Social System Evolution and Sociobiology

Abstract

E. O. Wilson’s [Wilson, 1975] overly-confident conception of “sociobiology” challenges the sociologist to join the “grand Darwinian synthesis,” which means, for him, to accept—without substantial evidence—the genetic determination of the central features of the social roles characteristic of human societies—apparently in all their cultural diversity. Such speculation is of questionable worth to the social scientist, since the great bulk of anthropological and sociological evidence points to the enormous range of actual and potential patterned social activities, and attests to the inherent plasticity of such actions within the very broad limits set by man’s biological and psychological make-up.