Professor examines the complex evolution of human morality

(PhysOrg.com) -- Although the question of what makes humans different from other animals doesn't have a single obvious answer, one seemingly conspicuous human trait is morality. Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871, singled out "the moral sense or conscience" as by far the most important difference between humans and other animals. Darwin`s argument was, of course, strongly based on the concepts of biological evolution and natural selection. Now, upon further investigating the origins of morality, Francisco Ayala, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, has proposed a Darwin-inspired explanation of how human morality might have evolved.

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