Loye’s Scientific Background

With a B.S. in psychology at Dartmouth and an M.A. in the psychology of personality and a Ph.D. in social psychology with a sociology minor from the New School for Social Research (now New School University), Loye has worked on many projects and in many settings as an expert in social, experimental, survey, and media research, and as a systems scientist, futurist, and evolution theorist.

A former member of the psychology faculty of Princeton University, over nearly a decade Dr.Loye was Director of Research for the Program on Psychosocial Adaptation and the Future and became a professor in the research series at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is a co-founder of the Society for the Study of Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences and a co-founder of the General Evolution Research Group (GERG), a multidisciplinary group composed of scholars from Italy, France, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Russia, China, and the United States.

He is a co-founding editorial board member and former book review editor for the group’s journal, World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, a member of the advisory council of the journal Advanced Development; the scientific advisory council to Pluriverso, a leading European intellectual journal; and a member of editorial council for Advanced Development, a leading journal on the intellectual and moral development of children .

In 1971 his psychohistory The Healing of a Nation received the Anisfield-Wolfe Award, previously given to Gunnar Myrdal and Martin Luther King, for the best scholarly book on race relations. The Leadership Passion was hailed by Contemporary Psychology as a "major advance" in its field. The Knowable Future and The Sphinx and the Rainbow are recognized as pioneering works of unusual stature in futures studies and the psychology of consciousness.

Among his later current books most notable are two potentially revolutionary series: His six book Darwin Anniversary Cycle and his six book Moral Transformation Cycle.

Two books of which he is the editor are notable for their contribution to the development of an adequate theory of evolution. He is the editor of The Evolutionary Outrider: The Impact of the Human Agent on Evolution – a book of essays by evolutionary scientists in which Loye introduces his own development of Evolution Action Theory and Riane Eisler’s development of Relational Dynamics – and The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution, in which Loye and ten other members of the General Evolution Research Group probe prospects for building a “full spectrum, action-oriented” theory of evolution.

For his contribution to the development of chaos theory in social science, in 1999 he was honored with the Humanitarian Award of the Society for the Study of Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences. “For contributions to the chaos community and the evolution of moral sensitivity,” the Award reads. In a recent book, An Arrow Through Chaos, Loye outlines the new view of the power and the function in evolution of our human capacity to predict the future on which in part this award was based. A special award in 2000 by the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning honored Riane Eisler and David Loye for “a human and intellectual partnership that has been dedicated to the knowledge of what matters most to future life.”