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76 C H A P T E R F O U R Richard Lewontin and His Colleagues Demur A short nine years after E. O. Wilson published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis , Ronald Reagan won reelection to the presidency by the second largest electoral margin in the history of twentieth-century American presidential politics.∞ The year was 1984 and even a casual observer of the American scene at the time may well have concluded that it was not George Orwell’s vision that had come to fruition in that fateful year but rather the vision of the nineteenth-century social philosopher Herbert Spencer. Indeed, Mario Cuomo, then a little-known governor from the state of New York, catapulted into the national spotlight that year by asserting, in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, that the first four years of the Reagan presidency marked the sad triumph of ‘‘a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest.’’≤ To their critics, both Social Darwinism and sociobiology were united in an unbending allegiance to the core philosophy of biological determinism. Many of these same critics were also quick to note that the success of Reagan in promoting his so-called Social Darwinist agenda and the success of Wilson in promoting sociobiology owed a great deal to the rhetorical gifts of each promoter . Thus by the early 1980s, many on the cultural and political left were calling for sustained e√orts to develop a comprehensive and compelling response to the reigning ideology of the day—a response that would appeal not only to scientists but to the broader public as well. One especially important result of these e√orts was the publication, in 1984, of a book entitled Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature.≥ The book was coauthored by Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin. Lewontin needs no introduction at this point. Steven Rose is a Richard Lewontin and His Colleagues Demur 77 neurobiologist and director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group at Britain’s Open University. He has sometimes been referred to as the ‘‘British Lewontin.’’ In 2000 he coedited an important volume of scientific articles entitled Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology.∂ Leon Kamin is an honorary professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He came to national prominence in 1974 when, as a professor of psychology at Princeton, he published The Science and Politics of IQ, a book that forcefully critiques the work of psychometricians like Arthur Jensen and defends the position that there is no scientific evidence to show that intelligence is to any degree heritable.∑ Not in Our Genes is an important book, written by three respected scientists , and directed primarily toward an educated audience of nonscientists. It generalizes and carries forth many of the arguments that the Sociobiology Study Group was making a decade earlier. As such, it constitutes nothing less than a frontal assault on the ideology of biological determinism. It also develops a sustained attack on the political agendas of Ronald Reagan, the New Right, and the capitalist-patriarchal-militaristic power structure in general. For these reasons at least it deserves our attention. But Not in Our Genes is also a very curious book, in part because its authors are simultaneously making and confusing two related but distinct arguments. On one level, Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin are arguing that the various ‘‘theories ’’ that the New Right and other conservatives allegedly use to buttress their particular ideological agendas—theories having to do with the heritability of intelligence or the biological di√erences between the sexes in areas like aggressiveness—are demonstrably wrong. Not only that, they assert that the wrongness of these theories can be demonstrated by science, and they set out to prove this, staying well within the established conventions of the scientific method. On the whole, this part of Not in Our Genes is at times very persuasive . Indeed, had Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin made only this type of argument they would have written a smaller, but ultimately more compelling and useful book than the one that actually got published. But in addition to this argument, Not in Our Genes also advances an argument that takes place on a deeper, perhaps more philosophical level. This second broad argument is concerned not with the correctness of any specific scientific theory but with the overall wisdom of applying conventional scienti fic methods—particularly methods that seem to rely...

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