DOCSLIB.ORG

Hunlall Ethology Newsletter

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hunlall Ethology Newsletter Hunlall Ethology Newsletter Editor: Glenn Weisfeld Depm1ment of Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Ml48202 USA 1-313-577-2835 (office) 577-8596 (lab), 577-2801 (messages), 577-7636 (Fax), 393-2403 (home) VOLUME 8, ISSUE I ISSN 0739-2036 MARCH 1993 Published by the InternatirmCl! Societ)' .for Human Ethology PROMOTE OUR NEWSLETTER SOCIETY NEWS Please ask your university 1ibrarJ' to entcr L1 CALL FOR NOMINATIONS subscription to the Human Ethology Newsletter. The institutionnl rate is given on the last page. Once you have done thal, please show the newsletter to Nominations are still open for President, Vicc- colleagues (students and faculty) who might be PresidentlPrcsidcnt-Elect. and Treasurer of ISHE. interested in joining lSI-IE. If we cun get some new Plc[lse scnd them to Nancy Segal, Membership Chair, members, we may be able to increase the length of Dept. of Psychology, California State University, the newsletter, since 1110rc articles nnd book reviews Fullerton, CA 92634 USA, CDX 1-714-773-2209. nre being received than previously. Remember that Self-nominations arc encoumgcd. Include nominee's this (Ivlarch) isstu: is the first of Lhe year, so this is a nddress nnd telephone number if possible. Terms good time to begin onc's subscription. Members also begin 1993-94. [f'ccivc a copy of the Mcmbcrship Director). ------- -_.------ This photo of some of the participants in the ISHE convention in Amsterdam last July Was kindly provided by HermDn Dienske. Page 2 of infonnntion systems in socinl eonlliet were also (lnalyzcd. REPORT OF VISIT TO The second report was "Tomalnla Mnlubona ANDECHS BY CRIMEAN [IS a rvlirror of the Trobriand Islands Culture." This ETI-IOLOGISTS Trobriander, called "Tom," graciously consented to be interviewed nnd observed repeatedly, <lnd to complete somc projective drawings for us. Wc tried tn By Vidol' P. Samohvalov and Vitalit), 1. EgOlUV, undcrstnnd how his behavior revealed univcrsallnws Dept of Psychiatry, Cril11ean tvfcdical Institute and as well <IS the characteristics of his homeland. Crimean Association of I-Tuman Ethology and Sociobiology, Simfcropol, Crimea 333000, Ukraine The third report wns "Mother-Infnnt Interaction: A Cross·Cultural Perspective." Using prom Oct. 11 to Dec. 3, 1992 \Ve lwei the Eibl's films, we nnalyzed these interactions in rive pleasure of visiting and working at the Institute of cullures: Trobrianders, Eipo, Yanomami, Tasaday Human Ethology of the Max-Planck Society, and 1Iirnbn. Culluml similarities and differences in Andechs, Germany. We were invited by the Director l"acilll expreSSIOns, postures, gestures, and of the Institute, Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfcldt. mallipuhltor)' activity were studied. Dr, Barbara Nicdncr helped prepiHC (his report. For many years ours was the only research group studying human ethology in the formcr USSR We 11llpC 10 pursue Curther collnborntivc (sec Dec. 1991 HEN). The "Iron Curtain" was cffi.1rlS with our colleagues in Andechs concerning pierced by Willinl11 D. Hamilton in 1990 ilnd by Eibl- crflss-cultural Illcthod5 <:lnd psychopathological EibesfeJdt in 199], who were the first foreign bchllVior. participants in our annual meetings. These meetings began in 1984 l1nd hl1d to be held in underground conditions due to prevailing politicnl [tnd idcoJogicnl circumstances. BOOK REVm""VS After surmounting numerous bureaucratic barriers wc came to Andcchs . thc henrt of hUn1nn \Ve <lfe t"ortunllte to have two rcvlcws of the ethology. Throughout our visit we were received following book. with great warmth and atlention by all scientists working there. Consequently we were able to begin Aggression and Peacefulness in Humans and Other many collaborative projects. Prof. Schicfcnhovel Primates. Edited by James Silverberg and J. Patriek e;.;plained some of the problems in conducting cross· Gray (1992). New York, Oxford: Oxford University cultuml research, using his work with the Trobriander Press, 310 pages, $55.00. and Eipo cultures as examples. Similarly, Dr. Herzog discussed Yanomami culture with us. Dr. Wiessner Reviewed by Ronald Bacnningcr hc!pcd us to understand some cultural traditions of Department of Psyehology the lKo Bushmen. Dr. Heunemann offered to help us Temple University work with film. Dr. Sehleidt discussed quantitative Philadelphia, PA 19122 USA. ethological methods with us, ilnd Dr. Wojtenek explained computer nnalysis of behavior. Drs. The stimulus for this hook was the Seville Sutterlin and Krell also provided valuable assistance. Statement on Violence that was signed on May 16, We also had some useful discussions of applying 1986 by a group of twenty biobehavioral scientists in ethological ideas and methods to human Seville. They eoneluded "that biology does not psychopathology, especially with Prof. Detlev Ploog. condemn humanity to war, and that humanity can be freed from the bondage of biological pessimism nnd As a result of our work in Andechs, we empowered with confidence to undertake the prepared three reports for our Institute. In the first, transformative tasks needed by a species "The Ethology of Poverty," we discussed the rapidly "capable of inventing peace". Signatories included changing situation in the former USSR. Ontogenetic, Jose Delgado, Robert Hinde, Richard Leakey and phylogenetic, and historical models were suggested John Paul Scott, people who have devoted goodly for analyzing poverty behavior, especially portions of their lives to studying the antecedents and compensatory mechanisms. Depression and the role consequences of aggressive behavior. One of the Page 3 many international responses to this Statement the emerging view that aggressive behavior may play (reprinted in the appendix of this volume) was a structuring role in long-ternl social relationships of symposium at the 1987 meeting of the American the kinds that primates have. In the past, a great deal Association for the Advancement of Science by its of rcsearch on aggression has bcen based on the Anthropology Section. With some additional assumption that it is A Bad Thing, something to be contributions and revisions this fascinating book is suppressed or mitigated whenever it appears, De the result of that symposium. Waal has argued very persuasively that more positive, prosocial consequences may also stem from For the past 15 years I have served as Editor aggression and fighting. Reconciliation and acts that of a multi-disciplinary journal called Aggressive reassure do occur in groups of chimpanzees and Behavior. To me, one of the most fascinating things such interactions do much to affinn, about this book Aggression and Peacefulness in stabilize, and reinforce reilltionships that are valuable Humans and other Primates, is how unacquainted I to the A great many human divorces am \vith the contributors and their work: I have met could be avoided if the participants had learned ways only one of the thirteen, whereas 1 know half of the to end disagreements without destroying their twenty signatories of the Seville Statement That is relationships. Such behaviofJure good examples of a statistica(ly significant difference which I mention how effective negative reinforcement can be; the only to emphasize how scientists live in relative reduction of tension and fighting bet\','ecn individuals isolation from each other, even when our research is increases the likelihood of effective conciliat(,f)' on a topic of such universal importance. Most of the bchaviors. In particular, de Wanl describes her., some contributors to this book are anthropologists; I wish evidence that a kind of "moralistic" aggre<':3lOn may more anthropologists would send manuscripts to my promote both egalitarian food sharing mer;hanisffii3nd journal (we do have u well-known primatologist on socialization of young rhesus monkey:::, our board). These people have really interesting datu to report. Sade's chapter presents a mathematical treatment of dominance (lhe non-linear kind) in My other general impression of this book is rhesus monkeys. Baldwin presents interesting data on how resolutely the authors have avoided even squirrel monkeys from which he derives a number of mentioning the Seville Statement on Violence. Only hypotheses about determinants of aggression in this the editors and Frans de Waul discuss its strcngths New World species. Belonging to male groups is and weaknesses, or its relevance to what we know apparently important because mobbing of females about aggression, violence or agonistic interactions. occurs during mating scason, but fcmales also exert The Statement netively asserted that aggression is not a peaceable effect on males by choosing those who the inevitable result of our biology by making five are less aggressive toward them. Stricr describes the statemen15 beginning with the words "It IS causes and consequences of nonaggression in woolly scientifically incorrect. .." that: I) our war-making spider monkcys (a.k.a muriquis), a species in which is inherited from our animal ancestors 2) war or other individuals do not groom each other but do embrace. violence is genetically programmed 3) our evolution Pereira defends the primatalagists' concern with selected for aggressive behavior 4) humans have a dominance relations, and describes how they develop "violent brain", and 5) war is caused by "instinct". in cercopithecinc societies prior to puberty -atopic As they were stated, these negative propositions are that leads quite directly into Strayer's description of so full ofloopholes that any thoughtful scientist could agonistic and affiliative structures
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Strange Survival and Apparent Resurgence of Sociobiology
    This is a repository copy of The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/118157/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Dennis, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-4625-1123 (2018) The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology. History of the Human Sciences, 31 (1). pp. 19-35. ISSN 0952- 6951 https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695117735966 Dennis A. The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology. History of the Human Sciences. 2018;31(1):19-35. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695117735966. Article available under the terms of the CC- BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can’t change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ The strange survival and apparent resurgence of sociobiology Abstract A recent dispute between Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson concerning fundamental concepts in sociobiology is examined.
    [Show full text]
  • Evolution, Politics and Law
    Valparaiso University Law Review Volume 38 Number 4 Summer 2004 pp.1129-1248 Summer 2004 Evolution, Politics and Law Bailey Kuklin Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bailey Kuklin, Evolution, Politics and Law, 38 Val. U. L. Rev. 1129 (2004). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol38/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Valparaiso University Law School at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at [email protected]. Kuklin: Evolution, Politics and Law VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW VOLUME 38 SUMMER 2004 NUMBER 4 Article EVOLUTION, POLITICS AND LAW Bailey Kuklin* I. Introduction ............................................... 1129 II. Evolutionary Theory ................................. 1134 III. The Normative Implications of Biological Dispositions ......................... 1140 A . Fact and Value .................................... 1141 B. Biological Determinism ..................... 1163 C. Future Fitness ..................................... 1183 D. Cultural N orm s .................................. 1188 IV. The Politics of Sociobiology ..................... 1196 A. Political Orientations ......................... 1205 B. Political Tactics ................................... 1232 V . C onclusion ................................................. 1248 I. INTRODUCTION
    [Show full text]
  • Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour
    Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour Kevin N. Laland Gillian R. Brown OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS SN-Prelims (i-xii) 3/4/02 12:22 PM Page i Sense and Nonsense SN-Prelims (i-xii) 3/4/02 12:22 PM Page ii This page intentionally left blank SN-Prelims (i-xii) 3/4/02 12:22 PM Page iii Sense and Nonsense Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour Kevin N. Laland Royal Society University Research Fellow Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour University of Cambridge and Gillian R. Brown Research Scientist Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour University of Cambridge 1 SN-Prelims (i-xii) 3/4/02 12:22 PM Page iv 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States By Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Kevin N. Laland and Gillian R. Brown, 2002 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.
    [Show full text]
  • Rose's Homeodynamic Perspective Is Not an Alternative to Neo-Darwinism
    Andrew J. Wells Rose's homeodynamic perspective is not an alternative to Neo-Darwinism Article (Published version) (Refereed) Original citation: Wells, Andrew J. (1999) Rose's homeodynamic perspective is not an alternative to Neo- Darwinism. Behavioral and brain sciences, 22 (5). pp. 911-912. ISSN 0140-525X DOI:10.1017/S0140525X9951220X © 1999 Cambridge University Press This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/12103/ Available in LSE Research Online: August 2012 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (1999) 22, 871–921 Printed in the United States of America Précis of Lifelines: Biology, freedom, determinism1 Steven Rose Biology Department, Brain and Behaviour Research Group, Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom. [email protected] Abstract: There are many ways of describing and explaining the properties of living systems; causal, functional, and reductive accounts are necessary but no one account has primacy. The history of biology as a discipline has given excessive authority to reductionism, which collapses higher level accounts, such as social or behavioural ones, into molecular ones.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Lewontin (1929-2021): Evolutionary Biology's Great
    To appear in Capitalism Nature Socialism Richard Lewontin (1929-2021): Evolutionary Biology’s Great Disrupter Stuart A. Newmana aNew York Medical College, New York, USA Richard Lewontin would have laughed out loud if someone had referred to him as a postmodernist. But his role in late 20th-early 21st century evolutionary biology was precisely that: dismantler of the greatest metanarrative of the period: Darwinism, and particularly its embodiment in the so-called modern evolutionary synthesis. This theory of biological change yoked Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection with a concept of the gene that originated with Gregor Mendel but was refracted through statistical models of population-level quantitative effects. Its conclusion that there must be a lockstep fit between genotype and phenotype was the most broadly influential scientific theory of the era, compelling left and right, philosopher and policy maker alike, not to mention virtually every working biologist. Selection was a vise that mercilessly squeezed organisms that deviated from the norms of their respective groups, culling them out if their (supposedly determinative) gene variants made them too different from their cohorts, or reducing the contribution of their descendants to future generations if they were even slightly less fit. If, on the contrary, they were slightly more fit, the associated genetic variants would become increasingly prevalent and eventually take over, leading to a population with features that had evolved away from the original. The implications of these assumptions according to the most persuasive mathematical models, was that evolution occurs with changes in the populational frequency of gene versions (alleles) of “small effect,” and therefore in established populations of organisms, allelic variability, in the absence of special “balancing” mechanisms to push against these tendencies, should be low.
    [Show full text]
  • Evolution, Politics and Law Bailey Kuklin
    Brooklyn Law School BrooklynWorks Faculty Scholarship Summer 2004 Evolution, Politics and Law Bailey Kuklin Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/faculty Part of the Law and Philosophy Commons, and the Law and Politics Commons Recommended Citation 38 Val. U. L. Rev. 1129 (2004) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of BrooklynWorks. VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW VOLUME 38 SUMMER 2004 NUMBER 4 Article EVOLUTION, POLITICS AND LAW Bailey Kuklin* I. Introduction ............................................... 1129 II. Evolutionary Theory ................................. 1134 III. The Normative Implications of Biological Dispositions ......................... 1140 A . Fact and Value .................................... 1141 B. Biological Determinism ..................... 1163 C. Future Fitness ..................................... 1183 D. Cultural N orm s .................................. 1188 IV. The Politics of Sociobiology ..................... 1196 A. Political Orientations ......................... 1205 B. Political Tactics ................................... 1232 V . C onclusion ................................................. 1248 I. INTRODUCTION The law begins and ends with human behavior. The ends of the law focuses on human flourishing, and the means of the law is to channel human conduct. The needs and wants of humans ground the norms of the law, from the overarching to the secondary. Hence, for the law to be suitable and effective, it must be based on a clear vision of the human condition. Evolutionary psychology is a discipline that helps to meet this requisite, for it is a powerful, but controversial, vehicle for analyzing and understanding human behavior, and hence, legal and social doctrine. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the potential usefulness of evolutionary psychology. To achieve this, I discuss the The author wishes to thank Stephen M.
    [Show full text]
  • Violence Can Be Psychobiologically Tamed J. Martin Ramirez
    kultura i edukacja (Culture and Education ) (2014) 5 (105) 182-192 http://kulturaiedukacja.prv.pl Why a Statement on Violence? Violence can be psychobiologically tamed by J. Martin Ramirez Center on Conflict Studies, Nebrija University, Spain & Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA email: <[email protected]> ABSTRACT The Seville Statement on Violence (SSV) originated by an International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) launched UN-Committee in the late seventies of the past century. Which were the main reasons which urged us to elaborate the Statement, difficulties were found on the way and how finally that first 'scientific' step towards peace was achieved. Its final product, elaborated by more than twenty scholars from different scientific disciplines and from all continents, was presented in Seville in 1986, at the VI Coloquio Internacional sobre Cerebro y Agresión (CICA). Three years later, it was endorsed by the 25th General Conference of UNESCO, in Paris. Its main message is that violence and war are not genetically inavoidable, that human nature does not obly us to behave violently. Keywords: violence, war, psychobiology, Seville Statement on Violence 1 INTRODUCTION It seems quite adequate to remember that during the Cold War some politicians on both sides used their belief that war was highly likely to justify the manufacture and deployment of more and more nuclear weapons. Although the Cold War is now over, war continues to be pervasive throughout the world, and there are those who see war as an inevitable consequence of human nature, based in the belief that people cannot change, that peace is therefore impossible, and that the only thing that works is a lethal and effective prophylactic of separation and overwhelming forcé.
    [Show full text]
  • The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine
    The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine STEVEN PINKER The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Delivered at Yale University April 20 and 21, 1999 Steven Pinker is professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences and director of the McConnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was educated at McGill Uni- versity and at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. He was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychologi- cal Society. His publications include Learnability and Cog- nition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (1989) and The Language Instinct (1994), which was named one of the ten best books of 1994 by the New York Times, the London Times, and the Boston Globe. His most recent book, How the Mind Works (1997), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and the William James Book Prize from the APA, and was a Šnalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Na- tional Book Critics Circle Award. These are extraordinary times in the history of human knowledge. For hundreds of years the progress of science has been a story of in- creasing uniŠcation and coherence, which the biologist E. O. Wil- son has recently termed consilience, literally “jumping together.”1 In 1755, Samuel Johnson wrote that his Dictionary should not be expected to “change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.” Few people today under- stand his use of the word “sublunary,” literally “below the moon.” It was an allusion to the ancient belief that there was a strict divi- sion between the pristine, lawful, unchanging cosmos above and our grubby, chaotic earth below.
    [Show full text]
  • Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Anthropology Faculty Publications Anthropology, Department of August 1987 Precis of Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature Philip Kitcher University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California Patrick Bateson (Comment by) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England Jon Beckwith (Comment by) Department of Microbiolgoy and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass. Irwin S. Bernstein (Comment by) Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA Patricia Smith Churchland (Comment by) Philosophy Department and Cognitive Science Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, FCaliforniaollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub See P nextart of page the forAnthr additionalopology authorsCommons Kitcher, Philip; Bateson, Patrick (Comment by); Beckwith, Jon (Comment by); Bernstein, Irwin S. (Comment by); Smith Churchland, Patricia (Comment by); Draper, Patricia (Comment by); Dupre, John (Comment by); Futterman, Andrew (Comment by); Ghiselin, Michael T. (Comment by); Harpending, Henry (Comment by); Johnston, Timothy D. (Comment by); Allen, Garland E. (Comment by); Lamb, Michael E. (Comment by); McGrew, W. C. (Comment by); Plotkin, H. C. (Comment by); Rosenberg, Alexander (Comment by); Saunders, Peter T. (Comment by); Ho, Mae-Wan (Comment by); Singer, Peter (Comment by); Smith, Eric Aiden (Comment by); Smith, Peter K. (Comment by); Sober, Elliot (Comment by); Stenseth, Nils C. (Comment by); and Symons, Donald (Comment by), "Precis of Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature" (1987). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 16. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub/16 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
    [Show full text]
  • Against Nature: on Robert Wright's the Moral Animal
    University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 1996 Against Nature: On Robert Wright's The Moral Animal Amy L. Wax University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Behavior and Ethology Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Evolution Commons, Law Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, and the Theory and Philosophy Commons Repository Citation Wax, Amy L., "Against Nature: On Robert Wright's The Moral Animal" (1996). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 1353. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1353 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AmyL. VVaxt The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. Robert Wright. Pantheon 1994. Pp x, 467. We live in cities and suburbs and watch TV and drink beer, all the while being pushed and pulled by feelings designed to propagate our genes in a sn1all hunter-gatherer population. Robert vVright1 If sociobiology is the answer, "\vhat 1s the question? For one thing, economics. "Modern neoclassical economics has forsworn any attempt to study the source and rontent of preferences, that is, the goals that motivate men's actions. It has regarded itself as the logic of choice under conditions of 'given tastes."'2 Unlike t Associate Professor of Law, Uni';ersity of Virginia School of Law.
    [Show full text]
  • World Views and Trojan Horses in the Sociobiology Debate
    Commentary World views and Trojan horses in the sociobiology debate 1. The sociobiology debate It is now over a quarter century since the famous sociobiology controversy began around Harvard zoologist Edward O Wilson’s huge tome Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. In that book Wilson set out to document and synthesize several decades of new theoretical and empirical research on animal social behaviour. Sociobiology was defined as “the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour”. The idea was, that just like other features, behaviour, too, was undergoing evolution, which meant that it, too, could be included in the Neodarwinist paradigm, in which evolution is expressed as a change in gene frequencies in populations. Wilson hoped to continue the work of the architects of the Modern Synthesis, who aimed at putting evolutionary biology on a firm quantitative foundation. There was good reason to deal with behaviour. The mystery of animal altruism had finally been cracked by people like William Hamilton, George Price, John Maynard Smith and Robert Trivers. A new “gene’s eye’s” perspective (made popular by George Williams’ important 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection) now shifted the focus from the individual organism to groups of relatives who shared genes. With the help of cost-benefit calculations, and with an eye to the genetic relatedness between the donor and recipient of an altruistic act, it was now possible to show that from a gene’s point of view it made sense for a bird, say, to sacrifice itself by letting out an alarm call, if it in this way could save a whole bunch of relatives.
    [Show full text]
  • Human Evolution: Darwinism, Genes and Germs
    334 Darwinism and Traditional Theology Human evolution: Darwinian evolutionary theory offered a view of life diametrically different from that of traditional Judeo-Christian theology. The biblical six days Darwinism, genes and germs of creation were thought to have taken place only a few thousand years ago. Today, scientists maintain that the universe is about 10,000 - 20,000 million * Jan Sapp years old, the earth is about 4,500 million years old, and life arose about 3,500 million years ago; hominids resembling our species appeared 4 million years ago, and our species, Homo sapiens appeared about 130,000 years Resumo ago. According to traditional natural theology, the world is static: God had A evolução é um processo complementar de divergência e integração. formed all species just as they appear today. And there is no genealogical A simbiose, integração fisiológica e/ou genética dos grupos taxonómi- cos é reconhecida, actualmente, como estando na base de mudanças relationship between them. There had been great cataclysms such as macroevolutivas. Considera-se que teve um papel central na evolução the biblical flood, but Noah had saved all the species living today. This static dos eucariotas, na origem das plantas terrestres e numa miríade de view was also shared by the great philosophers of ancient Greece. In the inovações evolutivas adaptativas. Numa perspectiva simbiótica de que Aristotelian and the Platonic order of things life forms were ordered in cada planta e cada animal é um superorganismo, um simbioma abrange os genes cromossómicos, os genes organelares e frequentemente outros single file from the most simple inanimate objects, to plants, then to lower simbiontes bacterianos, bem como vírus.
    [Show full text]