Special thanks to Roy Barzilai for answering 5 questions about his recently featured book – The Testosterone Hypothesis: How Hormones Regulate the Life Cycles of Civilization

Roy Barzilai is an independent scholar, who studied both Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and Rivka Schechter’s philosophy of language, rooted in the Hebrew Bible. The synthesis of Rand’s Aristotelian philosophy, and the biblical creed of ethical monotheism provides profound insights into the ideas that shaped the Western mind. By exploring the intellectual history of Western civilization, Roy seeks to reach a greater understanding of the human mind. – From Roy’s Homepage

Roy’s Homepage: http://testosteronecivilization.com

#1 – What was the impetus for The Testosterone Hypothesis?

The motivation for The Testosterone Hypothesis was an interest to discover the forces that shape human history and the cycles of civilization.

#2 – How is testosterone influential in human history?

Testosterone is called a personality hormone because it has a defining role in shaping the male brain while the fetus is still in the womb and in later stages in life. It is related to other crucial hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin that shape our emotional responses and our drives. Hence its role in shaping human history should be uncovered if we wish to understand the psychological forces that drive us.

#3 – Your book calls for a multi-disciplinary understanding of history. What is this multidisciplinarity so important?

The reductionist approach, which studies each subject in isolation, has been the defining framework of science for centuries, and has been the leading form to scientific progress. However, our world is interconnected and in order to gain a better understanding of the human mind and experience we must expand our effort to integrate the different scientific disciplines in a single frame of non-contradictory ideas about the nature of the world and hence reach a whole new level of understanding.

#4 – Recently released, what has the response to the book been so far?

There has been some initial interest in the book, but its theory is revolutionary in its scope and it may take many decades before the academic establishment is ready to deal with these ideas seriously.

#5 – Are you working on any new books/projects you can tell us about?

After everything I learned from the research for this book I am very interested in the effects of electromagnetic solar energy on the evolution of life on earth and want to expand my knowledge in this field.

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