Aggression and its most organized group expression, warfare, are phenomena that have considerable interest to those in the social and biological sciences. Indeed, it can be argued that it is only as a biosocial maladaption that such human behaviour can now be properly understood. This article briefly reviews the changing academic attitudes to the nature of aggression and war in human communities, past and present, arguing that society must begin to accept warfare now as a state of highly destructive social pathology. It can no longer be acceptable for the machinery of politics to place communities into states of warfare, or under the threat of mass‐destructive war, considering the increasing knowledge of human behaviour and that the vast majority of people as individuals are peace‐loving and not bellicose. Chronic world unrest urgently needs to be viewed in scientific, biosocial and epidemiological terms. Successful prophylaxis against the continuing violence must include an attempt to impart these perspectives to those in control of world politics.