Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rti-sel.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!wfi From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Behavior And Heredity: Final Comments Message-ID: <262@rti-sel.UUCP> Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 12:58:10 EDT Article-I.D.: rti-sel.262 Posted: Thu Jun 20 12:58:10 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 15:15:02 EDT Distribution: net Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC Lines: 135 [Note: this is a followup to the recent exchange titled 'Intelligence' posted to net.singles and net.social. THIS IS A LONG POSTING!!!] For my final comments on this subject in this newsgroup, I'm providing those of you who are interested with a couple of quotes that illustrate why many serious biologists take the claims of the sociobiologists with a LARGE grain of salt. There's also a bibliography for anyone who cares to pursue this topic further. Since this exchange seems to have little to do with the subject matter that's appropriate for net.singles and net.social, I suggest all future postings on this subject go to net.science instead. ______________________________________________________________________ The following quote is from "Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition," by E. O. Wilson, p. 279. I've capitalized certain words to illustrate just how shaky some of Wilson's claims are. ... Accordingly, Hutchinson ... SUGGESTED that the homosexual genes MAY possess superior fitness in heterozygous conditions ... An interesting alternative hypothesis has been SUGGESTED to me by Herman T. Spieth ... The homosexual members of primitive societies MAY have functioned as helpers ... Freed from the special obligations of parental duties, they COULD HAVE operated with special efficiency in assisting close relatives. Genes favoring homosexuality COULD then be sustained at a high equilibrium level by kin selection alone. It remains to be said that IF SUCH GENES REALLY EXIST, they are almost certainly incomplete in penetrance and variable in expressivity ... Other basic types MIGHT EXIST ... Please note how Wilson qualifies almost everything he says in this passage, unlike some of the people who have reported on his ideas in the popular press (and some of the people who seem to be fond of second-hand sociobiology in this newsgroup). __________________________________________________________________ This quote is from the preface to "On Human Nature," by E. O. Wilson, p. x - xi: ... I wish to say the following to others who are prone to read this book uncritically as a tested product of science: I might easily be wrong - in any particular conclusion, in the grander hopes for the role of the natural sciences, and in the trust gambled on scientific materialism ... ___________________________________________________________________ Two of the most outspoken critics of sociobiology are S. J. Gould and Lewontin (can't remember his first name). Both of these biologists are as respected in the field as Dr. Wilson (the work Wilson's best known for, by the way, are his brilliant studies of insect societies). From S. J. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man," p. 328 ff: ... All biologists know that there is no gene "for" aggression, any more than for your lower-left wisdom tooth. We all recognize that genetic influence can be spread diffusely among many genes and that genes set limits to ranges ... In one sense, the debate between sociobiologists and their critics is an argument about the breadth of ranges ... But in another sense, my dispute with human sociobiology is not just a quantitative debate about the extent of ranges ... Advocates of narrow and broad ranges do not simply occupy different positions on a smooth continuum; they hold two qualitatively different theories about the biological nature of human behavior. If ranges are narrow, then genes do code for specific traits and natural selection can create and maintain individual items of behavior separately. If ranges are characteristically broad, then selection may set some deeply recessed generating rules; but specific behaviors are epiphenomena of the rules, not objects of Darwinian attention in their own right ... if some peoples are peaceable now, then aggression itself cannot be coded in our genes, only the potential for it. If innate only means possible, or even likely in certain environments, then everything we do is innate and the word has no meaning. Aggression is one expression of a generating rule that anticipates peacefulness in other common environments ... This flexibility should not be obscured by the linguistic error of branding some common expression of the rule as "innate" because we can predict their occurrence in certain environments ... I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized brains - and I am equally confident that our brains became large as an adaptation for definite roles ... But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection. Our brains are enormously complex computers. If I install a much simpler computer to keep accounts in a factory, it can also perform many other, more complex tasks unrelated to its appointed role. These additional capacities are ineluctable consequences of structural design, not direct adaptations. Our vastly more complex organic computers were also built for reasons, but possess an almost terrifying array of additional capacities - including, I suspect, most of what makes us human ... _______________________________________________________________ And finally, the promised bibliography. First, a few books on genetics and evolution: M. W. Strickberger, "Genetics." MacMillan & Co. J. D. Watson, "Molecular Biology of the Gene." MacMillan & Co. J. Roughgarden, "Theory of Population Genetics and Evolutionary Ecology: An Introduction." W. A. Benjamin & Co. G. G. Simpson, "The Major Features Of Evolution." Simon and Schuster. The following titles are among the major works on sociobiology: E. O. Wilson, "Sociobiology." Belknap Publishing. E. O. Wilson, "On Human Nature." Harvard Press. C. J. Lumsden & E. O. Wilson, "Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process." Harvard Press. Works that are critical of sociobiology include the aforementioned book by S. J. Gould, and a book recently published by Lewontin and two other biologists (it was advertised and/or reviewed sometime in the last few months in the New York Review of Books and The New York Times Review of Books). ________________________________________________________________ -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly