SOCIOBIOLOGY
What Is Sociobiology?
i was surprised--astonished--by the initial reaction to
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. When the book was
published in 1975, I expected a favorable reaction from other
biologists. After all, my colleagues and I had merely been
extending Neo-Darwinism into the study of social behavior
and animal societies, and the underlying biological principles
we employed were largely conventional. The response was in
fact overwhelmingly favorable. From the social scientists, I
expected not much of a reaction at all. I took it for granted
that the human species is subject to sociobiological analysis
no less than genetic or endocrinological analysis; the final
chapter of my book simply completed the catalog of social
species by the addition of Homo sapiens. I hoped to make a
contribution to the social sciences and humanities by laying
out in immediately accessible form the most relevant meth-
ods and principles of population biology, evolutionary
theory, and sociobiology. I expected that many social scien-
tists, already convinced of the necessity of a biological foun-
dation of their subject, would be tempted to pick up the tools
and try them out. This has occurred to a limited extent, but
there has also been stiff resistance. I now understand that I
entirely underestimated the Durkheim-Boas tradition of au-
tonomy of the social sciences, as well as the strength and
power of the antigenetic bias that has prevailed as virtual
dogma since the fall of Social Darwinism.
I did not even think about the Marxists. When the attacks
on sociobiology came from Science for the People, the lead-
ing radical left group within American science, I was unpre-
pared for a largely ideological argument. It is now clear to me
that I was tampering with something fundamental: mythol-
ogy. Evolutionary theory applied to social systems is an
extension of the great Western traditions of scientific
materialism. As such it threatens to transform the assump-
tions about human nature made by some Marxist
philosophers into testable hypotheses. Its first line of evi-
Sociobiology and Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Critique and
Defense.
Copyright 9 1978 by Josscy-Bass Inc., Publishers. Edited by Michael S.
G~egory, Anita Silvers, and Diane Sutch. All but the final paper emanate
from this volume in slightly condensed form. The proceedings were origi-
nally delivered at a symposium sponsored by NEXA at San Francisco State
University, June 14-15, 1977.
10 0147-2011/78/0915-0005502.50/1
@ TransacUon, Inc..
Edward O. Wilson
I
dence is not favorable to those assumptions, insofar as most
traditional Marxists cling to a vision of human nature as a
relatively unstructured phenomenon swept along by eco-
nomic forces extraneous to human biology. Marxism and
other secular ideologies previously rested secure as unchal-
lenged satrapies of scientific materialism; now they were in
danger of being displaced by other, less manageable biologi-
cal explanations. The remarkably harsh response of Science
for the People exemplifies what Hans Kiing has called the
fury of the theologians.
Sociobiology Misunderstood
But much of the confusion has come from a simple misun-
derstanding of the content of sociobiology. Sociobiology is
defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all
forms of social behavior, including sexual and parental be-
havior, in all kinds of organisms, including man. As such it is
a discipline--an inevitable discipline, since there has to be a
systematic study of social behavior. Sociobiology consists
mostly of zoology. About 90 percent of its current material
concerns animals, even though over 90 percent of the atten-
tion given to sociobiology by nonscientists, and expecially
journalists, is due to its possible applications to the study of
human social behavior. There is nothing unusual about deriv-
ing principles and methods, and even terminology, from
intensive examinations of lower organisms and applying
them to the study of human beings. Most of the fundamental
principles of genetics and biochemistry applied to human
biology is based on colon bacteria, fruit flies, and white rats.
To say that the same science can be applied to human beings
is not to reduce humanity to the status of these simpler
creatures.
Nor is there anything new or surprising about having such
a discipline within the family of the biological sciences. The
term sociobiology was used independently by John P. Scott
in 1946 and by Charles F. Hockett in 1948, but the word was
not picked up immediately by others. In 1950 Scott, who had
been serving as the secretary of the small but influential
Committee for the Study of Animal Behavior, suggested
sociobiology more formally as a term for the"interdisciplin-
ary science which lies between the fields of biology (particu-
larly ecology and physiology) and psychology and sociol-
ogy." From 1956 into 1964 Scott and others constituted a
SOCIETY
Section on Animal Behavior and Sociobiology of the Ecolog-
ical Society of America, which became the present Animal
Behavior Society. During 1950--1970 "sociobiology" was
employed intermittently in technical articles, a usage evi-
dently inspired by its now quasiofficiai status. But other
expressions, such as "biosociology" and "animal sociol-
o g y , " were also employed. When I wrote the final chapter of
The Insect Societies (1971), which was entitled "The pros-
pect for a unified sociobiology," andSociobiology: The New
Synthesis (1975), where I suggested that a discrete discipline
should now be built on a foundation of genetics and popula-
tion biology, i selected the term sociobiology rather than
some other, novel expression because I believed it would
already be familiar to most students of animal behavior and
hence more likely to be accepted.
Biological Capacity
Pure sociobiological theory, being independent of human
biology, does not imply by itself that human social behavior
is determined by genes. It allows for any one of three pos-
sibilities. One is that the human brain has evolved to the point
that it has become an equipotential learning machine entirely
determined by culture. The mind, in other words, has been
freed from the genes. A second possibility is that human
social behavior is under genetic constraint but that all of the
genetic variability within the human species has been
exhausted. Hence our behavior is to some extent influenced
by genes, but we all have exactly the same potential. A third
possibility, close to the second, is that the human species is
prescribed to some extent but also displays some genetic
differences among individuals. As a consequence, human
populations retain the capacity to evolve still further in their
biological capacity for social behavior.
I consider it virtually certain that the third altemative is the
correct one. Because the evidence has been well reviewed in
other recent works, most notably those by Napoleon Chag-
non and William Irons, editors, B.I. Devote, editor, and
Daniel G. Freedman, I will not undertake to exemplify it or
review it in detail. Instead, let me outline its content.
Specificity of Human Social Behavior
Although the variation of cultures appears enormous to the
anthropocentric observer, all human behavior together com-
prises only a tiny subset of the realized social systems of the
thousands of social species on earth. Corals and other colo-
nial invertebrates, the social insects, fish, birds, and nonhu-
man mammals display among themselves an array of ar-
rangements which are difficult for human beings even to
understand, much less imitate. Even if we were to attempt to
duplicate some of these social behaviors by conscious de-
sign, it would be a charade likely to create emotional break-
down and a rapid reversal of the effort.
Phylogenetic Relationships
Our social arrangements most closely resemble those of
the Old World monkeys and apes, which on anatomical and
September/October 1978
biochemical grounds are our closest living relatives. This is
the result expected if'we share a common ancestry with these
primates, which appears to be an established fact, and if
human social behavior is still constrained to some extent by
genetic predispositions in behavioraI development.
Conformity to Sociobiological Theory
In the case of the hypothesis of genetic constraints on
human social behavior, it should be possible to select some of
the best principles of population genetics and ecology, which
form the foundations of sociobiology, and apply them in
detail to the explanations of human social organization. The
hypothesis should then not only account for many of the
known facts in a more convincing manner than previous
attempts, but also identify the need for new kinds of informa-
tion not conceptualized by the unaided social sciences. The
behavior thus explained should be the most general and least
rational of the human repertory, the furthest removed from
the influence of year-by-year shifts in fashion and conven-
tion. There are in fact a substantial number of anthropologi-
cal studies completed or underway that meet these exacting
criteria of postulational-deductive science. Among them can
be cited the work of Joseph Shepher on the incest taboo and
sexual roles; Mildred Dickeman on hypergamy and sex-
biassed infanticide; Irons on the relation between inclusive
genetic fitness and the emic criteria of social success in a
herding society; Chagnon on aggression and reproductive
competition in the Yanomamr; William Durham on the rela-
tion between inclusive fitness and warfare in the Mundurucfi
and other primitive societies; Robin Fox on the relation of
fitness to kinship rules; Melvin Konner and Freedman on the
Sociobiology is the systematic study of the
biological basis of all forms of social
behavior, including sexual and parental
behavior, in all kinds of organisms,
including man
adaptive significance of infant development; James Weinrich
on the relationship of genetic fitness and the details of sexual
practice, including homosexuality; and others.
Genetic Variation within the Species
According to V.A. McKusick and F.H. Ruddle, by 1977
more than 1200 loci had been located on human chromo-
somes through the first analysis of biochemical and other
mutations. Many of these point mutations, as well as a
growing list of chromosomal aberrations, affect behavior.
Most simply diminish mental capacity and motor ability, but
at least two, the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, based on a single
gene, and Turner's syndrome, caused by the deletion of a sex
chromosome, alter behavior in narrow ways that can be
related to specific neuromuscular mechanisms. The adreno-
genital syndrome, which is induced by a single recessive
11
gene, appears to masculinize girls through an early induction
of adrenocortical substances that mimic the male hormone.
More complex forms of human behavior are almost cer-
tainly under the control of polygenes (genes scattered on
many chromosome loci), which in turn create their effects
through the alteration of a wide array of mediating devices,
from elementary neuronal wiring to muscular coordination
and "mental set" induced by hormone levels. In most in-
stances, the role of behavioral polygenes can be evaluated,
but only qualitatively, by the careful application of twin and
adoption studies. The most frequently used method is to
compare the similarity between identical twins, which are
We will soon be able to locate and
characterize specific genes that alter the
more complex forms of social behavior
known to be genetically identical, with the similarity be-
tween fraternal twins, which are no closer genetically than
ordinary siblings. When the similarity between identical
twins proves greater, this distinction between the two kinds
of twins is ascribed to heredity. Using this and related tech-
niques, geneticists have produced evidence of a substantial
amount of hereditary influence on the development of a
variety of traits that affect social behavior, including number
ability, word fluency, memory, the timing of language ac-
quisition, sentence construction, perceptual skill,
psychomotor skill, extroversion-introversion, homosexual-
ity, the timing of first heterosexual activity, and certain forms
of neurosis and psychosis, including the manic-depressive
syndrome and schizophrenia.
In published work there is a flaw in the results that render
most of them less than definitive: identical twins are com-
monly treated more alike by their parents than are fraternal
twins. They are instructed in a more nearly parallel manner,
dressed more alike, and so forth. In the absence of better
controls, it is possible that the greater similarity of identical
twins could, after all, be due to environmental influences and
not their genetic identity. However, new and more sophisti-
cated studies have begun to take account of this additional
factor. J.C.l.x~hfin and R.C. Nichols, for example, ana-
lyzed the many aspects of the environments and perfor-
mances of 850 sets of twins who took the National Merit
Scholarship test in 1962. The early histories of the subjects,
as well as the attitudes and rearing practices of the parents,
was taken into account. The results showed that the generally
more similar treatment of the identical twins cannot account
for their greater similarity in general abilities, personality
traits, or even ideals, goals, and vocational interests. It is
evident that either the similarities are based in substantial part
on genetic identity, or else environmental agents were at
work that remained hidden to Loehlin and Nichols.
My overall conclusion from the existing information is that
Homo sapiens is a typical animal species with reference to the
12
quality and magnitude of the genetic diversity affecting its
behavior. I also believe that it will soon be within our ability
to locate and characterize specific genes that alter the more
complex forms of social behavior. Obviously the alleles
discovered will not prescribe different dialects or modes of
dress. They are more likely to work measurable changes
through their effects on learning modes and timing, cognitive
and neuromuscular ability, and the personality traits most
sensitive to hormonal mediation. If social scientists and
sociobiologists somehow choose to ignore this line of inves-
tigation, they will soon find human geneticists coming up on
their blind side. The intense interest in medical genetics,
fueled now by new methods such as the electrophoretic
separation of proteins and rapid sequencing of amino acids,
has resulted in an acceleration of discoveries in human hered-
ity that is certain to have profound consequences for the
genetics of social behavior.
Genes and Methodological Reductionism
I wish now to discuss in broad terms the ways in which the
several intellectual traditions represented so well by the other
contributors to this special issue might be reconciled with the
relatively uncompromising biologistic approach I have taken
to the present time.
The first area of conflict that can be resolved is the relation
of genes to culture. Many social scientists see no value in
sociobiology because they are persuaded that variation
among cultures has no genetic basis. Their premise is right,
their conclusion wrong. We can do well to remember Rous-
seau's dictum that those who wish to study men should stand
close, while those who wish to study man should look from
afar. The social scientist is interested in the often microscopic
but important variations in behavior that almost everyone
agrees are due to culture and the environment. The
sociobiologist is interested in the more general features of
human nature and the limitations that exist in the environ-
mentally induced variation. He is especially interested in the
fact that although all cultures taken together constitute a very
great amount of variation, their summed content is far less
than that displayed by the remaining species of social ani-
There is no a priori reason why any portion
of the foundation of human social behavior
must be excluded from the domain of
sociobiological analysis
mals. By comparing the diagnostic features of human organi-
zation with those of other primate species, the sociobiologist
aims to reconstruct the earliest evolutionary history of social
organization and to discern its genetic residues in contempo-
rary societies. The approach complements that of the social
sciences and in no way diminishes their importance----quite
the contrary.
Those immersed in the rich lore of the social sciences
SOCIETY
sometimes reject human sociobiology because it is reduc-
tionistic. But almost all of the great advances of science have
been made by reduction, in the form of conjectures that are
often bold and momentarily premature. Theoretical physics
transformed chemistry, chemistry transformed cell biology
and genetics, natural selection theory transformed
ecology--all by stark reduction which at first seemed in-
adequate to the task. Reduction is a method by which new
mechanisms and relational processes are discovered. In the
most successful case histories of postulational-deductive sci-
ence, propositions are expressed in forms that can be elabo-
rated into precise, testable models. The other side of reduc-
tion, the antithema of the thema, is synthesis. As the new
principles and equations are validated by repeated testing,
they are used in an attempt to reconstitute the full array of the
phenomena of the subject. Karl Popper has correctly sug-
gested that philosophical reductionism is wrong but meth-
odological reductionism is necessary for the advancement of
science. Here is how I tried to summarize the role of
sociobiological reduction in Daedalus (Fall 1977):
The urge to be reductionistic is an understandable
human trait. Ernst Mach captured it in the following
definition: "Science may be regarded as a minimal
problem consisting of the completest presentment of
facts with the least possible expenditure of thought."
This is a sentiment of a member of the antidiscipline,
impatient to set aside complexity and get on with the
lions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern"--not
search for more fundamental ideas. The laws of his
only experiences scenarios fed to it by the sensory channels;
subject are necessary to the discipline above, they
it creates them by recall and fantasy. In sustaining this activ-
challenge and force a mentally more efficient restruc-
ity, the brain depends substantially on the triggering effect of
turing, but they are not sufficient for its purposes.
verbal symbols. It also relies on what have been called plans
Biology is the key to human nature, and social scien-
or schemata, configurations within the brain, either innate or
tists cannot afford to ignore its emerging principles.
experiential in origin, against which the input of the nerve
But the social sciences are potentially far richer in
cells is compared. The matching of the real or expected
content. Eventually they will absorb the relevant ideas
patterns can have one or more of several effects. It can
of biology and go on to beggar them by comparison.
contribute to mental " s e t , " the favoring of certain kinds of
sensory information over others. It can generate the remarka-
Physical Basis of Mind
ble phenomena of Gestalt perception, in which the mind
The strongest redoubt of counterbiology appears to be supplies missing details from the actual sensory information
mentalism. It is difficult--for some it is impossible--to in order to complete a pattern and make a classification. And
envision the existence of the mind and the creation of sym- it can serve as the physical basis of will: the mind can be
bolic thought by biological processes. The human mind, this guided in its actions by feedback loops that lead from the
argument often goes, is an emergent property of the brain that sense organs to the brain schemata to the neuromuscular
is no longer tied to genetic controls. All that the genes can machinery and sense organs and back again until the
prescribe is the construction of the liberated brain. schemata "satisfy" themselves that the correct action has
But the relation between genes, the brain, and the mind is been taken. The mind could be a republic of alternative
only a practical difficulty, not a theoretical one. Models have schemata, programmed to compete for control of the decision
already been produced in neurobiology and cognitive centers, individually waxing and waning in power according
psychology that allow at least the possibility of mind as an to the relative urgency of the body's needs being signalled
epiphenomenon of complex but essentially conventional through other nervous pathways passing upward through the
neuronal circuitry. Consciousness might well consist of large lower brain centers. The mind might or might not work
numbers of coded abstractions, some fed stepwise through a approximately in such a manner. My point is that it is entirely
hierarchy of integrating centers whose lowest array consists possible for all known components of the mind, including
of the primary sense cells, others originating internally to will, to have a neurophysiological basis subject to genetic
simulate these hierarchies. The brain--in Charles Sher- evolution by natural selection. There is no a priori reason
rington's (1940) metaphor the "enchanted loom where mil- why any portion of the foundation of human social behavior

September/October 1978 13
must be excluded from the domain of sociobiological anal-
ysis.
Convergence
Some critics have objected to the drawing of analogies
between animal and human behavior, especially as it entails
the same terminology to describe phenomena across species.
This reservation has always struck me as insubstantial. The
definitions and limitations of the concepts of analogy and
homology have been well worked out by evolutionary
biologists, and it is difficult to imagine why the same reason-
ing cannot be extended with proper care to the human
species. We already speak of the eye of the octopus and the
Sociobiology can be the bridging discipline
between the natural sciences and the social
sciences and humanities
eye of man, copulation in an insect and copulation in m a n ,
and learning in the earthworm and learning in man, even
though in each of these cases the two species are in different
superphyla and the traits listed were independently evolved.
The questions of interest are in fact the degrees of con-
vergence and the processes of natural selection that made the
convergence so close. When biologists compare altruism in
the honeybee worker with human altruism, no one seriously
believes that they are based on homologous genes or that they
are identical in detail. Slavery practiced by Polyergus and
Strongylognathus ants resembles human slavery in some
broad features and differs from it in others, as well as in most
details of its execution. By using the same term for such
comparisons, the biologist calls attention to the fact that some
degree of convergence has occurred, and he invites an anal-
ysis of all the causes of similarity and difference. There is a
hellenistic term for insect slavery---dulosis--but its usage
outside entomology would not only complicate language but
slow the very comparative analysis which is of greatest
interest.
Speaking the Common Language
I am most puzzled by the occasional demurral that
sociobiology distracts our attention from the real r~eeds of the
world, The question is raised: How can we worry about the
origins of human nature when the nuclear sword hangs over
us? When people are starving in the Sahel and Bangladesh,
and political prisoners are rotting in Argentinian jails? In
response one can answer: Do we want to know, in depth and
with any degree of confidence, why we care? And after these
problems have been solved, what then? The highest goals
professed by governments everywhere are human fulfillment
above the animal level and the realization of individual poten-
tial. But what is fulfillment, and to what ends can potential be
expanded? 1 suggest that only a deeper understanding of
human nature, which must be developed from neurobiologi-
14
cal investigations of the brain and the phylogenetic recon-
struction of the species-specific properties of human be-
havior, can provide humanity with the perspective it requires
to formulate its highest social goals.
The excitement of sociobiology comes from the promise of
the role it will play in this new humanistic investigation. Its
potential importance beyond zoology lies in its logical posi-
tion as the bridging discipline between the natural sciences on
the one side and social sciences and humanities on the other.
For years the chief spokesmen of the natural sciences to
Western high culture have been physicists, astronomers,
geneticists, and molecular biologists, articulate and persua-
sive scholars whose understanding of the evolution of the
brain and of social behavior was unfortunately minimal.
Their perception of values and the human .condition was
almost entirely intuitive, and hence scarcely better than that
of other intelligent laymen. Biology has been employed as a
science that accounts for the body of man; it concerns itself
with technological manifestations such as the conquest of
disease, the green revolution, energy flow in ecosystems and
the cost-benefit analysis of gene splicing. Natural scientists
have by and large conceded social behavior to be biologically
unstructured, and therefore the undisputed domain of the
social sciences. For their part, most social scientists have
granted that human nature has a biological foundation, but
they have regarded it as of marginal interest to the resplen-
dent variations in culture that hold their professional atten-
tion.
In order for the fabled gap between the two cultures to be
truly bridged, social theory must incorporate the natural
sciences into its foundations, and for that to occur, biology
must deal systematically with social behavior. This compe-
tence is now being approached through the two-pronged
advance of neurobiology, which boldly hopes to explain the
physical basis of mind, and sociobiology, which aims to
reconstruct the evolutionary history of human nature.
Sociobiology in particular is still a rudimentary science. Its
relevance to human social systems is still largely unexplored.
But in the gathering assembly of disciplines, it holds the
greatest promise of speaking the common language.IS]
READINGS SUGGESTED BY THE AUTHOR:
Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Wilson, Edward O. "Biology and the Social Sciences." Daedalus
106 (Fall 1977): 127-140.
Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1978.
Edward O. Wilson is Tamer Lecturer at Kings College, Cam-
bridge University and professor of science at Harvard University.
He is the author of many technical publications and several books,
including Sociobiology: The New Synthesisand On Human Nature.
He has received several science awards including the National
Medal of Science (1976).
SOCIETY