Socio Biology
"Science offers the boldest metaphysics of the age: the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, thereby plunging repeatedly into new terrain, the world will somehow become clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe, and the strangeness will all prove to be connected and make sense." Edward O. Wilson
Just by flipping through the pages of a newspaper or watching the local news, it becomes obvious how great an impact science has on our current thinking. The media has become a showroom for scientific exploits; we hear about gene discoveries, we have a newfound reverence for the ER room, we have ten drug options for every ailment. Science has become the authority on everything from illness to the environment. When the time comes to write a paper for a biology class, the problem isn't what to write about, it is what not to write about. With this in mind, it is not surprising that anyone with a romantic spirit, an affinity for magic, and a secret desire to believe in the X Files, has difficulty accepting that the intricacies of the world can be explained away by science. Is there such a thing as the unknown, or is everything just waiting to be scientifically identified?
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Frustrated and a little angry at science for stripping life of some of its mystical beauty, I set out with the broad task of searching the web for an arbitrary paper topic for a science class assignment. After a professor casually mentioned the work of renowned scientist Edward O. Wilson, I decided to enter his name into the computer and see what I would discover. The results not only provided me with a paper topic, but they also helped me come to terms with some of my pent up resentment for the omnipotent field of science/biology.
Edward O. Wilson is the father of sociobiology, a discipline which fuses the concepts of culture and society with the theories of biology (evolution, genetics, etc.). At first glance, sociobiology is horrifying, especially to an anthropology student or a feminist; the discipline makes claims like, warfare is innate, men and women have clear-cut biological differences, and religion can be reduced to evolutionary principals. Wilson contends that only when we accept that all questions can be traced back to science will we have an understanding of the world around us. In this paper I will briefly examine some of these claims in an attempt to ascertain whether or not sociobiology holds any merit, whether or not the media should be concentrating so heavily on science and its effects on the modern world.
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Why does warfare dominate modern human history? For centuries, theorists have been trying to explain why humans wage war on other humans. Hobbes explained that humans were by nature violent brutes; evolutionists thought humans' violent disposition was a product of the sexual division of labor of our Australopithecine ancestors in which case men bonded over hunting and warfare. The consensus seemed to be that warfare and aggression were not cultural or learned traits, but that they were innate. From an evolutionary standpoint, however, this theory does not coincide with evolution through natural selection. Why would we wage war when war depleted our best men? Also, what of those people who are nonviolent or genuinely seem to care about people by practicing altruism?
Wilson borrows aspects of these theories and questions in order to propose the sociobiological explanation. Wilson argues that human populations have a natural tendency to close its doors to outside groups and display enmity towards them, in order to create loyalty and supremacy amongst the group; he uses the terms "ethnocentricity" and "xenophobia" to describe these qualities. War is an attempt to preserve a group, to further its survival. When stimulated, humans have a naturally aggressive response (a possible stimulant could be the competition for resources).
To explain altruism, Wilson writes, "Compassion is selective and often ultimately self-serving." The person who risks his life for the group is really just trying to protect his gene pool. As another example, Wilson mentions the Buddhist who "earns points towards a better personal life by performing generous acts." Therefore sociobiology claims that humans have a genetic predisposition to aggression and egocentricity, all rooted in the old notion "survival of the fittest." Those who look out for themselves will live the longest.
Although I have only provided a very brief summary of sociobiology's theory on war, one can easily comprehend why when Wilson's ideas were published, dissenters immediately arose. The theories seem to suggest that humans have the predisposition to be violent, selfish, racist, killers. The theories place emphasis on the role of men in society and speak little about women. I found that some ideas in Wilson's book, On Human Nature, use shaky anthropological discourses to support his arguments (such as generalizations made about particular tribes such as the !Kung or Yanomami).
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Professor of psychology C. George Boeree writes about attraction from a sociobiological perspective: "We should be sexually attracted to others whose characteristics would maximize our genetic success, that is, would give us many healthy, long-lived, fertile children". Boeree continues to explain why men and women are attracted to one another on the basis of successful reproduction.
In Wilson's On Human Nature, he addresses the other component of sex: pleasure. Human females are distinct in that they lack the estrus, or period of heat: "Women remain sexually receptive, with little variation in the capacity to respond, throughout the menstrual cycle." Wilson explains that sexual responsiveness has become nearly continuous because it facilitates bonding. Bonding is a Darwinian advantage that binds members of a group together, thus prolonging its survival. Frequent sex therefore is not only advantageous in relation to reproduction but also because it creates bonds in the group. Pleasure in sex can form strong and/or long-term relationships between individuals. (information and quote from On Human Nature, by Edward O. Wilson)
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In addition to war and sex, sociobiology attempts to define such human issues as religion and hope with biological terminology and ideas. Most explanations are founded on the basis that genetics and evolutionary adaptations account for nearly all human and societal manifestations.
Not only can sociobiology explain the world, but Wilson contends that it can save the world as well. He believes: "The key to unification is consilience...literally a 'jumping together' of knowledge as a result of the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation".
Wilson believes that natural science can link all other disciplines together. Sociobiology is a reflection of this in that it attempts to bring the elements of both natural and social sciences together. If everyone were to have a fundamental understanding of science, there would be revolution and enlightenment; people would change, public policy would change. We would have the knowledge needed to see the world as it is, to understand why people act the way they do. In an interview, Wilson says: "All that sociobiology can do, in my opinion, is to tell us more about where we came from, what we've got, what our predispositions are, as an aid in the cost-benefit analysis that goes into any discussion of our future goals. That's what a large part of politics and social planning is all about: what our goals are, what we want to achieve beyond mere survival".
Describing genes with the term "selfish" is not meant to imply that they have actual motives or will – only that their effects can be accurately described as if they do. The contention is that the genes that get passed on are the ones whose consequences serve their own implicit interests, not necessarily those of the organism, much less any larger level. Some people find this metaphor entirely clear, while others find it confusing, misleading or simply redundant to ascribe mental attributes to something that is mindless. For example, Andrew Brown has written:
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"Selfish", when applied to genes, doesn't mean "selfish" at all. It means, instead, an extremely important quality for which there is no good word in the English language: "the quality of being copied by a Darwinian selection process." This is a complicated mouthful. There ought to be a better, shorter word – but "selfish" isn't it.
A crude analogy can be found in the old saw about a chicken being just an egg's way of making more eggs. In a similar inversion, Dawkins describes biological organisms as "vehicles" or survival machines, with genes as the "replicators" that create these organisms as a means of acquiring resources and copying themselves. At the level of organisms, we can see genes as being for some feature that might benefit the organism, but at the level of genes, the sole implicit purpose is to benefit themselves. A related concept here is the extended phenotype, in which the consequences of the genes to the environment outside the organism are considered.
Dawkins proposes that genes that help the organism in which they happen to be to survive and reproduce tend to also improve their own chances of being passed on, so – most of the time – "successful" genes will also be beneficial to the organism. An example of this might be a gene that protects the organism against a disease, which helps the gene spread and also helps the organism. There are other times when the implicit interests of the vehicle and replicator are in conflict, such as the genes behind certain male spiders' instinctive mating behaviour, which increase the organism's inclusive fitness by allowing it to reproduce, but shorten its life by exposing it to the risk of being eaten by the cannibalistic female. Another good example is the existence of segregation distortion genes that are detrimental to their host but nonetheless propagate themselves at its expense. Likewise, the existence of junk DNA that provides no benefit to its host, once a puzzle, can be more easily explained. A more controversial example is aging, in which an old organism's death makes room for its offspring, benefiting its genes at the cost of the organism.
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These examples might suggest that there is a power-struggle between genes and their host. In fact, the claim is that there isn't much of a struggle because the genes usually win without a fight. Only if the organism becomes intelligent enough to understand its own interests, as distinct from those of its genes, can there be true conflict. An example of this would be a person deciding not to breed because they do not want to raise children, even though their genes lose out due to this decision.
When looked at from the point of view of gene selection, many biological phenomena that, in prior models, were difficult to explain become easier to understand. In particular, phenomena such as kin selection and eusociality, where organisms act altruistically, against their individual interests (in the sense of health, safety or personal reproduction) to help related organisms reproduce, can be explained as genes helping copies of themselves in other bodies to replicate. Interestingly, the "selfish" actions of genes lead to unselfish actions by organisms.
Prior to the 1960s, it was common for such behaviour to be explained in terms of group selection, where the benefits to the organism or even population were supposed to account for the popularity of the genes responsible for the tendency towards that behaviour. This was shown not to be an evolutionarily stable strategy, in that it would only take a single individual with a tendency towards more selfish behaviour to undermine a population otherwise filled only with the gene for altruism towards non-kin.
Presumably we have all heard a lot of the discussion of what is wrong with the public schools in this country--maybe we have heard more than we want to hear, and maybe we have already come to some conclusions as to who and what is at fault, and what therefore needs to be done to improve our schools.
Nonetheless, I can almost guarantee you that you have not heard enough--you will almost surely learn some very important things from this book that you could not possibly have known about unless you also did all the interviewing around the country that Kozol did. Before I read this book, I thought I had a pretty good idea of the conditions of a few of our schools, but I had no idea of how bad conditions are and how extensive the problems are in many of our inner city schools in this country. Your eyes will be opened if you read Kozol.
In a little over 200 pages he reports not only statistics on many city and suburban schools, but describes the conditions of the schools and their surroundings, and he gives many of his interviews with teachers and with many of the pupils along with his impressions of their outlooks. The main impact of the book lies in his repeated attempts to interpret the way inadequate school facilities affects not only the progress of the school children but their whole outlook. Do not be surprised if you find some of this heartbreaking.
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Kozol’s own reaction to what he learns is made clear from time to time with some excellent statements of the principles he thinks should be applied in these cases. The whole issue of inequalities in school expenditure per pupil in different sections of a city is explored carefully, with arguments on both sides made clear. He even includes a review of several important court cases dealing with the issue. It is clear that how school district boundaries are set is extremely important, especially since public schools are financed primarily by property taxes.
By reducing love, religion, racism, etc, to the laws of science, sociobiology seems to undervalue the importance of the sacred and overlook personal agency. But a point that Wilson makes repeatedly is that sociobiology does not attempt to lay out a moral foreground, to claim that warfare and racism are acceptable because they are innate to human beings. If we are aware of our predispositions, then we can try to overcome them. If anything were to lead to world peace, it would probably be consilience.
Of course, like all disciplines, sociobiology has flaws, it is dangerous for any discipline to make such homogenizing statements; but I think it is grounded in something quite revolutionary and promising. Initially, I thought Wilson was merely making sweeping generalizations. I understood why after the publication of his first book, students at Harvard petitioned to have him fired. And aside from the fact that he deals harsh blows to liberal educations (because they do not properly incorporate science), there is beauty and validity in his arguments. If the theories of sociobiology and consilience were to spread, the challenges would be to use the knowledge to improve the world and to somehow find beauty and magic alongside the presence of science.
Sociobiology is a neo-Darwinian synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics and other disciplines. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely related to the fields of human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology.
Sociobiology investigates social behaviors, such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects. Just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with the natural environment, it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior. Applied to nonhumans, sociobiology is noncontroversial.
Sociobiology has become one of the greatest scientific controversies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially in the context of explaining human behavior. Criticism, most notably made by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, centers on sociobiology's contention that genes play a central role in human behavior and that variation in traits such as aggressiveness can be explained by variation in peoples' biology and is not necessarily a product of the person's social environment. Many sociobiologists, however, cite a complex relationship between nature and nurture. In response to the controversy, anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides launched evolutionary psychology as a branch of sociobiology made less controversial by avoiding questions of human biodiversity.