This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics

Wilson, Robert A.

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This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics.  Sociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionary biology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Although sociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’ optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the human domain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics have argued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic determinism and represents the zealous misapplication of science beyond its proper reach that characterized the eugenics movement. More recently, evolutionary psychology represents a sophistication of sociobiology that attends to the mind as the "missing link" between evolution and behaviour (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, Pinker 1997)

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31/12/2019 Encyc - Eugenics Archiveseugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee477095aa000000025b 1/5SociobiologyRobert A. WilsonSociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionarybiology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Althoughsociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the humandomain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics haveargued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic determinismand represents the zealous misapplication of science beyond its properreach that characterized the eugenics movement. More recently,evolutionary psychology represents a sophistication of sociobiologythat attends to the mind as the "missing link" between evolution andbehaviour (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, Pinker 1997).Origins of SociobiologyEvolutionary biologists have long been interested in explaining thesocial behaviour of animal species. Subsequently, there is (to adaptEbbinghaus’s phrasing) a “long history” of drawing analogies betweenanimal and human social behaviour stretching back in Westernphilosophy to at least Aristotle, as well as a “short past” of seeking toexplain human behaviour from the perspective of ethology, the generalbiological study of behaviour (Lorenz 1966).Sociobiology itself arose in the 1960s and is associated particularlywith the entomologist Edward O. Wilson’s influential book31/12/2019 Encyc - Eugenics Archiveseugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee477095aa000000025b 2/5Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). Wilson’s final chapter of thatbook applied this approach to human behaviour, with his On HumanNature (1978) developing this focus on our own species. Central to thisand much other sociobiological work was the earlier work of WilliamHamilton (1963, 1964), which introduced the concept of kin selection,and that of Robert Trivers (1972), which introduced the idea ofreciprocal altruism.The common idea in these works was that otherwise puzzling socialbehaviours and traits could be explained in terms of natural selectionby focusing on benefits that accrue to individuals, and byunderstanding those benefits in terms of the survival of genes that theycarry. Foremost amongst these are traits and behaviours that at leastappear to be evolutionarily altruistic in that they seem to systematicreduce the relative fitness of those who engage in them. For example,the existence of sterile castes of insects (e.g., in bees and in ants), orthe presence of sentinels in a flock of birds that increase their ownchance of falling prey to a predator while offering a benefit to the flock,are both puzzling from the point of view of individual selection. Howwould genes favouring such traits and behaviours evolve by naturalselection? Hamilton and Trivers tackled this problem, typically calledthe problem of altruism, by appealing to the benefits that such traitsand behaviours have for the survival of relatives—those sharing analtruistic individual’s genes in proportion to their degree of relatedness—or for the delayed benefits that reciprocal sacrifice have.Sociobiology and the Levels of SelectionExplanations of social traits and behaviours that appealed to naturalselection earlier in the twentieth-century had helped themselvesgenerously to the idea of group selection: altruistic traits andbehaviours survive because they benefit the group, rather than theindividual. Due chiefly to the growing influence in the 1970s of George31/12/2019 Encyc - Eugenics Archiveseugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee477095aa000000025b 3/5Williams’ Adaption and Natural Selection (1966) and RichardDawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976), the accounts provided by Hamiltonand Trivers came to be seen as not only antithetical to group selectionbut as advocating the gene as some kind of fundamental level at whichnatural selection operated. On this view, behaviours are both causedprincipally by genes and evolve for the benefit of genes. A renewal ofwork on the levels of selection over the past decade or so (Sober andWilson 1998, Wilson 2005, Okasha 2006) complicates thisunderstanding of the relationship between kin selection and genicselection, and thus of the relationship between sociobiology and themultiple levels at which selection operates.Controversies Over Sociobiology and their Relevance to EugenicsThis complication is relevant to thinking about the relationshipbetween sociobiology and eugenics because of a common view of each.Sociobiology and eugenics are often characterized as meliorativeenterprises based on core, basic science, with resistance to theirconclusions turning primarily either on a lack a knowledge of thescience or some kind of political squeamishness. But like critiques ofeugenics, critiques of sociobiology are often in fact based on asensitivity to a more nuanced understanding of the relevant science—genetics and psychiatry in the case of eugenics, and evolutionarybiology in the case of sociobiology.While sociobiology's proponents view it chiefly as the extrapolation ofgeneral evolutionary principles to human social traits and behaviours,critics have viewed sociobiology as a form of scientism, as resting onsuperficial categories of traits and behaviour, and as reinforcingproblematic political views (Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin 1984, Kitcher1985). Each of these criticisms has also been leveled against eugenics.The specific form of scientism most important in this context is agenetically deterministic vision of human social behaviour. On this31/12/2019 Encyc - Eugenics Archiveseugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee477095aa000000025b 4/5view, human social behaviours are "fixed by the genes", and thismisleadingly simplistic view has been taken to imply that socialbehaviours, roles, and institutions themselves are evolutionarilyinevitable. Rather than developing this criticism further here, I want tounderscore a general lesson from joint reflection on sociobiology andeugenics (cf. Kingsland 1988).Homo sapiens is a biological species, and as such, there are generalevolutionary principles, such as those concerning natural selection orinheritance, and biological facts peculiar to the species, that constrainthe study of human social behaviour and intergenerational humanvariation. But precisely how those principles and facts constrain thecorresponding sciences, of sociobiology or eugenics, is subject to manyvagaries. This starts with the very categories we use to individuate thephenomena being studied. For example, in the case of sociobiology,identifying homosexuality and rape in non-human animals and doingso seeking an understanding of human social behaviour, has beentheoretically naïve. In the case of eugenics, relying on folk notions ofwhat sorts of people there are—paupers, the feeble-minded, the unfit—to arrive at social policies to improve human populations suffers fromthe same naivity. It is not simply that we should issue caution in theembrace of sciences that purport to reveal more about human natureand how to improve it or design social policies that are based on thatnature. It is that the value-ladenness of the sciences themselves makecontentious even the most basic starting points for such inquiry.Cite this document (APA):Wilson, R. (2014, April 29). Sociobiology. Retrieved December 31, 2019, fromhttp://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee477095aa000000025bReferences31/12/2019 Encyc - Eugenics Archiveseugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee477095aa000000025b 5/5Cosmides, Leda and John Tooby (eds.), 1992, The Adapted Mind: EvolutionaryPsychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University PressDawkins, Richard, 1976, The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hamilton, William, 1963, “The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior”, American Naturalist97: 354-356.Hamilton, William, 1964, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaivour I and II”,Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-16 and 17-52.Kingsland, Sharon, 1988, “Evolution and Debates Over Human Progress from Darwin toSociobiology”, Population and Development Review14, Supplement: Population andResources in Western Intellectual Traditions, pp.167-198.Kitcher, Philip, 1985, Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for HumanNature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Lorenz, Konrad, 1966, On Aggression. London: Methuen.Okasha, Samir, 2006, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.Pinker, Steven, 1997, How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.R.C. Lewontin, S. Rose, and L.J. Kamin, 1984, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology,and Human Nature. New York: Pantheon Books.Sober, Elliott, and David Sloan Wilson, 1998, Unto Others: The Evolution andPsychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Trivers, Robert, 1971, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism”, Quarterly Review ofBiology 46: 35-57.Williams, George, 1966, Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.Wilson, Edward O., 1975, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: BelknapPress.Wilson, Robert A., 2005, Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the FragileSciences: Biology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Sociobiology

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