaches in the social sciences has begun to wane. Such thoughtful and enriching insights as Fox’s probing analyses of why bureaucracies fail and national enmities flourish will enrich all those willing to integrate perspectives from cultural anthropology and philosophy to neuroscience and behavioral ecology.”—Roger D. Masters, Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government, Dartmouth College “A new book by Robin Fox is always an intellectual treat, and Conjectures and Confrontations, which is written with his usual verve, wide learning, wit, and theoretical sophistication, is no exception. In the current postmodernist Zeitgeist, this book is especially welcome for its vigorous, but balanced, defense of reason, science, and the Western Enlightenment tradition.”—Melford E. Spiro, professor emeritus of anthropology, University of California, San Diego “This book of essays offers a fascinating perspective on Robin Fox himself, for the author shares with us some of the intellectual roots which helped to shape him as a truly biocultural persona—an anthropologist who anticipated, and helped to develop, today’s robust merger of biology and the behavioral sciences. The topical essays are, as always, polished and insightful; there is the literary flair and breadth of a Levi-Strauss, yet, refreshingly, the responsibility of a scientist who is true to his facts and careful about them. Some gems in this collection include a discussion of the perils of bureaucracy—delivered not to fellow academicians but to federal bureaucrats in Washington—and a valiant attempt to make some sense of the enduring debate about moral universals. Robin Fox is not afraid of controversy; he provides an insightful assessment of the Politically Correct Culture which pervades contemporary university communities, and suggests that the fashionable field of sociobiology is, in ways, rather theoretically constricted. This work helps to sum up what has been, so far, an extraordinary intellectual career.”—Christopher Boehm, director, the Jane Goodall Research Center, University of Southern California
