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The Transformation of Human Sociobiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Philip Kitcher
Philip Kitcher*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Extract

Critics of human sociobiology need a new image. Intense as the joys of strangling infant sciences may be, they do eventually fade, leaving a desire to nurture some more healthy enterprise. In this essay, I shall attempt to complement the critique given in my (1985) by offering a blueprint for the transformation of human sociobiology.

I start with a point that seems to me essential for understanding the complex of issues surrounding sociobiology: sociobiology is highly diverse. Restricting our attention to what I have called “narrow sociobiology” (Kitcher 1985, p. 115), the application of ideas from evolutionary biology to the study of animal social behavior, we find a range of studies and programs that differ in scope, rigor, and intention. Almost everyone who is concerned with the evolution and function of social behavior pays homage to Darwin (for exceptions, see Ho and Saunders 1984), but this common commitment that covers thinkers as diverse as Richard Lewontin and E. O. Wilson provides no grand conclusion about the nature of sociality in humans or in animals generally.

Type
Part III. Sociobiology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 63 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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