Sociobiology#Controversy

E. O. Wilson defined sociobiology as "the extension of population biology and evolutionary theory to social organization".{{cite book |author=Wilson, E. O. |author-link=E. O. Wilson |year=1978 |title=On Human Nature |url=https://archive.org/details/onhumannature00wils |url-access=registration |page=x |publisher=Harvard |isbn=978-0674016385}}

Sociobiology is based on the premise that some behaviors (social and individual) are at least partly inherited and can be affected by natural selection.{{cite book |last1=Mohammed |first1=Sulma I. |last2=Alfarouk |first2=Khalid O. |last3=Elhassan |first3=Ahmed M. |last4=Hamad |first4=Kamal |last5=Ibrahim |first5=Muntaser E. |title=The Genetics of African Populations in Health and Disease |chapter=Sociobiological Transition and Cancer |date=2019 |pages=217–232 |doi=10.1017/9781139680295.010 |isbn=9781139680295 |s2cid=214321882 |chapter-url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/genetics-of-african-populations-in-health-and-disease/sociobiological-transition-and-cancer/E4FE8995823F33510961E6FDF1293F38 |language=en}}

The discipline seeks to explain behavior as a product of natural selection. Behavior is therefore seen as an effort to preserve one's genes in the population. Inherent in sociobiological reasoning is the idea that certain genes or gene combinations that influence particular behavioral traits can be inherited from generation to generation.{{cite journal |title=Rethinking The Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology |last1=Wilson |first1=David Sloan |last2=Wilson |first2=Edward O. |author1-link=David Sloan Wilson |author2-link=E. O. Wilson |journal=The Quarterly Review of Biology |year=2007 |volume=82 |issue=4 |pages=327–348 |doi=10.1086/522809 |pmid=18217526 |s2cid=37774648 }}

For example, newly dominant male lions often kill cubs in the pride that they did not sire. This behavior is adaptive because killing the cubs eliminates competition for their own offspring and causes the nursing females to come into heat faster, thus allowing more of his genes to enter into the population. Sociobiologists would view this instinctual cub-killing behavior as being inherited through the genes of successfully reproducing male lions, whereas non-killing behavior may have died out as those lions were less successful in reproducing.{{cite journal |last1=Packer |first1=Craig |last2=Pusey |first2=Anne E. |title=Adaptations of Female Lions to Infanticide by Incoming Males |journal=The American Naturalist |date=1983 |volume=121 |issue=5 |pages=716–728 |url=https://www.cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/downloads/Adaptations_of_female_lions_to_infanticide.pdf |doi=10.1086/284097 |bibcode=1983ANat..121..716P |s2cid=84927815 |archive-date=2015-12-29 |access-date=2017-04-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151229213243/http://cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/downloads/Adaptations_of_female_lions_to_infanticide.pdf |url-status=dead }}

File:Plos wilson.jpg, a central figure in the history of sociobiology, from the publication in 1975 of his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis]]

The philosopher of biology Daniel Dennett suggested that the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes was the first proto-sociobiologist, arguing that in his 1651 book Leviathan Hobbes had explained the origins of morals in human society from an amoral sociobiological perspective.{{cite book |author=Dennett, Daniel |author-link=Daniel Dennett |title=Darwin's Dangerous Idea |url=https://archive.org/details/darwinsdangerous0000denn |url-access=registration |publisher=Simon and Schuster |year=1995 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/darwinsdangerous0000denn/page/453 453–454] |isbn=978-0140167344}}

The geneticist of animal behavior John Paul Scott coined the word sociobiology at a 1948 conference on genetics and social behavior, which called for a conjoint development of field and laboratory studies in animal behavior research.{{cite web |title=The Life of J.P. Scott |url=https://www.bgsu.edu/arts-and-sciences/neuroscience/john-paul-scott/the-life-of-jp-scott.html |publisher=Bowling Green State University |access-date=14 December 2016}} With John Paul Scott's organizational efforts, a "Section of Animal Behavior and Sociobiology" of the Ecological Society of America was created in 1956, which became a Division of Animal Behavior of the American Society of Zoology in 1958. In 1956, E. O. Wilson came in contact with this emerging sociobiology through his PhD student Stuart A. Altmann, who had been in close relation with the participants to the 1948 conference. Altmann developed his own brand of sociobiology to study the social behavior of rhesus macaques, using statistics, and was hired as a "sociobiologist" at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in 1965.

Wilson's sociobiology is different from John Paul Scott's or Altmann's, insofar as he drew on mathematical models of social behavior centered on the maximization of the genetic fitness by W. D. Hamilton, Robert Trivers, John Maynard Smith, and George R. Price. The three sociobiologies by Scott, Altmann and Wilson have in common to place naturalist studies at the core of the research on animal social behavior and by drawing alliances with emerging research methodologies, at a time when "biology in the field" was threatened to be made old-fashioned by "modern" practices of science (laboratory studies, mathematical biology, molecular biology).{{cite journal |last1=Dobzhansky |first1=Theodosius |title=Are Naturalists Old-Fashioned? |journal=The American Naturalist |date=September 1966 |volume=100 |issue=915 |pages=541–550 |doi=10.1086/282448 |bibcode=1966ANat..100..541D |s2cid=129104506 }}

Once a specialist term, "sociobiology" became widely known in 1975 when Wilson published his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, sparking intense controversy. Since then "sociobiology" has largely been equated with Wilson's vision. The book pioneered and popularized the attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviors such as altruism, aggression, and nurturance, primarily in ants (Wilson's own research specialty) and other Hymenoptera, but also in other animals. However, the influence of evolution on behavior has been of interest to biologists and philosophers from the 19th century onwards. Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, written in the early 1890s, is a popular example. The final chapter of the book is devoted to sociobiological explanations of human behavior, and Wilson later wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book, On Human Nature, that addressed human behavior specifically.{{cite magazine |last=Walsh |first=Bryan |url=https://entertainment.time.com/2011/08/30/all-time-100-best-nonfiction-books/slide/on-human-nature-by-edward-o-wilson/ |title=All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books |magazine=Time |date=17 August 2011}}

Edward H. Hagen writes in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology that sociobiology is, despite the public controversy on its application to humans, "one of the scientific triumphs of the twentieth century." He adds that "Sociobiology is now part of the core research and curriculum of virtually all biology departments, and it is a foundation of the work of almost all field biologists." Sociobiological research on nonhuman organisms has increased dramatically and continuously in the world's top scientific journals such as Nature and Science. The more general term behavioral ecology is commonly substituted to avoid the public controversy.{{cite book |last=Hagen |first=Edward H. |author-link=Edward Hagen (anthropologist) |title=The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology |editor=Buss, David M. |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2005 |chapter =Controversial Issues in Evolutionary Psychology |pages=145–173 |isbn=978-0471264033 |doi=10.1002/9780470939376.ch5}}

File:Nikolaas Tinbergen 1978.jpg , whose work influenced sociobiology]]

Sociobiologists maintain that human and other animal behavior can be partly explained as the outcome of natural selection. They contend that in order to fully understand behavior, it must be analyzed in terms of evolution, principally by natural selection. Sociobiology is based upon two fundamental premises:

• Certain behavioral traits are inherited,
• Inherited behavioral traits have been honed by natural selection and were adaptive in the environment in which they evolved.

Sociobiology uses Nikolaas Tinbergen's four questions to search for explanations of animal behavior.{{cite journal |last=Birkhead |first=T. R. |title=Reflections |journal=Behavioral Ecology |volume=25 |issue=2 |date=1 March 2014 |issn=1045-2249 |doi=10.1093/beheco/art123 |doi-access=free |pages=239–241 |url=https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article-pdf/25/2/239/605702/art123.pdf}} Two of these categories are at the species level; two, at the individual level. The species-level categories (often called "ultimate explanations") are{{Cite journal |last=MacDougall-Shackleton |first=Scott A. |date=2011-07-27 |title=The levels of analysis revisited |journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |volume=366 |issue=1574 |pages=2076–2085 |doi=10.1098/rstb.2010.0363 |pmc=3130367 |pmid=21690126}}

• the adaptive function that a behavior serves and
• the historical evolutionary process that resulted in this functionality.

The individual-level categories (often called "proximate explanations") are

• the development of the individual and
• the proximate mechanism (such as brain anatomy and hormones).

Studies of human behavior genetics have found behavioral traits such as creativity, extroversion, aggressiveness, and IQ have high heritability. Researchers are careful to point out that heritability does not constrain the influence that environmental or cultural factors may have on these traits.{{Cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Wendy |last2=Turkheimer |first2=E. |last3=Gottesman |first3=Irving |last4=Bouchard |first4=Thomas |year=2009 |title=Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research |journal=Current Directions in Psychological Science |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=217–220 |url=http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20%282009%29.pdf |access-date=29 June 2010 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01639.x |pmc=2899491 |pmid=20625474 |quote=Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008). |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100911043817/http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20(2009).pdf |archive-date= Sep 11, 2010 }}{{Cite journal |last=Turkheimer |first=Eric |date=April 2008 |title=A Better Way to Use Twins for Developmental Research |journal=LIFE Newsletter |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=2–5 |url=http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20%282008%29.pdf |access-date=29 October 2010 |quote=But back to the question: What does heritability mean? Almost everyone who has ever thought about heritability has reached a commonsense intuition about it: One way or another, heritability has to be some kind of index of how genetic a trait is. That intuition explains why so many thousands of heritability coefficients have been calculated over the years... Unfortunately, that fundamental intuition is wrong. Heritability isn't an index of how genetic a trait is. A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed. |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111125033850/http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20(2008).pdf |archive-date= Nov 25, 2011 }}

Various theorists have argued that in some environments criminal behavior might be adaptive.{{cite journal |last=Mealey |first=Linda |title=The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model |journal=Behavioral and Brain Sciences |date=1995 |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=523–541 |doi=10.1017/S0140525X00039595 |s2cid=53956461 |url=http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.mealey.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021026131543/http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.mealey.html |access-date=27 October 2020 |archive-date=2002-10-26 |url-access=subscription }} The evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory, by sociologist/criminologist Lee Ellis, posits that female sexual selection has led to increased competitive behavior among men, sometimes resulting in criminality. In another theory, Mark van Vugt argues that a history of intergroup conflict for resources between men have led to differences in violence and aggression between men and women.{{cite book |last=Hernán |first=Roberto |title=Gender Differences in Cooperation and Competition |date=2015 |work=Experimental Economics: Volume 1: Economic Decisions |pages=154–168 |editor-last=Branas-Garza |editor-first=Pablo |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |doi=10.1057/9781137538192_10 |isbn=978-1-137-53819-2 |last2=Kujal |first2=Praveen |editor2-last=Cabrales |editor2-first=Antonio}} The novelist Elias Canetti also has noted applications of sociobiological theory to cultural practices such as slavery and autocracy.Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981, pp. 444–445.

Genetic mouse mutants illustrate the power that genes exert on behavior. For example, the transcription factor FEV (aka Pet1), through its role in maintaining the serotonergic system in the brain, is required for normal aggressive and anxiety-like behavior.{{cite journal | last=Hendricks | first=Timothy J. | last2=Fyodorov | first2=Dmitry V. | last3=Wegman | first3=Lauren J. | last4=Lelutiu | first4=Nadia B. | last5=Pehek | first5=Elizabeth A. | last6=Yamamoto | first6=Bryan | last7=Silver | first7=Jerry | last8=Weeber | first8=Edwin J. | last9=Sweatt | first9=J.David | last10=Deneris | first10=Evan S. | title=Pet-1 ETS Gene Plays a Critical Role in 5-HT Neuron Development and Is Required for Normal Anxiety-like and Aggressive Behavior | journal=Neuron | volume=37 | issue=2 | date=2003 | doi=10.1016/S0896-6273(02)01167-4 | doi-access=free | pages=233–247}} Thus, when FEV is genetically deleted from the mouse genome, male mice will instantly attack other males, whereas their wild-type counterparts take significantly longer to initiate violent behavior. In addition, FEV has been shown to be required for correct maternal behavior in mice, such that offspring of mothers without the FEV factor do not survive unless cross-fostered to other wild-type female mice.{{cite journal |last1=Lerch-Haner |first1=J.K. |last2=Frierson |first2=D. |last3=Crawford |first3=L.K. |last4=Beck |first4=S.G. |last5=Deneris |first5=E.S. |date=Sep 2008 |title=Serotonergic transcriptional programming determines maternal behavior and offspring survival |journal=Nature Neuroscience |volume=11 |issue=9 |pages=1001–1003 |doi=10.1038/nn.2176 |pmid=19160496 |pmc=2679641 }}

A genetic basis for instinctive behavioral traits among non-human species, such as in the above example, is commonly accepted among many biologists; however, attempting to use a genetic basis to explain complex behaviors in human societies has remained extremely controversial.{{cite news |last1=Fisher |first1=Helen |title='Wilson,' They Said, 'Your All Wet!' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/wilson-naturalist.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=21 July 2015 |date=16 October 1994}}{{cite magazine |last=Gould |first=Stephen Jay |author-link=Stephen Jay Gould |title=Sociobiology: the art of storytelling |magazine=New Scientist |date=16 November 1978 |volume=80 |issue=1129 |pages=530–533 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530}}

Steven Pinker argues that critics have been overly swayed by politics and a fear of biological determinism,{{efn |Biological determinism was a philosophy underlying the social Darwinian and eugenics movements of the early 20th century, and controversies in the history of intelligence testing.{{cite journal |last1=Allen |first1=Garland E. |title=The Roots of Biological Determinism: review of The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould |journal=Journal of the History of Biology |date=1984 |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=141–145 |jstor=4330882 |doi=10.1007/bf00397505 |pmid=11611452 |s2cid=29672121 }}}} accusing among others Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin of being "radical scientists", whose stance on human nature is influenced by politics rather than science,{{cite book |author=Pinker, Steven |author-link=Steven Pinker |title=The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |publisher=Penguin Books |location=New York |year=2002 |page=149 |isbn=978-0-14-200334-3 |quote=A surprising number of intellectuals, particularly on the left, do deny that there is such a thing as inborn talent, especially intelligence. Stephen Jay Gould's 191 bestseller The Mismeasure of Man was written to debunk 'the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity ... and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness' |title-link=The Blank Slate }} while Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Kamin, who drew a distinction between the politics and history of an idea and its scientific validity,{{cite book |author1=Richard Lewontin |author2=Leon Kamin |author3=Steven Rose |title=Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature |url=https://archive.org/details/notinourgenes00rich |url-access=registration |publisher=Pantheon Books |year=1984 |isbn=978-0-394-50817-7}} argue that sociobiology fails on scientific grounds. Gould grouped sociobiology with eugenics, criticizing both in his book The Mismeasure of Man.{{cite book |author=Gould, Stephen Jay |author-link=Stephen Jay Gould |year=1996 |title=The Mismeasure of Man |url=https://archive.org/details/mismeasureofman00goul_1 |url-access=registration |page=Introduction to the Revised Edition}} When Napoleon Chagnon scheduled sessions on sociobiology at the 1976 American Anthropological Association convention, other scholars attempted to cancel them with what Chagnon later described as "Impassioned accusations of racism, fascism and Nazism"; Margaret Mead's support caused the sessions to occur as scheduled.{{Cite news |last=Eakin |first=Emily |date=2013-02-17 |title=Who Are the Real Savages? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/napoleon-chagnon-americas-most-controversial-anthropologist.html |access-date=2024-07-03 |work=The New York Times Magazine |pages=32 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

Noam Chomsky has expressed views on sociobiology on several occasions. During a 1976 meeting of the Sociobiology Study Group, as reported by Ullica Segerstråle, Chomsky argued for the importance of a sociobiologically informed notion of human nature.{{sfn |Segerstråle |2000 |p=205}} Chomsky argued that human beings are biological organisms and ought to be studied as such, with his criticism of the "blank slate" doctrine in the social sciences (which would inspire a great deal of Steven Pinker's and others' work in evolutionary psychology), in his 1975 Reflections on Language.Chomsky, Noam (1975), Reflections on Language:10. New York: Pantheon Books. Chomsky further hinted at the possible reconciliation of his anarchist political views and sociobiology in a discussion of Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which focused more on altruism than aggression, suggesting that anarchist societies were feasible because of an innate human tendency to cooperate.Chomsky, Noam (1995). [http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199505--.htm#TXT2.23 "Rollback, Part II."] Z Magazine 8 (Feb.): 20–31.

Wilson has claimed that he had never meant to imply what ought to be, only what is the case. However, some critics have argued that the language of sociobiology readily slips from "is" to "ought", an instance of the naturalistic fallacy. Pinker has argued that opposition to stances considered anti-social, such as ethnic nepotism, is based on moral assumptions, meaning that such opposition is not falsifiable by scientific advances.Pinker, Steven (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking. p. 145 The history of this debate, and others related to it, are covered in detail by {{harvtxt|Cronin|1993}}, {{harvtxt|Segerstråle|2000}}, and {{harvtxt|Alcock|2001}}.

{{cols |colwidth=15em}}

• Biocultural anthropology
• Biosemiotics
• Cultural evolution
• Cultural selection theory
• Darwinian anthropology
• Dual inheritance theory
• Evolutionary anthropology
• Evolutionary developmental psychology
• Evolutionary neuroscience
• Evolutionary psychology
• Genopolitics
• Human behavioral ecology
• Kin selection
• Memetics
• Social evolution
• Social neuroscience
• Sociophysiology
• Zoosemiotics

{{colend}}

{{notelist}}

{{reflist |30em}}

• {{cite book |last=Alcock |first=John |title=The triumph of sociobiology |year=2001 |location=Oxford, UK |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-514383-6 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/triumphofsociobi00alco }}
• {{cite book |editor=Barkow, Jerome |year=2006 |title=Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-513002-7 |ref=none}}
• {{cite book |last=Cronin |first=Helena |author-link=Helena Cronin |title=The ant and the peacock: Altruism and sexual selection from Darwin to today |year=1993 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-45765-1 }}
• {{cite book |last=Segerstråle |first=Ullica |title=Defenders of the truth: The sociobiology debate |year=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-286215-0 }}

• {{cite book |last=Etcoff |first=Nancy |author-link=Nancy Etcoff |title=Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty |publisher=Anchor Books |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-385-47942-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/survivalofpretti00nanc |ref=none}}
• {{cite book |last1=Kaplan |first1=Gisela |author-link1=Gisela Kaplan |last2=Rogers |first2=Lesley J. |title=Gene Worship: Moving Beyond the Nature/Nurture Debate over Genes, Brain, and Gender |publisher=Other Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-1-59051-034-6 |ref=none}}
• {{cite book |last=Lerner |first=Richard M. |author-link=Richard M. Lerner |title=Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide |publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-271-00793-9 |ref=none}}
• {{cite journal |last=Ovcharov |first=Dmitry |title=The problem of biological and social in Russian philosophy of the second half of the XX — beginning of the XXI century: historical and philosophical analytical review |journal=Bulletin of the Chelyabinsk State University |date=2023 |volume=477 |issue=7 |pages=61-67 |doi=10.47475/1994-2796-2023-477-7-61-67 |ref=none}}
• Richards, Janet Radcliffe (2000). Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Routledge.

{{Commons category}}

{{Wikiquote}}

• [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sociobiology/ Sociobiology] (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20021026131543/http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.mealey.html The Sociobiology of Sociopathy, Mealey, 1995]
• [http://www.froes.dds.nl Speak, Darwinists!] – interviews with leading sociobiologists
• [https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/richard-dawkins-race-evolution-in-group Race and creation] by Richard Dawkins
• [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15wils.html?pagewanted=1 Scientist at Work |Edward O. Wilson |Taking a Cue From Ants on Evolution of Humans by Nicholas Wade]

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