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In his own words, Herbert Gintis’s latest book is “an analysis of human nature and a tribute to its wonders” (3). More prosaically, it is a collection of essays, some of which are original and others published elsewhere. Instead of being structured around topics in decision and game theory, like his previous book (2009), this book develops interrelated themes, such as the evolutionary origins of moral sense, its central role in political games, and the socially entangled nature of human rationality and individuality. Some chapters develop Gintis’s vision of the unified behavioral sciences by model-building demonstrations; others do so by reflecting on history and methodology. The demonstrative part of the book models the evolution of human socio-political systems, power relations in markets, altruism, voter turnout, and Walrasian dynamics—drawing on decision theory, game theory, evolutionary theory, and complexity theory. This part offers readers familiar with formal apparatus an excellent overview of the Gintis’s recent contributions to the field. The reflective part discusses the nature of rational actor models, provides an intellectual history of sociology and economics, and advocates the unification of the behavioral sciences. This part gives readers interested in history and philosophy of the behavioral sciences an insightful first-hand account by one of the leading figures in the field. In this review, I focus on Gintis’s advocacy of interdisciplinarity, mostly commenting on the reflective part of the book. I also include a meta-review—a review of three reviews of the book, written by other scientists. Regarding the demonstrative part, I strongly recommend the readers to carefully study it themselves, because that is the only way to really appreciate the original insights of the formal work. (And if they are too busy to read all of it, they should at least read Chapters 3 and 9.)

erasmus journal for philosophy and economics

Review of Herbert Gintis’s Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 357 pp.