David Elliot Loye


David Elliot Loye, is an American author, psychologist, and evolutionary systems scientist.

Early life

Born in Palo Alto, California, Loye served in World War II in the Navy under the writer Walter Karig. Their division was involved in writing projects associated with the war effort. After the war, he completed his undergraduate education at Dartmouth College in writing and psychology. There, his poetry classes with Robert Frost deeply influenced him. He returned to Oklahoma city and worked with journalist Frank McGee at WKYTV

Career

He went on to become the editor of Oklahoma Today magazine before moving to Princeton New Jersey in 1960. While there he began attending the New School and ultimately earned a master's degree and a doctorate in psychology. Loye wrote the national award-winning book, The Healing of a Nation,. This book focused on history and solutions to healing the "sickness" of racism in America.
During this time Loye moved to a job with the Educational Testing Services in Princeton, New Jersey. After his Phd was awarded he began a short-term position at Princeton University, Before moving to Los Angeles to become a UCLA School of Medicine Research Director for the Program on Psychosocial Adaptation and Neuropsychiatric Institute. Along with Roderic Gorney and Gary Steele, Loye developed the groundwork for the study on television violence its impact of mass entertainment on evolution and human survival.
In the 1980s Loye moved to Carmel, California and transitioned to full-time writing and research on the evolution within society in a social context. He worked with his partner and wife, Riane Eisler, along with evolution theorist Ervin Laszlo on concepts of a cooperatively oriented theory of evolution.
These three, along with others, became co-founders of the multinational General Evolution Research Group and World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, of which Loye is a former book review editor and continuing member of the editorial board.

Charles Darwin

In the 1990s Loye wrote about Charles Darwin’s case for moral evolution rather than the "survival of the fittest/selfish gene theory" mindset as a higher order prime driver for human evolution. Of his book Darwin’s Lost Theory, internationally eminent scientist Ervin Laszlo has written: "...everyone concerned with our understanding of evolution on this planet owes Loye a deep debt of gratitude... Of urgent importance to the intellectual discourse of our time... has brought his unique erudition to an enormous and critical task, and carried it off with genius...Should cause a revolution in social theory...Dramatically changes our understanding of Darwin and of evolution itself...One of the major books of the early Twenty-First Century"

Personal life

Loye married twice, first to Billy Henslee Loye, and secondly to author Riane Eisler. He has four children.

Honors