From Reith Lectures, 1998.
What can we say about the origins of war? Little that will not cause conflict between scholars. Students of the origins of war broadly divide into those who look for evidence of it embedded in human nature, and those who seek it among the external or contingent influences which act upon human nature. The naturalists, as the first group is known, divide further and with marked hostility. A minority of them insist that man is naturally violent, as many animal species are. The majority, by contrast, regard violence as an aberrant, unnatural activity to be found only in flawed individuals or as a response to particular sorts of provocation or stimulation and, therefore, avoidable if such triggers can be identified and palliated or eliminated.
The strength of feeling on the subject among the naturalist majority is exemplified by what has become their loyalty test: the Seville Statement of May 1986, modelled on UNESCO’s statement on race and now adopted by the American Anthropological Association as its official position. The statement contains five articles, each prefaced by the words ‘it is scientifically incorrect’.
Thus if one subscribes to the Seville Statement, it is scientifically incorrect to believe that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors, or to believe that war or any other violent behaviour is genetically programmed into human nature. It also asserts that it is scientifically incorrect to believe that in the course of human evolution, there has been a selection for aggressive behaviour more than for other kinds of behaviour; that humans have a violent brain or, finally, to believe that war is caused by instinct or any other single motivation.
There is much to be admired about the Seville Statement since it seeks to liberate the human race from the deadening conviction that war is its natural lot. Unfortunately, there is little that is scientific about it. Science has thus far quite failed to substantiate any of its five articles, some of which are not scientific propositions at all.
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