The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues Edited by Arthur L. Caplan (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues. Edited by Arthur L. Caplan. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Pp. 514. $6.95. The Sociobiology Debate is a useful compendium of "oft-cited" papers discussing those aspects of sociobiology germane to the evolution of human nature and human ethical values. The emphasis in this volume of edited and condensed papers is on the historical antecedents of the nature-nurture controversy regarding human behavior and on the current, often heated, public debate over sociobiology. The equally controversial scientific and empirical issues that underlie much of sociobiological theorizing are conspicuously and unfortunately neglected. Although Caplan's concern with philosophical and conceptual issues may attract a wide readership, the answers to many of the difficult questions raised are not logical but biological and lie in ecology, genetics, and evolution. In this review, I will attempt to make explicit some of the genetical and evolutionary assumptions implicit in the reprinted essays, which are for the most part psychological , philosophical, or sociological in tenor. In this way, the advantages and disadvantages ofomitting much ofthe biology ofsociobiology can be made clear. In studying human behavior, the authors of many of the essays contained in this book subscribe to the methodology of what Lewontin has called the "adaptationist program." They begin with the fundamental assumption that human behavior is adaptive, that is, they assume that all or most aspects of human behavior are or have been the focus of natural selection. Therefore, what exists is good from the point of view of individual survival and reproduction. To paraphrase what E. O. Wilson calls in the foreword the three alternative states "allowed" for our species by sociobiology: Some are born fit, some acquire fitness (through apt choice of mates or habitat), and some have fitness thrust upon them, usually by their kin. Once human behavior has been assumed adaptive, it is partitioned into components such as incest inhibitions, bond formation, parent-offspring conflict, sex-biased infanticide, primitive warfare, territoriality, and sexual practice (to cite a few examples from Wilson's foreword). Each component is then treated as an independent evolutionary unit molded by selective pressures and problems posed by the environment. The goal is to establish a functional relationship between the behavior or value and the environment. Thus, incest inhibitions function to obviate the deleterious effects of inbreeding, bond formation functions to diminish the possibilities for mate desertion and cuckoldry, and sexbiased infanticide enhances the reproductive success of newly dominant males. Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author. 658 Book Reviews The adaptationist program, particularly when applied to the study of human behavior and human values, has several drawbacks as a scientific methodology. The first is the opportunity for reifying arbitrary behavioral divisions and components which are not free to vary in response to evolutionary forces. When behavioral terms and concepts, developed in the context of sociological, psychological , and philosophical research, are adopted uncritically by evolutionary theorists and subject to the adaptationist methods described above this opportunity for error is further augmented. A second drawback stems from the tendency to ascribe evolutionary function to human values on the basis of the intent perceived to underlie the values. That is to say, when human values are studied as evolutionary units the relevant environment is human society and an appeal to the common wisdom often substitutes for a biologically rigorous functional analysis. In many cases, the circularity of the arguments is simply reinforced by the evolutionary interpretation and little is added in the way of insight. A more interesting and fruitful approach to the evolution of human behaviors and values is the study of cultural evolution in its relation to biological evolution. The major difference between the two processes lies in the laws of transmission or heredity. The hereditary laws of Mendel, with interesting but minor variations , characterize transmission in biological systems. These laws, when combined with knowledge of the mating system, provide a null hypothesis for gene and genotype frequency distributions against which selective forces are measured . Cultural transmission, however, differs in several respects. Instead of a single pair of biological parents, culturally inherited traits and behaviors can...