Scientific foundations for a global ethic at a time of evolutionary crisis

This paper reports the results of a ten year search for consensus among scientific findings on the nature of the origin and development of moral sensitivity and morality. Fields surveyed include psychology, sociology, political science, economics, history, and gender and feminist studies in social science; physics and biology in natural science; and brain research, old and new evolutionary studies and theory, including chaos, self‐organizing, and other nonlinear theories in systems science. An agreement on six underlying factors was found. Based on these “foundations,” a new theory of moral transformation and a new global ethic are proposed.

Keywords:

• biological evolution
• brain research
• cosmic evolution
• cultural evolution
• dominator morality
• evolutionary theory
• freedom and equality
• gender relations
• global ethic
• love
• moral sensitivity
• morality
• partnership morality
• systems science
• the “two worlds,”
• values.