The Reciprocal Modular Brain in Economics and Politics: Shaping the Rational and Moral Basis of Organization, Exchange, and Choice

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Summary: No, we're not totally selfish!
Review: Gerald Cory's The Reciprocal Modular Brain in Politics and Economics is a nice short book that is ahead of its time in relating the human brain to the social sciences. First of all he argues forcefully that whatever details of its methodology need to be ironed out, Paul MacLean's seminal theory of the Triune Brain (reptilian for habits, old mammalian for emotions, and new mammalian for reason) remains fresh and relevant for human social behavior. Then he proceeds to discuss how these different parts of the brain contribute to economic and political behavior. In particular he counters the bias that still prevails among academic economists in favor of self-interest by stating that self-interest and empathy (based on both reciprocity AND concern for others) are both important, and there is a constant tension and trade-off between the two.

This book is almost more a manifesto than it is a detailed academic argument. But at this stage of knowledge that is precisely what is needed: it lays out a fundamental set of ideas that need to be considered by academic social scientists really interested in the betterment of society. The general argument still needs to be fleshed out with details both at the biological/psychological end and at the economic/political end. But Cory provides a vitally important set of organizing principles that the people searching for the details can hang their hats on. For this reason I think it is must reading both for socially progressive economics and political scientists and for psychologists seeking to apply their work to bettering human institutions.

Daniel S. Levine -- Professor of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington -- [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: A Great Title, but does not Deliver the Goods
Review: I write as an economist who works in behavioral ecology in general, and on the analytical modeling and empirical testing of theories of reciprocity in particular. From my point of view, the book leaves much to be desired.

I do not have the expertise to comment on the author's neuroscientific arguments. Whatever their value, his applications to economics and the other social sciences are highly general and superficial, consisting of quoting some authorities from the past and interspersing one or two current references on a given topic. The link between neuroscience and behavioral ecology is pure hand-waving.

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Summary: New Look at the Triune Brain
Review: It was a pleasure to read Gerald Cory's pathbreaking new book The Reciprocal Modular Brain in Economics and Politics. This book represents a profoundly important synthesis of neuroscience, Paul Maclean's triune brain theory, psychology, sociology, and economic theory that revolves around Cory's central thesis that human beings are more than inherently selfish, bloodlessly rational, and price-driven consumers of material goods; yes, we humans are selfish, scarcity-obsessed products of millions of years of biological evolution and thousands of years of cultural evolution, but Cory convinces us that we are equally designed to love, cooperate, and share fairly with other members of our species. Cory has forever shattered the brittle and Procrustean notion that we human beings are nothing more than robotic pawns of our own self-interest- we are instead vibrant, dynamic, and not always perfectly predictable social beings and the social science and economic theory of the next millenium must confront that fact. As icing on the cake, the book is eloquently and engagingly written and will certainly be a major intellectual contribution in a number of domains of thought: evolutionary cognitive psychology, the neuroscience of triune brain theory, social psychology, and evolutionary-based economic theory.