Precis of Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature

Authors

• 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, California
• Patricia Draper (Comment by), University of Nebraska, LincolnFollow
• John Dupre (Comment by), Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, California
• Andrew Futterman (Comment by), Department of Biology, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO
• Michael T. Ghiselin (Comment by), California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
• Henry Harpending (Comment by), Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
• Timothy D. Johnston (Comment by), Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC
• Garland E. Allen (Comment by), Washington University, Saint Louis, MO
• Michael E. Lamb (Comment by), Departments of Pyschology, Psychiatry, and Pediatrics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
• W. C. McGrew (Comment by), Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland
• H. C. Plotkin (Comment by), Department of Pyschology, University College London, London, England
• Alexander Rosenberg (Comment by), Department of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, California
• Peter T. Saunders (Comment by), Department of Mathematics, King's College, London, England
• Mae-Wan Ho (Comment by), Developmental Dynamics Research Group, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, England
• Peter Singer (Comment by), Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia
• Eric Aiden Smith (Comment by), Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
• Peter K. Smith (Comment by), Department of Pyschology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, England
• Elliot Sober (Comment by), Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
• Nils C. Stenseth (Comment by), Department of Biology, Divison of Zoology, University of Oslo, N-0316 Oslo 3, Norway
• Donald Symons (Comment by), Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

August 1987

Comments

Published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1987) 10, 61-100. Copyright © 1987 Cambridge University Press. Used by permission.

Abstract

The debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both dcfieieneies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene-culture coevolution. Vaulting Ambition thus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior.