| The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Howard Bloom |
| Subject(s) | Sociology, Evolution |
| Publisher | Atlantic Monthly Press |
| Publication date | January 1995 |
| Pages | 466 |
| ISBN | 9780871135322 |
The Lucifer Principle is a book by Howard Bloom. It sees a social group, not an individual, as a main subject of human evolution. It "explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture" and argues that "evil is a by-product of nature's strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric".[1] It sees selection (i.e. through violent competition) as central to the creation of the 'superorganism'[2] of society and the inevitable 'pecking orders' and hierarchies inherent in human social groups, and proposes group selection as main factor of human societal and cultural development.
The book proposes as the mechanism for human cultural development the selection of specific psychological traits in a given population to support the culture it develops, as well as some universal traits supportive of the humans' nature as a social animal, necessary for the formation and maintenance of social groups instinctively formed by humans, and of cultures developed by these societies, through propagation and replication of memes. It also sees ever enlarging human societies with their specific cultures compete throughout history in violent competition and war. It claims the selection processes manifesting themselves as Evil from an individual's point of view.
Reviews of the book[3] saw it as 'ambitious' and 'disturbing' in its conclusions that societies based on individual freedom might succumb to systems such as communism or Islamic fundamentalism.[4][5] The Washington Post said that "Readers will be mesmerized by the mirror Bloom holds to the human condition... He draws on a dozen years of research into a jungle of scholarly fields...and meticulously supports every bit of information...." while Chet Raymo in the Boston Globe termed it "a string of rhetorical firecrackers that challenge our many forms of self-righteousness."
Bloom later wrote[6] that he and his publisher had been threatened by Islamic groups who objected to aspects of the book. He claimed that "Arab pressure groups asked ever so politely that The Lucifer Principle be withdrawn from print and that nothing that I write be published again. They offered to boycott my publisher's products — all of them — worldwide. And they backed their warning with a call for my punishment in seventeen Islamic countries." Bloom states that the Attorney for the Authors Guild wrote to his publishers, warning of an author boycott if the book was pulled from the shelves. The publishers asked Bloom to rewrite a chapter on Islamic violence, which led to the creation of 358 lines of footnotes attesting to the facts he presented within it.[6]