The announcement of Darwin’s theory of Evolution in 1859
that the origin of all life forms could be explained by means
of a simply defined mechanical principle—natural selection operating
over geologic time spans—provoked responses ranging
from frantic denial to curiosity to glorification of evolution as a
philosophy of life. Many thinkers and writers including political
commentators, social theorists and philosophers began to reconceptualize
their respective areas of expertise in evolutionary
terms.1 The advantage of an evolutionary take on these subjects
were twofold, first a hoped-for but not always fulfilled increase in
understanding brought about by the evolutionary perspective,
and second the prestige of the newest theory of modern science—
one which plainly had revolutionary implications and would add
plausibility to whatever point of view such thinkers were advocating.
The first applications of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution to
politics and society produced a lush variety of ideas, most of them
assumed by their creators to be directly implied by evolution, but
which in their variety showed how indefinite the political implications
of evolutionary theory were at that time.

Among political writers who struck out on an evolutionary
path were Herbert Spencer who advocated what became known
as “social Darwinism”” which purported to show how a highly
individualistic idea of human nature was implied by the theory of
evolution which, in turn, supported a political philosophy of
unrestrained capitalism.2 As a study in contrast, Karl Marx was
also fascinated with evolution, but while Spencer took the struggle
of the individual to be the theme of evolution for political theory,
Marx took the struggle of the classes for political control. Marx
nowhere makes a detailed comparison of his theory with Darwin’s,
but sees general resemblances in that evolutionary struggle
inevitably brought about progress determinable by scientific law;3
however, both Marx and Spencer viewed political conflict in
morally neutral terms with the resultant cost in lives and social
conflict an acceptable cost for social progress. Other prominent
writers included Walter Bagehot, a prominent English journalist
whose book Physics and Politics presented evolutionary reflections
on the nature of social change which applied material as well
as theoretical elements to questions of national character.4 In
contrast to Bagehot’s establishment politics, which tended to look
upon the British Empire as a model of political organization,
stands Peter Kropotkin, a Russian nobleman and socialist reformer
whose book Mutual Aid interestingly used examples from
nature to correct and not merely accept Darwin’s theory by
emphasizing the necessity of co-operation among organisms in
the development and sustenance of life.5 In the 20th Century,
Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man presented a
version of evolution that was teleological and even mystical which
has drawn the ire of both scientific and religious critics, and which
promoted a progressive view of politics.6 Karl Popper, whose
stringent views on the limits of human knowledge are the basis of
both his philosophy of science and his Libertarian political
theory, changed his emphasis from physics to biology later in his
career to produce an evolutionary theory of human knowledge.7

These writers, it may be said, took general themes and inspiration
from Darwin’s theory of evolution, but in the last 40 years there
have been significant advancements within the explanatory structure
of evolutionary theory including the rigorous application of the
theory to the behavior of all living organisms. The greatest general
advancement of evolutionary theory came about in the 1950’s with
the integration of the science of genetics with evolution, resulting in
a mathematically precise ability to explain how organisms transmit
the characteristics to the their offspring which enable them to
survive by giving them a selective advantage in the struggle for
existence.8 Mendel’s famous experiments with pea plants had
enabled him to determine the general laws of genetics and to
discover the existence of an ultimate unit of genetic transmission,
a kind of biological atom, the gene. As research has shown and is
showing, a direct path can be traced from specific genes and their
place on chromosomal strand to physical characteristics such as
an organism’s eye color, size or ability to withstand disease.

The next large step in the advancement of evolutionary theory
had direct political implications and came about by using genetic
theory to explain not just the bodily characteristics of organisms but
their behavior as well. Behavior patterns such as feeding, excretion
and defending territory are obviously aimed at an individual
organism’s self-preservation, but social behaviors such as sex, rearing
of offspring and living in social settings such as families, tribes or
flocks are aimed at something more. This is especially true of
“”altruistic”” acts, i.e. those self-sacrificial behaviors which seem to
destroy rather than enhance the ability of a single organism to
survive. Seemingly selfless acts such as tigresses fighting to the death
on behalf of their cubs, or the existence of sterile casts (“”drones””)
among certain insect populations such as bees and wasps is explained
by the fact that such behavior enhances the chances of the
organisms passing along its genes to the next generation. Such costbenefit
thinking even explains the relative difference in the desire to
sacrifice on behalf of a child versus a nephew, for the child has onehalf
of the parental genes, while the nephew only has one-fourth.
Terms such as gene pool, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism are
now in general use as a means of explaining the behavior of bees,
turkeys, and most importantly, humans.9 The result has been the
growth of a new scientific subfield concerned with the explanation
of social behavior based on biology, a trend which has been given the
names sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral ecology.
10 In this paper, however, the term “”social biology”” is used which
is a less familiar but more inclusive term, referring to aspects of
psychology, cognitive science, ethology, anthropology, comparative
anatomy, genetics and evolution.

The status of social biology as a branch of modern science was
established by the publication of the book that gave the field its
best known name, and which attracted immediate and intense
attention, namely Edward O. Wilson’s Sociobiology.11 First published
in 1975 Sociobiology is so important and influential that its
fits Kuhn’s definition of a paradigm text, i.e. a book which defines
a scientific field in terms of a body of facts, theories and
techniques which act holistically, such that scientists who accept
it see the phenomena of their field entirely within its boundaries.
The book itself is large, even in the abridged edition which
Harvard University Press subsequently published in 1980, and
while often technical, it is not so difficult as to be beyond the
purview of laymen. Sociobiology is organized encyclopedically
beginning with a theoretical section on the principles of social
evolution expressed in the terms of population biology; a second
part on “”social mechanisms”” dealing with such general behavioral
characteristics of organisms as communication, aggression, dominance,
roles, sex and parenting; a third part giving detailed
descriptions of those species which manifest a high degree of
“”sociality”” i.e. which live in groups, tribes, colonies and the like.
Included in the social species are, among others, jellyfish which
swim in large “”colonies””; ants, bees and wasps, the social insects
which live in hives; fish which swim in schools; wolves which live
in packs; primates which live in close knit families and tribes, and,
finally man. It was the last chapter which bringing to bear all the
organized knowledge about animal behavior which had gone
before in the book to a description of the human race that made
it influential among intelligent people beyond specialists in evolution
and animal behavior, and which caused a large public
reaction. Commenting on the sustained critical reaction of his
book among academic left-wing critics, Wilson later wrote: “”There
were also important political implications. If human nature is
mostly acquired, and no significant part of it is inherited, then it
is easier to conclude, as relativists do with a passion, that different
cultures must be accorded moral equivalency…. The hypothesis
that human nature has a genetic foundation called all these
assumptions into question.””12

In effect, Wilson’s book has caused a replay of the controversies
that surrounded the original publication of Darwin’s The Origin of
Species only this time, the debate is transposed from a religious to
a political dimension. Once again, the human race is reduced to its
animal ancestry—not only its bodily form, but its behavior, ideas,
social forms and aspirations with no reference to political ideals, or
the transcendent and the moral realms. Characteristics which seemingly
differentiate human beings from the animal kingdom are
ruthlessly exposed, so it seems, as rationalizations, self-deceptive fig
leaves to guard ourselves against the knowledge that we are nothing
more than highly complex protoplasmic machines, the accidental
result of eons of the ignorant struggles of unthinking nature. This
time, however, the evolutionary case is strengthened by the acquisitions
of a hundred years of additional knowledge gained from
research and observation, and a mathematically clear idea of the
essential role of genes in evolutionary process.13

Another important book that established the idea that animal
but especially human behavior was mostly influenced by biology was
The Selfish Gene 14 published in 1976 by the English researcher and
writer, Richard Dawkins. Here in the provocative title, is Dawkins’
entire thesis that the behavior of all biological organisms, including
humans, is motivated by the urge to pass on one’s genes to posterity.
Dawkins’ book has been very influential in part because he has a
compelling writing style, reminiscent of Bernard Shaw’s or Bertrand
Russell’s which uses linguistic clarity and seemingly irrefutable logic
to bring the reader to a conclusion that contradicts common sense.
In Dawkins’s case, that conclusion is a form of genetic reductionism
so extreme that it excludes the body and the human mind as primary
agents of human behavior, and denies their essential reality on any
level. Like Galileo trying to convince his readers that the revolving
of the sun around the earth is an illusion, Dawkins attempts to
convince his readers that the existence of individual organic bodies,
while seemingly the most necessary components of biological existence,
are best understood as merely a vehicle for the transmission of
genes.15 Like all contemporary social biologists, Dawkins begins
with the solution to the puzzle of altruistic behavior, arguing that
seemingly self-sacrificial acts which risk the life of the altruist are in
reality a way of heightening the chances of an individual organism
passing on its genes to the next generation.16 Dawkins is particularly
anxious to dispute the idea of “”group selection”” an idea proposed by
the biologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards and writer Robert Ardrey which
states that individual organisms sacrifice themselves on behalf of
groups, i.e. their families, tribes, species or races.17 Instead, Dawkins
argues for the “”orthodox”” alternative that organisms act only on their
own behalf, “”selfishly””, but ultimately on behalf of their genes —the
evolutionary doctrine termed called kin selection.18 But Dawkins has
extended the notion of selfish genes from a biological theory virtually
to a philosophy (“”The long reach of the gene knows no obvious
boundaries.””19) and has especially drawn notice for his assertion that
the theory of evolution makes it possible to be an “”intellectually
fulfilled atheist.”” Dawkins has since produced several more semipopular
books on evolution and has established himself as the best
known advocate for a particularly hard-edged interpretation of
“”orthodox”” Darwinian evolution.

These books by Wilson and Dawkins produced in the 1970’s and
1980’s became the center of a social and intellectual movement that
puts much more emphasis on the biological sources of human
behavior than the cultural,20 a movement which has been reinforced
by the recent development of the practical aspects of genetic theory
including gene therapy, cloning and the human genome project.
The recent trend in clinical psychology to rely more on behavioral
conditioning and drug treatments rather than on psychoanalysis and
depth psychology has also reinforced the notion that human behavior
is at base biological. The belief that both theoretically and
practically biology is the determinative influence in human behavior
has direct political consequences, as will be seen in the sections
below which examine the reactions of the left and the right to the
development of social biology. In the following analysis, it will be
shown that while the left and the right have responded differently to
the advent of social biology, that their respective responses have
involved them in a set of corresponding dilemmas.

#page#

In the following section, the left-wing response will be described
in some detail, and it will be seen that in general that the left’s
dilemma is that the rise of social biology has seriously undercut the
rational case for a progressive and egalitarian social agenda which
has forced the left to rely almost exclusively on cultural explanations
for human behavior since culture can be manipulated in a way that
genes cannot, i.e. by education, raising public awareness, and the
force of law. The situation becomes most difficult when genetic
causes are used to explain the differences between groups, in
particular among races and between men and women rather than
just among individuals, for here social biology confronts the egalitarian
agenda in its most essential part. The scientific plausibility of
biological explanations based on genes and evolutionary urges forces
the left to use cultural criticism to de-legitimate the very categories
of scientific explanation and the ideal of scientific rationality; even
bona fide scientists such as Richard Lewontin and Stephen J. Gould
have done this which shows just how threatening social biology is to
the left.

In the third section, the right wing response will be described in
detail. On the right, the dilemma is that the materialistic and
reductive tendencies of social biology undercut the case for traditional,
religious or teleologically based values. While social biology
supports the traditional right wing criticism of social reforms that
require a reformation of human nature, at the same time it undercuts
the rational arguments for revealed religion and natural right. The
latter occurs because of the very materiality of genetic explanation by
reference to large molecules such as DNA, and through the putatively
natural process of evolution which has been extended from the
origin of species including man, to the behavior of organisms
including man also. Thus, social biology can provide a scientific basis
for the traditional belief that a definite human nature exists, but only
at the cost of de-moralizing traditional sources of value.

The fourth and final section will update the political responses
to the rise of social biology, for in the 1990’s and in the new century,
attempts have been made to resolve the respective dilemmas of the
left and the right. Social biology has gained wide acceptance which
has moved the controversy on, and now both left and right wing
writers have to deal with an intellectual and social fait accompli, the
left so as not to sever the bonds between science and social progress,
and the right in order to find an intellectual ground for social ideals
in the naturally selective processes of social evolution.

From the Left: Threat and Attack.

Response to the publication of Sociobiology in 1975 was instantaneous
on the left as political activists and commentators, including
left-wing biologists and social scientists, published articles, reviews,
and books, a trend which continues to this day.21 One such response
which came several years later and which did not contain much
analysis is nonetheless worth mentioning at the start since it shows
just how strong the left’s response was, and still is.22 It is a handbill
xeroxed on a sheet of standard letter sized paper, a garish yellow,
published by the “”Committee Against Racism”” which announces a
march for May Day 1982 to take place in Washington D.C. It is
standard hard-left fare, decrying “”racist unemployment””, fascism
and imperialism, but on the back it announces a “”FORUM: STOP
SOCIOBIOLOGY- The Rise of Facism (sic) in Science””, and
announces that the speaker at the forum will be “”Prof. Gar Allen of
Harvard””. The handbill states, “” In the past dozen years, a new wave
of Hitlerite theories have filtered down from the “”ivory towers”” of
academia to the public schools, the mass media, and finally, to the
gutter racists in the KKK.”” It goes on to cite the work of several well
known figures including Arthur Jenson, William Shockley and
Richard Herrnstein but focuses on Wilson’s Sociobiology “”in which
not merely wealth, intelligence, and employment but ALL social
behavior, are said to be genetically determined. Wilson speculates
about genes for “”altruism,”” “”territoriality,”” “”xenophobia (= racism),””
and even rape.”” There not much reasoned analysis, but then it is a
handbill and a call to action. Even so, it manifests two basic
characteristics of all prior and subsequent criticisms by the left
(including far more reasoned ones) of the advent of social biology,
namely the vehement rejection of the essential doctrines of social
biology, but especially sociobiology and the identification of social
biology as a movement from the right.

There was a lot for the critics of Sociobiology to comment on,
including the facts that Wilson’s ambition was plain, i.e. to found a
new science of human behavior based on the most recent developments
in evolutionary biology, and that given the scope and merits
of his book, Wilson had good reason to feel he had accomplished his
task. One immediate response was an exchange of letters that
appeared in the New York Review of Books the first of which was cowritten
by a leftist collective consisting of a group of professors,
researchers and other credentialed people from the Boston and
Cambridge area. Unlike the handbill, this was not the hasty work of
political provocateurs, but made a case that Wilson was the inheritor
of Spencer and others who had claimed that natural selection was the
basis of human behavior whose “”biological determinism”” had been
used to justify sterilization, eugenic policies, the Nazi gas chambers,
and the political status quo. The letter claimed, for instance, that
Wilson’s use of the term “”slavery”” to describe how a species of ant
uses the smaller insect called an “”aphid”” as a source of labor
constituted, in effect, a justification of human slavery.23 It stated that
Wilson had made several basic errors in attempting to explain
human behavior by the same principles by which animal behavior
was explained, but above all claimed that Sociobiology was a work of
justification of present “”social arrangements remarkably similar to
the world which E.O. Wilson inhabits.””24

Wilson responded with a letter of his own in which hurt feelings
were as much evident as outright anger since among the signers of
the original letter were two of Wilson’s own colleagues in the
Harvard University Biology Department, Richard Lewontin and
Stephen J. Gould, both of whom would continue to write book
length works attempting to discredit Wilson and social biology in
general (see below). In his letter to the New York Review of Books,
Wilson denied the “”false statements and accusations”” in the original
letter and was particularly angry about the identification of sociobiology
with eugenics and Naziism. He said that the collective’s letter
had selectively quoted him in order to make him appear to be “”the
arch hereditarian.”” He particularly denied that his treatment of
slavery of aphids by ants was in any way a justification for human
slavery and made it a point also to strongly deny that his theory
served as a justification for the status quo, quoting an article he
had written for the New York Times Magazine. “”[T]here is a
dangerous trap in sociobiology, one which can be avoided only by
constant vigilance. The trap is the naturalistic fallacy of ethics,
which uncritically concludes that what is, should be.””25 He went
on to cite examples of how characteristics of human behavior
which had been developed early in mankind’s evolution including
the tendency to make war and to have as many children as possible
were still a part of human nature, inherent in “”[o]ur primitive old
genes”” even after they had been outmoded by new historical
developments. Wilson concluded by accusing the collective of a
“”self-righteous vigilantism”” which suppresses free inquiry.26

These accusations and counter-accusations would be played out
many times by Wilson and his most vehement left-wing critics and
would proceed to the extent of a physical attack on Wilson by having
a pitcher of water dumped on his head at the annual meeting of the
AAAS in 1977.27 The points at issue would remain, however, i.e.
whether sociobiology was a valid scientific field or a projection of
bias onto scattered and indefinite patterns of evidence, the apparently
conservative ethical and political implications of social biology,
and whether culture or biology were more important determinants
of human behavior. In the meantime, more extensive attacks were
being prepared by critics who were less in a hurry and prepared to
make detailed, book lengths arguments against social biology.

The first notable book length response was anthropologist
Marshall Sahlins’s The Use and Abuse of Biology28 which has gone
through nine printings, four in hardcover and five in paperback.
Sahlins’ book countered the claim that biological causes were
sufficient to explain human behavior with the counter-claim that the
foundations of human behavior are cultural.29 Sahlins’ book could be
seen as engaging social biology in an academic turf battle, since it is
one of the signal claims of social biology that this new science will
eventually subsume all the social sciences within them. It is in this
fashion that social biology is said to be reductive, in that it assumes
that eventually there will be no independent causal agents required
to explain all animal and human behavior except biological agencies.
30 Sahlins’ book is not overtly political in that its motive ostensibly
is to deny the validity of the methodology of social biology;
however, Sahlins’ stance is that of the social scientist who, like Marx,
believes that it is not enough to explain the world, rather the social
scientists must work to change it as well.31

Sahlins interposes culture as a non-reductive agency created by
human beings between the basic biological causes described by
social biology and the overt behavior of human beings. “”In sum, the
sociobiological reasoning from evolutionary phylogeny to social
morphology is interrupted by culture.””32 Sahlins takes rhetorical and
logical advantage of the “”space”” that may be said to exist in the social
biological account between genes and evolutionary processes on one
hand, and intentional human behavior on the other, for if humans,
or other animals, are less inclined to sacrifice themselves for a
stranger than a family member, this is surely not because they
consciously do the mental calculation that factors genetic closeness—
referred to scientifically as the “”r”” relationship33—before
performing or not performing the sacrificial act. Sahlins claims that
there is no evidentiary case for a connection between genetic
closeness and the actual occurrence of altruistic behavior, and
provides counter-examples from the observations of social scientists
in the field.34 Sahlins takes his stand on kin relationships, and the
largest chapter in this short book consists of his attempt to overturn
the sociobiological doctrine of “”kin selection.”” The subject of kin
relations is an especially clear field on which anthropologists and
social biologists can do intellectual battle, for kin relations are
essential objects for both fields of inquiry and much evidence can be
brought forth from both sides. Sahlins offers examples from various
tribes in which altruistic acts, i.e. those which do not immediately
help the actor, is explained not by genetic closeness but by a set of
socially constructed rules. Sahlins concludes that the practices of
these peoples contradicts in a variety of complex ways the simplistic
picture given by sociobiologists that altruistic acts depend upon
solely the “”r”” factor.

In the last two chapters of Abuse, Sahlins renders an anthropological
portrait of sociobiology as a reflection of the capitalist
economic structure of Western civilization; Darwin borrowed not
only from Malthus, it appears, but also from Adam Smith. Sahlins’
critical points are well taken and precisely argued, however he
elevates the function and autonomy of culture to an extreme degree
that resembles the autonomy and control given by social biologists
to genes and natural selection. Tellingly, the first social scientist that
Sahlins criticizes in his book is Bronislaw Malinowski who was not
a biologist but an anthropologist. Malinowski’s anthropological
theory was functional, looking to classify the social habits and mores
he studied as reflections of a general pattern of human existence
according to how such social patterns serve essential human wants
and needs.35 But so intent is Sahlins on making culture independent
of common human needs or common human nature that he attacks
Malinowski’s “”functionalism”” even though it is not biology dependent,
making the reader wonder how far Sahlins is willing to go in
separating culture from not only biology, but from any discovery of
common traits of humanity.

A peculiar aspect of the left-wing attack on social biology is that
several of the best known critics are themselves biologists who,
aware that the advent of social biology presents a real challenge to
their ideology, have responded by elaborating on the explanatory
aspects of their own field of biology. The best known example of this
approach is Not In Our Genes36 published in 1984 by three politically
active scientists, Richard Lewontin (who signed the initial
letter to the New York Review, attacking Sociobiology), Steven Rose
and Leon Kamin. This book provides a full-length treatment of
several different topics in current biology which have social implications.
The book’s early chapters deal generally with the topic of
biological determinism and its application to human society, putting
the subject in the historical context of bourgeois attitudes and
updating the subject by linking the new developments in biology
directly with the recent rise of right-wing political movements in
England and the United States. In this way, the authors move to
discredit scientific reductionism by associating it with that class
traditionally thought by leftist social critics to be the beneficiaries of
oppression, i.e. the bourgeoisie. Following this general discussion
are separate chapters on the biological basis (or lack thereof) of
inequality measured by intelligence tests, on patriarchy and the
biology of gender roles in society, on psychiatry including a separate
chapter on schizophrenia, and on sociobiology pictured as the total
synthesis of all the false and politically motivated arguments for the
biological basis of inherent social inequality. There is a final chapter
in which the authors attempt to provide a theoretical basis for a new
biology with egalitarian social implications, and in this article I will
deal with the chapter on sociobiology and the final chapter.

The chapter on sociobiology starts by putting the development
of sociobiology in a historical context: “”Not since Hobbes’s Leviathan
has there been such an ambitious program to explain and
prescribe for the entire human condition beginning with a few basic
principles.”” The chapter proceeds to place sociobiology in a contemporary
context, claiming that its appeal is in its legitimization of the
status quo, i.e. of a society that is hierarchical, entrepreneurial and
competitive.37 This point is not new, but the authors proceed to
criticize sociobiology in terms of scientific explanation, attacking its
complete reliance on evolutionary selection as if it were the only
significant factor in biological development and, the authors claim,
as if natural selection always acted to produce the best kind of
organism or behavior possible in a given set of ecological or social
circumstances (“”optimality””). The authors then proceed to attack the
reductionism of sociobiology, claiming that biological reductionism
in general appeals to bourgeois social scientists desperate to place
their insufficiently precise theories, e.g., sociobiology, on a firm
scientific basis. The central place in the attack on sociobiology is
given to a three part criticism, of its portrayal of human nature, of its
claim of the innateness of human behavior, and of genetic determinism.
Of interest is the section “”Adaptive Stories,””38 which attacks the
way seemingly non-adaptive social behaviors are explained by sociobiology.
Such types of human behavior as homosexuality, selfsacrifice
or voluntary celibacy are not obviously adaptive, and
sociobiologists have had to construct intricate theoretical accounts
including “”kin selection”” and “”reciprocal altruism”” to explain how
such behaviors increase the probability of a person transmitting
his or her genes. An example would be that homosexual behavior,
while preventing the possibility of transmitting a person’s genes
directly, nonetheless benefits his or her gene pool because
homosexuals assist in the rearing of nieces and nephews with
whom they share one fourth of their genes. The authors criticize
such “”just so”” stories on the basis that they show more ingenuity
than persuasive logic and, in truth, sociobiology is vulnerable on
this point. In their discussion, the authors assume that sociobiologists
posit individual genes for each type of behavior even though
lately social biologists have denied this.

#page#

The final chapter, “”New Biology Versus Old Ideology”” presents
a theory which attempts to deal with the consequences of
reductive explanations in biology and in the nature/nurture controversy.
Not content with gene/culture interactionism as a
possible compromise because it reifies these two competing
elements, the authors present a theory that three levels of
causality must be considered in assessing any biological phenomenon:
the holistic or systems level, the descriptively biological
level, and the base reductive level of chemical and physical
explanations. In the instance of a jumping frog, the systems level
would explain why the frog jumped from a lily pad into the water,
perhaps to chase a fly; the biological level which provides the most
pertinent explanation, would explain the jump in terms of a muscle
twitch in the frog’s legs as a results of neurotransmission from its
brain; the base reductive level explains the jump in terms of
chemical reactions within the muscle.39 Such an account is less
ontological and more dialectical, and serves the authors as a
model to deal with the mind/brain dichotomy and the assumed
tension between the individual and society. “”What characterizes
human development and actions is that they are the consequence
of an immense array of interacting and intersecting causes.””40

Another left-wing criticism which remains influential is the
book by the late evolutionary writer Stephen J. Gould, The
Mismeasure of Man,41 which won the National Book Critics Circle
Award and was cited in a recent survey as one of the one hundred
most important books of the last century. It does not directly
confront the advent of social biology but rather makes an historical
analysis of what Gould deems are examples of prejudiced science in
the study of mankind from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Gould deals with such figures as Louis Agassiz, the last well known
naturalist to oppose Darwin’s theory of evolution, Paul Broca who
made a study of cranial capacity and correlated brain size to
intelligence, Alfred Binet who invented the IQ test, and Cyril Burt
who “”reified”” intelligence. Despite its historical nature, Gould’s
book points directly at the contemporary political issues of biology
and human nature as he makes clear,42 for one of its constant features
is the imputation of racist, misogynist and classist motives to the
figures he studies. Gould’s egalitarianism is profound and relentless,
refusing even to recognize the possibility of inherent differences
between individuals and among groups based on biology. Rather, he
attributes the belief in inherent human differences as the result of
persistent fallacies in Western thinking starting with the Greeks,
namely the tendency to reify and then rank entities.43

In the “”Introduction””, Gould explains that his object is to attack
the myth of biological determinism, especially as it refers to the
quality of the human intellect. He avers that biological determinism
directly reflects the prejudices of the upper classes and states that
genetic determinism in recent times is an extension of the same
motive as seen in ancient times. Gould cites Plato’s Republic and the
doctrine of the noble lie as a prime origin of this technique: “”This
book is about the scientific version of Plato’s tale.””44 Despite the
historical context, Gould is more concerned with the status of
modern empirical science, especially biology, as the truth teller of
our time, for while Plato’s Socrates admits the truth about the noble
lie, that it is a propagandistic myth, the claim of modern empirical
science is that it has a guaranteed method of determining the truth.

Gould faces the consequence of the claim that social biology is
scientific and objective and that objections to it are fruitless. Determinists
have often invoked the traditional prestige of science as
objective knowledge, free from social and political taint. They
portray themselves as purveyors of harsh truth and their opponent
as sentimentalists, ideologues and wishful thinkers.””45 To counter
this claim, Gould unhesitatingly aims attacks the foundations of
scientific thought: “”I criticize the myth that science itself is an
objective enterprise.””46 Since he is a scientist himself, however, this
puts Gould in a bind since he is professionally committed to the ideal
that science tells the truth about objective reality. Gould states both
sides of the dilemma, first, in order to explain its support for
politically incorrect conclusions, science “”must be understood as a
social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise”” and that much of its
“”change through time does not reflect a closer approach to absolute
truth.”” However Gould also rejects “”the purely relativistic claim that
scientific change only reflects modifications of social contexts, that
truth is a meaningless notion outside cultural assumptions.””47 Gould
is therefore left with the task of providing detailed examinations of
the claims of biological determinists in order to show at what point
their alleged scientific evidence and reasoning led to the justification
of eugenics and sterilization, the oppression of women and blacks,
and the belief that such a thing as “”intelligence”” exists and could be
accurately tested in individuals.

In the first half of the book, Gould deals with early attempts to
understand human nature biologically which included systematically
comparing apes to human criminal types, and devising a scale
which enabled scientists to rank the various races of man in terms of
evolutionary development. Gould’s tone in these early sections is
derisory and judgmental, as if by exposing the blatant prejudices of
these scientists, he is presenting a kind of horror show for the
titillation of his more enlightened audience. He presents, for example,
the racial ideas of the foremost naturalist of his time and an
honored professor at Harvard (a building is named for him) Louis
Agassiz which indicate that he thought that blacks evolved separately
from whites, a theory termed polygeny. What Gould is mainly
concerned with is Agassiz’s negative attitude and suggested policies
towards blacks; he was for legal equality but did not think blacks
were or should be the social equals of whites. Gould never puts this
opinion in an historical context, leaving the reader to judge entirely
from a contemporary mind-set which is not only anachronistic but
unfair. It would have been useful to note that Agassiz’s belief that
civil rights for black slaves should be limited to legal equality was the
same as Abraham Lincoln’s, and that to be in favor of merely legal
equality in 19th Century America was to be in favor abolition and
civil war. As if to show what happens to the politically incorrect,
Gould says of Agassiz’s last years that “”his world collapsed during
the last decade of his life”” in part due to his refusal to accept
Darwinism, thus “”standing firm in his antiquated beliefs.””48

In the second half of MM, Gould embarks on a close analysis of
the development of IQ testing and what he terms the “”reification”” of
intelligence. Here he presents a fairly detailed historical account of
the work of Binet, Terman and others who made IQ testing a
national phenomenon in the early 20th Century, pointing out how
it was used to discriminate against immigrants. Gould gives the
most attention to his last case, that of the English psychologist
and hereditarian, Sir Cyril Burt who was famous for so-called
“”twin studies”” in which identical twins reared apart were tested for
their mental ability. The correlations were so close as to all but
cinch the case for a very high degree of heritability of intelligence;
however, Gould, following other scholars, takes it as proven that
at least in his later studies, Burt faked his evidence and never had
the sample of 57 sets of twins whom he claimed to have tested.49
Gould, once having made this point, goes on to examine Burt’s
“”real error”” which he claims is the reification of intelligence as a
real entity.50 To make his point, Gould goes into a long and
mathematically complex description of “”factor analysis”” which is
the use of statistical correlations from test results to infer that a
unified faculty of intelligence exists, originally devised by British
psychologist Charles Spearman.51 Because it is a statistical method,
Gould is able to raise a series of objections and questions of the
sort that usually arise when statistical correlations are used to
make a case for cause and effect in any controversial area. Thus,
Gould concludes that using the statistical method of factor
analysis to infer a single, gradable faculty of intelligence, and then
asserting that this faculty is innate and largely unaffected by
culture is the major error of Burt and his school (including Arthur
Jensen) since it is based on questionable mathematics, inegalitarian
presumptions and social prejudice.

Gould felt obliged to revise The Mismeasure of Man in 1996 by
the addition of a long introduction and two concluding chapters,
leaving the original text largely intact. The “”immediate prod for this
revised version”” was the publication of The Bell Curve by Herrnstein
and Murray, and Gould’s desire that the expanded version of his
book should constitute “”a response to this latest cyclic episode of
biological determinism.””52 The expanded version reprints the two
reviews of The Bell Curve written by Gould, one of which appeared
originally in the New Yorker. Two brief points are worth making
about Gould’s response. First, Gould was so evidently appalled by
the reappearance of, as he saw it, scientific racism that his remarks
on The Bell Curve are remarkably personal in his description of his
own leftist political commitments and remarkably vitriolic in their
attack on the rhetoric, statistical methodology and inferred agenda
of his object of wrath. However, secondly, it is possible that Gould
missed the point of The Bell Curve which is not an attack on welfare
programs (Murray had already attacked the utility of welfare in his
book Losing Ground) or a defense of racial profiling based on I.Q.
levels, but rather a warning against social stratification based on
intelligence.

Gould concludes his main text by defending the positive merits
of debunking and arguing for a concept of “”biological potentiality
versus biological determinism.”” He argues in a manner traditional in
these debates that cultural evolution has displaced biological evolution
in the formation of human characteristics, stating that the
evolution of the human brain did not have a strictly adaptive
function. “”Flexibility is the hallmark of human evolution,”” he writes.53
Gould adds the argument that biology has passed beyond the earlier
notion that individual bodily characteristics are determined one-onone
by single genes to a broader understanding that bodily characteristics
are influenced by a combination of genes, and therefore
neither are behavioral characteristics determined by a single gene.54
He is particularly intent on disposing of the notion that social biology
has produced evidence that there exists a constant human nature,
including such aspects as male dominance, aggressiveness, etc.
stating that sociobiologists have, in effect, made a category mistake.55

Gould is entrapped in a dilemma of resting his whole intellectual
and academic career on Darwinism but refusing to acknowledge the
evidence and conclusions that social biology draws from evolutionary,
ethological and behavioral evidence. Surely some of the large
mass of research that constitutes the scientific basis of social biology
must have validity, but his criticisms remain too broad to make the
necessary distinctions and he never fully resolved the issue. Even
though later in his career Gould would go on to argue in a wider and
more detailed manner about the nature of evolutionary explanation,
he never presented his political and methodological criticisms in one
integrated work.

From the Right: Opportunity and Dilemma

Response from the right to the advent of social biology was slow
in coming even though it promised scientific support for one of
the most strongly held of conservative doctrines: the constancy of
human nature throughout history which exhibited characteristics of
self-interest, sexual differentiation, acquisitiveness, aggression and
social hierarchy, characteristics which social engineering could
affect only marginally if at all. This reluctance was probably due to
right wing suspicion of modern science as an engine of the more
disturbing aspects of the Enlightenment including its tendency
toward materialism, determinism and atheism, and also because of
the technical issues presented by social biology which required
education in the arcana of gene pools, kin selection and the genetic
links between biology and behavior. In truth, there is a large deposit
of writing and thinking about biology and behavior in the traditional
writings on which conservatives rely—most particularly those of
Aristotle—but these discussions are written in humanistic and
philosophic rather than in modern scientific terms. It also took some
time for right wing intellectuals to overcome a resistance to evolutionary
theory since it meant turning from Aristotelian teleology
which infused much conservative thinking to the unfamiliar and cold
regions of Darwinism and the mechanism characteristic of modern
science. Despite this, there seems to have existed a general sense
of the conservative implications of social biology from its beginnings
which, detected much sooner by the left, had made it a target
of their attacks.

An early mention of sociobiology by a conservative writer came
in Paul Johnson’s popular history of the twentieth century, Modern
Times published in 1983. In its first chapter, “”A Relativistic World,””
Johnson uses a prominent scientific discovery as a leitmotif of the
entire work, namely Einstein’s Theory of Relativity which Johnson
portrays ominously as the unintended cause of the moral relativism
that underlay the crimes and brutalities that characterize twentiethcentury
history.57 In the last chapter, “”Palimsests of Freedom””
however, he portrays sociobiology in a positive manner, as a counter
to the social sciences whose influence Johnson stated was a part of
the reason that the twentieth century had “”turned into an age of
horror or, as some would say, evil.””58 Johnson, as a late twentieth
century conservative, was fearful of the power of the totalitarian state
and saw the misuse of allegedly scientific theories as an integral part
of the malignant growth of state power. In particular, Social Darwinism,
Marxism, and Freudianism, he states, are invalid extensions of
scientific theories, especially the theory of evolution; but as Johnson
points out, Darwin never approved of either Marxism—which
ended in the murderous regimes of Stalin and Mao—or of Social
Darwinism, which “”terminated in Hitler’s holocaust.””59

As indicated by his references to relativity at the beginning of his
large book and of contemporary social science and biology at the end
of it, Johnson has great respect for the power of scientific ideas,
seeing them as integral parts of the cultural and political history of
modern times. He portrays the development of sociobiology as a
positive influence since it provides a scientific basis for the view that
“”minds and mental attitudes evolved like bodies, and that behaviour
could be studied like other organic properties, by means of comparative
genealogies and evolutionary analysis.”” He calls Wilson’s Sociobiology
“”a masterly book,”” which “”aroused the same kind of fury as
Darwin’s Origin of Species. It offended a range of vested interests:
not the churches, this time, but the radical social scientists”” whose
“”academic imperialism”” and policy of “”indoctrination”” Johnson
attacks.60 Johnson is deeply concerned with what he sees as the
dominance of the academic left in the study of politics, society and
the humanities, citing the vehemence of their attacks on sociobiology
in this regard, but Johnson, like more recent conservative
writers, sees a ready response to the mind-set of the left in the
developments of contemporary social biology.

A subsequent work by two conservative scholars also dealt with
developments in social biology and the social sciences. The
Conservative Movement61 by Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming
is a brief but penetrating and unsentimental description of the
conservative movement by two prominent conservative scholars
which concentrates less on politics and economic theory than on
cultural and intellectual concerns. The authors include a chapter
on how conservative ideas fare in the academy which points out
that conservative ideas are all but systematically excluded, but
that headway was being made in opposition to the dominance of
left wing ideas by developments in science. Gottfried and Fleming,
unlike Johnson, do not condemn all of social science, but instead
see certain contemporary developments as supporting the conservative
attack against the dominance of left-wing ideas. Contrasting
these new developments against the ideas of John Dewey
and other progressives which presume the infinite malleability of
individual human nature, the authors cite the work of theoretical
linguist Noam Chomsky who insists that there “”are structures in
language (syntax, for example) which are universal.””62 Despite the
reputation of the social sciences as a redoubt of left-wing ideas,
the sociological theories of Robert Nisbet and George Homans as
well as research on human emotions and cognitive science, give
evidence that human nature is, in large part, a given, with innate
structures of mind as well as body. The authors conclude, “”[t]here
are obvious implications for a conservative worldview. Human
mental life and (by implication) social institutions are not infinitely
plastic; they are rooted in the structures of the mind which
is, itself, conditioned by the organic development of the brain.””63
However, they lament, “”[f]ew (if any) conservatives took note.””

The culmination of these “”rebel”” movements in the academy
was the publication of Wilson’s Sociobiology,64 which was based
upon the pioneering ethnographic research of figures such as
Lorenz and Ardrey, and the development of genetic cost benefit
analysis by Trivers and Hamilton, and Dawkins “”who offered the
most radical statement of this position.””65 What the authors refer to
as “”The New Synthesis”” gives a portrayal of human nature as a
constant feature of political existence which is in itself much more
determined by inner biological causes than is assumed by left-wing
academics who prefer to think that human social characteristics are
externally determined social constructs. It is the content of this
biologically given human nature which inspires outright “”hatred”” by
its opponents on the left, for as Gottfried and Fleming describe it,
human nature, limited by genetic constraints, is male dominant,
aggressive, hierarchical and selfish, i.e. directed by the desire for
individual survival. They state that the “”Christian view of human
nature is very similar”” and refer to the doctrine of Original Sin66, by
which they presumably mean that that the Christian view is that
human nature is deeply if not inherently flawed, tending to the
selfish rather than the altruistic. The authors point out that the
nature of human sex roles is the most controversial topic taken up by
social biology67 even as evidence mounts from comparative studies
of distributed intelligence that men do better in mathematics while
women do better in verbal articulation, and as anthropological
studies give evidence that the differential roles of women as home
makers and child rearers and of men as warriors and hunters is
constant across cultures. The authors bemoan the fact that with
some pronounced exceptions including Paul Johnson, Thomas
Molnar and Gertrude Himmelfarb, conservatives rejected or ignored
the discoveries of social biology, even as the left, including
Lewontin and Gould, subjected them to withering and often unfair
attack. “”Not in Our Genes and (all the essays and anthologies
churned out in the late seventies) was a clear sign that implicitly
conservative ideas were not covered by academic freedom.””68

Even while decrying the lack of conservative appreciation and
utilization of social biology, one of the authors was at the same time
attempting to remedy this lack. In 1988 Thomas Fleming published
The Politics of Human Nature which remains to this day the
only explicitly conservative book-length treatment of social biology
and compatible developments in the social sciences. The book
is somewhat quirky but penetrating and readable, as Fleming
applies his talent as an essayist and acute observer of the contemporary
scene with his background as a classicist, well up on the
political theory of Aristotle and the literature of ancient Greece
and Rome. The book begins by stating that the collapse of the
Roman Empire “”created a crisis from which political thinking has
never quite recovered[,]””69 indicating that Fleming’s theoretical
stance regarding politics is classical and pre-modern, and that it
is from that stance that he will analyze contemporary events.

#page#

Fleming combines his pre-modern politics with evidence
from current social science and sociobiology, arguing that just as
Aristotle and a succession of other political theorists including
Maine, Filmer and Lord Kames relied on descriptions of human
nature as it actually appeared from contemporary evidence, so
also current politics should proceed from the best scientific
evidence about human nature. Fleming applies discoveries from
sociobiology and current social science to political subjects
including gender roles, the relationship between the individual
and society, and the most natural form of politics which Fleming
claims is local and federal. He rejects all contract theories,
pointing to the anthropological, historical and recent scientific
evidence that no individual ever lived in a so-called “”state of
nature”” prior to the evolution of social forms.70 Rather, human
nature, Fleming states, is inherently social which is the most
significant discovery he takes from sociobiology, along with the
discovery that there is in fact a constant human nature which
perseveres throughout human history. Fleming’s view is not that
of a Libertarian but of a social conservative, and he denies the
assertion that the theory of evolution supports an individualistic
political theory despite the example of Spencer and other social
Darwinians.

Fleming contrasts the naturalness of the family and the manifestly
social character of human nature against the abstractions of
modern political theory, demanding that the priority of the real
should prevail over the theories of the modern contract philosophers
and contemporary multiculturalist, feminist, and Libertarian scholars.
These, following Liberal contract theory, are able to posit a
“”state of nature”” by inventing an account of egalitarian or female
dominated cultures that supposedly pre-existed modern society in
the West; “”…a philosopher can use the state of nature as a mirror to
his own picture of reality.””71 In denying the validity of contract
theory, Fleming also denies its implied doctrines of universal natural
rights and egalitarianism. His analysis especially applies to the role
of women and family life, to which Fleming devotes several chapters
stating the traditional but now controversial doctrine that women are
naturally adapted to the home and nurturing. This assertion puts
him in direct conflict with contemporary academic mores; however
Fleming also asserts that, as a result of mechanization and advanced
capitalism, women have lost authority and power in society that they
formerly had.72

Fleming offers as an alternative to contract theory his own theory
of evolution, a theory of political as well as biological evolution which
combines historical, anthropological and political elements along
with those of social biology. Pointing out that we really do not know
much about the earliest appearance of mankind, he states that “”we
are not…a solitary species,”” and that, “”to the extent that man is man,
he lives in families.””73 Under the pressure from competition from
other families or small groups, family structures evolve into states
which have a “”greater need for direction and for the institutionalization
of leadership.””74 The next step in social evolution is from the
biological to the cultural, since for human beings, “”cultural evolution
has replaced biological evolution.”” Here, Fleming refers to a geneculture
interaction model but wants to make it clear that cultural
evolution is based on biological evolution, not merely because of
constraints put on culture by biological necessity, but because
human culture has a genetic and adaptive basis so that the process
of selection applies “”both in the form of gene-culture interaction and
in the spread of successful institutions and innovations.”” Fleming
explains the development from tribal societies to advanced civilizations
by referring to cognitive development within the human
species, so that social innovations will not only have to provide
adaptive “”utility”” but be “”consistent with our mental organization….””
75 There is a drive to advancement in social organization
which reflects an inherent “”code or strategy”” so that we should not
regard tribal societies as more “”natural”” than ours, since this
attitude would “”treat the extraordinary reproductive success of
advanced civilizations as a fluke.””76 Fleming implies that social
innovations and advancements act in societies in competition
with each other as do mutations within a species; they can give a
reproductive advantage which then spreads throughout a society
giving it an advantage in competition with other societies.

Fleming has given a natural account of social evolution which
while having a regard for culture and mind, stays as close to the
biological account as possible. It is a significant accomplishment,
since the usual effect of introducing cultural evolution at the point
that the human race makes its appearance on the evolutionary timeline
is to let loose the kind of abstract descriptions of self-invented
human attributes that includes doctrines of natural rights and edenic
beginnings. However, one reviewer (the present author), while
praising the book, stated that there is an “”important difference””
between what sociobiology and social science say about human
nature as opposed to the ideals of a traditional conservatism, “”for
although the patterns of evidence may be said to ‘support’ or ‘mirror’
conservative social ideals, they are not identical to them.”” Further,
“”the laws of evolution that describe human behavior do not reach the
level of natural law.”” Fleming, however, prefers a more naturalistic
concept of natural law which reflects immediately the evidence of
human nature, a position he refers to as “”natural politics.””77

Another noteworthy attempt to base conservative politics on
social biology is a long article in 1997 written by law professor John
O. McGinnis. The fact that the article appeared in National Review,
the most widely read journal of the American right, indicates that
conservatives had come to accept the possibility that social biology
can be used to support a conservative theory of politics. “”The Origin
of Conservatism”” begins by asserting that the social sciences have
“”turned to evolutionary biology to draw an ever more precise and
powerful description of the human nature that generates all cultures.””
Further, since the results of these discoveries are “”now
seeping into the public consciousness…any political movement that
hopes to be successful must come to terms with the second rise of
Darwinism.”” McGinnis’s essay proceeds in an optimistic manner
to detail “”seven concepts that are essential to the Darwinian
picture of man”” the logic of which when “”applied to human affairs
turns out to bolster major tenets of mainstream conservatism.””78
Here are the seven concepts:

1. Human nature is self-interested, always grasping for status
and property as a means for survival which implies the inevitability
of exchange among individuals, the development of social hierarchies
and the need for government regulation.

2. Kin selection, which implies that the family is “”a natural unit
of society”” and that “”family affections are not mere social constructs.””

3. Sexual differentiations, which imply that women have a
heavier investment in their children than do men. Human children
require so much care and support over so long a time that the state
has a strong interest in supporting marriage since family obligations
serve to “”counteract the more roving nature of the male.””

4. Reciprocal altruism, which because it genetically impels
human beings to perform selfless acts for one another, serves to
cement small groups of people together. However, reciprocal altruism
also leads to factionalism which the conservative strategy of
federalism obviates. The state therefore should not provide access to
too many goods via legislation and redistribution since this will
increase the appetite of interest groups for influence and government
largesse.

5. Deception, which occurs throughout nature in the form of
camouflage and mimicry; in humans the capacity for language
heightens the ability to deceive other human beings, requiring in
turn the facility to detect deception. Politicians deceive by means of
a “”commanding presence, a compassionate demeanor, and rhetorical
virtuosity”” which are evolutionarily designed mechanisms.

6. Natural inequality, particularly in intelligence which “”undermines
the basic premise of liberal egalitarianism: that it is possible
to equalize outcomes….”” The greatest threat to a democracy is that
men unequal in their ability to acquire property will find political
means of expropriating the property of those who have the talent to
attain prosperity.

7. The fragile and divided self which arises from the fact that the
self “”is jury-rigged from different mechanisms from our evolutionary
past.”” The sexual self is not continuous with the rational and
acquisitive self, which directly challenges the “”liberal project of
protecting the sphere of sexual autonomy from regulation while
heavily regulating exchange of resources.””79

In general, McGinnis is concerned with establishing a link
between sociobiology and two main themes of conservative thought
including the family unit and private property. He answers religious
objections to Darwinism by stating, much like Gottfried and Fleming,
that the “”description of man that emerges from evolut