192 S HORT L ITERATURE N OTICES
(remembered wellness) and Glaubensfactor (the
faith factor). The main thesis is that when man
appeals to faith, he activates neurological pathways for
dramatic self-healing. In a way Heilung durch Glauben
is a continuation of the study by Benson about The
Relaxation Response (1975). The main message is how
man can use his remembered wellness to influence
and cure 60 to 90 per cent of medical complaints. The
main goal is to make faith an integral part of modern
medicine.
The notion remembered wellness suggests that
man has an intense desire for wellness, and has an
ability to remember the calm and confidence asso-
ciated with health and happiness, but not just in an
emotionally or psychologically soothing way. This
memory is also physical. The author gives an overview
of research and studies on conditions to be affected by
belief.
Herbert Benson wrote an interesting, well-docu-
mented, popular medical book, not a philosophical
one. The sub-heading of the original English edition is:
The Power and Biology of Belief. The German version
of the subtitle is Die Beweise (the proof) and Selbst-
heilung in der Neuen Medizin (Self-Healing in New
Medicine). Timeless Healing still has not got a place
in the libraries of Dutch universities. The translation
into Dutch (1996) can be found in some Dutch public
libraries.
From a theological and critical point of view I
would like to indicate that Benson takes far less inter-
est in the fides quae, that is in: what one beliefs, but
rather in the fides qua: that and how one beliefs, and
that in a rather individualistic way. He is also not
always clear in his definitions of the notions belief,
faith and spirituality.
From a philosophical point of view I would like
to stress the nexus between medical knowledge and
religious experience in this book. The book articu-
lates a consciousness that healing cannot succeed with
the application of pharmaceuticals, surgery and proce-
dures alone. The supplement is not an anthropological
or a humanistic one, and has not been found in an
organistic, general system theory or holistic theory.
The supplement is rather a practical theological or
pastoral one. Benson makes faith not only an inte-
gral but also an integrating part of medicine. Therefore
Benson reminds us of the healing function of pastoral
care.
In the nineteenth century this pastoral care had
fallen into the position of a junior partner to many
other helping professions, like medicine. It borrowed
techniques from psychology, medicine, education, law
and social work (Cf: Clebsch, W.A. and C.R. Jeackle
(1964) Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective Harper
& Row: New York, Evanston, London). In modern
times the validity of pastoral care had become ques-
tionable. In postmodern times pastoral care should
become of more interest.
Heilung durch Glauben can be regarded as a valu-
able contribution to the rebirth of the healing function
of pastoral care. Therefore this book is not only inter-
esting for physicians with pastoral concerns but also
for theologicans who give pastoral care to patients.
Hans Meissner
Netherlands
Hurd, J.P. (ed.): 1996, Investigating the Biological
Foundations of Human Morality. Lewiston, The
Edwin Mellen Press. 249 pages. ISBN: 0-7734-8843-
X. Price: $89.95
Evolution as a historical process had been a necessary
condition for the existence of human beings in general
and especially for every cultural, philosophical and
even ethical reasoning. But not until Charles Robert
Darwin had published his On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection in 1859, and with that had
introduced evolution as a scientific concept in biology,
this phenomenon gained overwhelming attention not
only in biology but also in general scientific and social
thought. The present volume, edited by James P. Hurd,
contains a collection of twelve articles which reflect
the importance of the concept of biological evolution
in psychology, religion, philosophy and, in particular,
in ethics and moral reasoning.
William Irons examines Morality as an Evolved
Adaptation and holds the view that the evolution of
morality by individual selection is able to explain
all aspects of morality he reduces philosophical
ethics and moral reasoning to the principles of evolu-
tion, because the only criterion of normative rank is
survival. To give reasons for an action the philo-
sophically interested reader has to conclude has no
function in itself, if reasons only serve to guarantee
survival. Linda Mealey in her contribution Evolu-
tionary Psychology and the Search for Evolved Mental
Mechanisms Underlying Complex Human Behavior
is in search of brain-mechanisms, that are respon-
sible for taking moral decision as the centre of
this specific kind of decision-making Mealey wants to
give evidence for mechanisms in human psyche that
detect status or threat. We value people as food or
bad (and we will remember them as good or bad!)
because there are special brain functions that form our
moral judgements. This line of thought is continued
by Timothy J. Shaw and his considerations on the
 S HORT L ITERATURE N OTICES
Human Brain, Religion, and the Biology of Sin, in
which he wants to demonstrate, that on the basis of a
special capacity of the human brain there is a spiri-
tual side which enforces us to override selfish animal
behaviour conducted by lower parts of the brain. For
this spiritual side, he argues, it is difficult to provide
a sociobiological explanation of its evolution. The
Selection of Moral Behavior by its Consequences is
the topic of Carole J. Young in this volume. To act
morally and in her view that means to help others
or to perform altruistic behaviour is an evolu-
tionarily stable strategy under continuously changing
environmental conditions. Young furthermore wants
to reconcile the sociobiological approach of human
behaviour with behaviourism. The following chapter
of Garret E. Paul focuses attention on the reconnec-
tion of biology and ethics. In Taste, Natural Law, and
Biology: Connections and Separations Between Ethics
and Biology Garret wants to overcome the fact/value-
dichotomy by saying that value emerges in response to
fact and that it produces new facts itself. The origin
of this dichotomy derives from in the social situa-
tion of modern selves, who live sharply divided lives,
impaled on the split between external facts and internal
emotions. The key-concept, which is often thought
to be contributed to morality by the theory of evolu-
tion, is that of altruism. The various senses of this
phenomenon are distinguished by Gregg Johnson in
his text Inadequacies of Sociobiological Explanations
of Altruism. He argues that extended altruism is
the only morally relevant kind of altruism. Lucie R.
Johnson illuminates hidden normative implications in
psychoanalytical and evolutionary theories.
A series of contributions to the present volume
examines explicitly the various limits of evolution-
193
ary theory in explaining the specific ethical aspects
of moral behaviour. These articles are: Jeff Schloss
Sociobiological Explanations of Altruistic Ethics:
Necessary, Sufficient, or Irrelevant?, Elving Ander-
son/Bruce Reichenbach Implications of the Human
Genome Project for Views of Morality, Gary Simpson
Human Nature and Communicative Ethics, Alfred
Kracher Genetic Behaviour and Moral Choice,
James Fetzer Ethics and Evolution. The develop-
ment of the human brain is directed by genes, genes
have several effects on human behaviour but genes
cannot function as reasons for action. Therefore a
disposition to altruistic behaviour can certainly influ-
ence our behaviour, and even if it determines some
aspects of our behaviour, there is no reason to believe
that actions are good because of any biological kind
of disposition. Fitness has not the same meaning as
goodness, because if the former is a biological cate-
gory the latter is of practical origin and no reasonable
biologist would claim to explain concrete actions or to
reduce ethical theory to biological concepts. Biology,
and especially sociobiology, is only able to deter-
mine specific constraints of acting and reasoning (both
regarded as general capacities of human beings) with
scientific precision.
To investigate the biological foundations of human
morality provides only very rough means to under-
stand and to explain ethical aspects of human action
and moral reasoning. But the present volume enables
the reader to gain an insight into a multitude of inter-
connections between these two scientific professions.
Andreas Vieth
Germany