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Purpose – This chapter focuses on the role evolution has played in our development of politics and public policy and reviews the theoretical approaches and studies of the last decade that address biopolitics and evolution, such as the “gene-culture co-evolution theory.”

Design/methodology/approach – In this chapter some of these theoretical developments will be reviewed, including what has been called the “Synergism Hypothesis,” with particular emphasis on what is relevant for understanding the role of politics and public policy in the evolutionary process.

Findings – A new, multileveled paradigm has emerged in evolutionary biology during the past decade, one which emphasizes the role of cooperative phenomena in the evolution of complexity over time, including the evolution of socially organized species such as humankind. I refer to it as “Holistic Darwinism.”

Practical implications – This study develops an understanding of the complicated relationship between human biology and the role of evolution in shaping politics and public policy.

Originality/value – This study addresses several existing biopolitical concepts and presents new explanations and terminology for its understanding.

Aristotle's Politics provides an example of what a biopolitical science might look like. Three key elements stand out: (1) an account of political structure as a multilevel society including kin and non-kin relationships; (2) an account of the human species that includes comparison with other social species that are capable of coordinated action; and (3) an emphasis on the human capacity to understand and communicate moral rules. Over the last 50 years, a number of research programs in evolutionary anthropology have provided the basis for a biopolitical science that maps onto the elements above. Schultz, Opie, and Atkinson describe the trajectory of human evolution from solitary to a pair bonded, familial species. Michael Tomasello's two-step account of the evolution of human cooperation shows how the ancestral humans went from merely gregarious to genuinely political animals. Christopher Boehm shows how the human capacity for moral emotions and decision making by consensus developed. Richard Wrangham provides evidence that the suppression of reactive aggression by ancestral human societies resulted in a self-domesticated species, a process that enhanced the human capacity for cooperation and communication. Bernard Chapais argued that the emergence of pair bonding among ancestral humans laid the foundation for both consanguineal and affinal kinship structures. That these bodies of research hold together can best be seen when they are viewed in light of Aristotle's biopolitical science.

Essays a conceptural clarification and theory of the process of economic evolution. Using the Veblenian matrix, conceptualizes the economic process in the framework of culture and its evolution. Economic evolution, as a gestalt, comprises the processes of both economic growth (quantitative statics) and development (qualitative dynamics). The dynamics of culture evolution is founded on the advance of technology which constitutes the “core of culture”. The essence of the process of culture evolution is contained in the dichotomy of useful knowledge. The advance of useful knowledge appears in its application as technology and in its store as culture. The process of economic evolution increases the capacity of culture and thereby enables humankind to take bigger and bigger bites of the infinity of knowledge. Culture evolution, fed by the dynamics of the economic process, offers the potential for an enhanced “consciousness of the cosmos” and as such a conception of human progress.

The Mediterranean Diet (MD) is an expression of different Mediterranean food cultures and lifestyles. It is characterized by high consumption of olive oil, vegetables, legumes, whole grain products, fruits and nuts. This paper aims to emphasize on the evolution of human diet from earliest human ancestors to current civilization, the effect of MD on human health and the role of globalization to shift traditional diet, particularly MD to processed foods.

Different published papers were collected from the internet by using the following phrases: evolution of human diet, human ancestors, the effect of globalization on a regional diet, Mediterranean diet, healthy food, food pyramid, evolution of human diet and effect of globalization on diet. Finally, the papers were read and summarized as a review paper.

MD has been accepted worldwide owing to its health impact such as prevention and control of type 2 diabetes, anti-inflammatory effects and decrease in the risk of cardiovascular diseases and incidence of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. However, in conjunction with this discordance between our ancient, genetically determined biology and the nutritional, cultural and activity patterns of contemporary Western populations, many of the so-called diseases of civilization have emerged. Particularly, the food staples and food-processing procedures introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial periods have fundamentally altered nutritional characteristics of ancestral hominin diets. MD is currently under the risk of extinction for a result of the effects of globalization.

The review paper focuses on the evolution of human diet as an effect of globalization on the regional diet with emphasis on the MD. It specifically focuses on the link between diet and earliest human ancestors, about MD and its health benefit, diet pyramid and effect of globalization on regional diet.

This paper aims to determine the status of the socialist market economy through a logical analysis of the evolution of economic systems in human society.

This paper presents an analysis of uncertainty and the functions performed by different economic systems in managing and resolving it, thereby explaining the evolutionary rationale behind economic system evolution.

Firstly, the socialist market economy empowers the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation, which serves as the foundation for activating individuals' motivation to engage in economic activities. Secondly, the socialist market economy adheres to the basic socialist economic system, which is the basis for the socialist market economy to stabilize the economy and society or to address the risk of economic uncertainty that may trigger macro-level inconsistencies in economic operations. Thirdly, the advantages of a socialist market economy in adapting to economic uncertainties do not arise spontaneously and must be exerted through continuous improvement of the socialist market economy.

The innovation of this paper lies in introducing uncertainty to clarify the logic behind the evolution of economic systems in human society and explaining the typical significance of the socialist market economy and its advantages in accommodating and resolving uncertainty.

A multidimensional understanding of human nature based on biology can provide a very useful framework of analysis and bring some understanding and coherence to the very fragmented perspectives within moral, political, and legal philosophy. A useful four-part framework of analysis can be based on the evolution of the brain as described by Paul MacLean (1973, 1990) and Sir John Eccles (1989). A similar pattern of development of our mental and moral capacities through experience in childhood was also described by Jean Piaget (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) and Lawrence Kohlberg (1981). This multidimensional understanding of human nature considers the individual, social, rational, and metaphysical perspectives. Because this four-part multidimensional understanding of human nature is based on a naturalized epistemology related to the development of our mental capacities in both evolution and through experience, this pattern can be seen across a wide variety of disciplines. Medical ethics, US constitutional democracy, and legal philosophy will be used as examples of the usefulness of this multidimensional understanding of human nature.

The paper aims to enrich current debate about human–technology dichotomy in socio-economic settings by decoding and systematizing the main phases through which it has been approached in managerial and social studies.

A multi-interpretative framework is built thanks to the adoption of a qualitative approach inspired by the inductive logic, and for analyzing the historical evolution of the approach to human–technology dichotomy and for explaining them through an innovative conceptual model.

An innovative conceptual model is proposed for depicting connections and evolutions among the main four phases in the evolution of the approaches to human–technology dichotomy.

Reflections and conceptual model herein can support researchers in rereading the multiple theoretical and practical contributions provided with reference to human and technology relations in socio-economic settings.

The paper can support managers and entrepreneurs in defining and evaluating managerial approaches for efficiently enhancing human–technology interaction.

The paper proposes an innovative conceptual model based on a multi-interpretative framework for decoding the historical evolution of the approaches to human–technology dichotomy in business settings. New variables are added to the current debate about the topic for building an original interpretive viewpoint.

The synthesis of cybernetics and general systems theory makes it possible to formulate the concept of cybernetic evolution, considered as the higher stage of an anti‐entropic evolution universe. In this broad framework, it is possible to draw epistemological conclusions and implications. These concern the essence of cognition and knowledge, and directedness and the main stages of epistemic evolution, as well as classes and forms of cognitive mechanisms and processes. The three stages of cognition, the biological, the sociological or societal, and the technological, are discussed.