full text for paper (28 pages):

Pinker’s Better Angels and Dwyer & Micale’s Darker Angels

web page for paper:

In 2011 Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature was published. The intervening years have seen robust debate relating to Pinker’s thesis of declining violence. The debate has centred around a number of major issues. Now, in 2021, many of these issues have been addressed in Dwyer and Micale’s The Darker Angels of Our Nature; Refuting the Pinker Theory of History & Violence. These same issues are also addressed in my own work which is characterised by a Values, World Society and Modelling (VWSM) approach.

1 Steven Pinker’s book sets an exciting agenda

2 A decline in war death rates?

3 Worldwide violence … World Wars I and II

4 Complexity

5 Progress … the trajectory of value

6 Age, gender and ethnicity

7 Environment

8 Reason and emotion

9 Enlightenment

10 History

11 Debating different approaches

12 Academic disciplines … idea systems … religions … gods … debate

13 ‘Grand History’ and The Future

14 The four books

Chapter extracts for Dwyer & Micale’s Darker Angels

1 Steven Pinker’s book sets an exciting agenda

2 Time series: social value, violence and population

3 Power trajectories: Western Dominance and Eastern Growth: chapter

… World War (paper)

4  Ukraine 2014: Ukraine: united or divided? West and East; living with others: chapter

… Scotland: ‘our values’? more varied and less distinctive

5 Value Trajectories: Wellbeing, Wealth, Health, Peace and the Environment

6 Rules in society: age, gender, ethnicity and religion

… The USA: violent culture, ethnic structure. PART 2 Events

… The abstract structure of public opinion: the racism protests 2020

7 as above: Value Trajectories: Wellbeing, Wealth, Health, Peace and the Environment

8 Mathematics, logic, artificial intelligence and ordinary language

… Individuals: Activities, Happiness and Other Values, Emotion, Personality

9 ‘Our values’: the enlightenment … the prophet

10 World history: the growth and distribution dynamics of power, truth, value chapter

… World history: progress and destruction, independence and incorporation: chapter

… Power trajectories: Western Dominance and Eastern Growth: chapter

… Cultural trajectories: languages, religions and political cultures

as above: Value Trajectories: Wellbeing, Wealth, Health, Peace and the Environment

… Knowledge Trajectories: Fermat’s Last Theorem and Modularity

11 Debating the mathematical science approach to international relations: chapter

13 Religion and mathematics

14 Conflict, Complexity and Mathematical Social Science. 2010. (CCMSS)

Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2014. (YB14)

Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2015. (YB15)

Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2017. (YB17)

…

Earlier debate:

Review of Pinker’s Better Angels (Larry Ray, 2013?)

Dark diagnostics and idealized modernities (Larry Ray, 2014?)

Pinker’s response to review in Sociology (2015)