Leading Sociobiology Out Of The Theoretical Wilderness Print E-mail
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008 17:00
Leading Sociobiology Out Of The Theoretical Wilderness
The March of Sociobiology.
Sociobiology evaluates the possible evolutionary advantages of social behavior (in all species).
The sociobiological domain is a neo-Darwinian synthesis of biology and sociology that also draws from anthropology, archaeology, ethology, evolution, population genetics zoology, and other disciplines. Researchers investigate social behaviors, such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects.
Applied to nonhumans, sociobiology is relatively noncontroversial.Evolutionary biologists note that selection pressure led animal evolution toward useful ways of interacting with the natural environment.
Sociobiology has become one of the greatest scientific controversies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially in the context of explaining human behavior.Sociobiologists posit the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior.Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely related to the fields of human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology.
Criticism of sociobiology centers on a contention that genes play a central role in human behavior and that variation in traits such as aggressiveness can be explained by variations in biology and not necessarily as a product of social environment.
In response, anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides launched evolutionary psychology as a branch of sociobiology made less controversial by avoiding questions of human biodiversity.
Many sociobiologists today cite a complex relationship between nature and nurture.
Binghamton, NY, USA. Charles Darwin originally envisioned that adaptations can evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy, from genes to ecosystems. He proposed an evolutionary explanation for morality and pro-social behaviors — individuals behaving for the good of their group, often at their own expense.
 
This anticipated the future discipline of Sociobiology, an attempted synthesis of scientific disciplines that can explain behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours: the theory of group selection.
 
Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology. Wilson, David Sloan and Edward O.Wilson. The Quarterly Review of Biology 82(4):327-48. 
 
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English biologist and one of several scientists considering theories of evolution.
 
Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859), which set forth his theory that animals evolved through variation and natural selection of those most fit to survive in particular environments.
 
Darwin did not totally keep his distance from the social, racial and religious consequences of his theories, but participated in the debate. In Sexual Selection And The Descent of Man (1871) he applied his theory directly to the question of human beings.
 
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English biologist.
Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe … an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. — Charles Darwin.
 
However, a century after Darwin published his famous passage, explanations based on group selection had become taboo and did not recover.
 
For evolutionary biologists, an allele (/əˈliːl/; Gr. αλληλος allelos — each other) is one member of a pair or series of different forms of a gene. Group selection is the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, without regard to how the allele may affect the firness of individuals within that group.
 
For decades, group selection was used as a popular explanation for evolutionary adaptations, but critics cast serious doubts on it as a major mechanism of evolution. While some scientists continued their pursuit of the idea. There has been a resurgence of interest in group selection, but only as a phenomenon that emerges from standard models of selection.
 
Cover: Quarterly Review of Biology
In a landmark article for The Quarterly Review of Biology, Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology, evolutionary scientists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson — whose Sociobiology: The New Synthesis brought widespread attention to the field in 1975 — call for an end to forty years of confusion and divergent theories.  
 
Wilson and Wilson trace much of the confusion in the field to the 1960’s. In those days, most evolutionists rejected “for the good of the group” thinking and insisted that all adaptations must be explained in terms of individual self-interest. In an even more reductionistic move, genes were called “the fundamental unit of selection,” as if this was an argument against group selection.
 
Scientific dogma became entrenched in popular culture with the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976). Although evidence in favor of group selection began accumulating almost immediately after its rejection, its taboo status prevented a systematic re-evaluation of the field until now. The authors say:
The old arguments against group selection have all failed. It is theoretically plausible, it happens in reality, and the so-called alternatives actually include the logic of multilevel selection. Had this been known in the 1960s, sociobiology would have taken a very different direction. It is this branch point that must be revisited to put sociobiology back on a firm theoretical foundation. Accepting multilevel selection has profound implications. It means we can no longer regard the individual as a privileged level of the biological hierarchy …
In their new publication, Wilson and Wilson attempt a new consensus and theoretical foundation that can reset the basis for sociobiology. Based on current theory and evidence, they argue for natural selection as a unequivocally multilevel process.
 
The authors conclude by paraphrasing Rabbi Hillel: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”
 


David Sloan Wilson is Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. His most recent book is Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives.

Edward O. Wilson is Pellegrino Research Professor in Entomology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His encyclopedic work on ants, The Superorganism, was co-written with Bert Hölldobler. An updated edition is scheduled for publication in November 2008.

This article is revised and expanded from its original appearance at TS-Si.org on 4 December 2007.

 


Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology. Wilson, David Sloan and Edward O.Wilson. The Quarterly Review of Biology 82(4):327-48.  [ Download PDF ]

Abstract

Current sociobiology is in theoretical disarray, with a diversity of frameworks that are poorly related to each other. Part of the problem is a reluctance to revisit the pivotal events that took place during the 1960s, including the rejection of group selection and the development of alternative theoretical frameworks to explain the evolution of cooperative and altruistic behaviors. In this article, we take a “back to basics” approach, explaining what group selection is, why its rejection was regarded as so important, and how it has been revived based on a more careful formulation and subsequent research. Multilevel selection theory (including group selection) provides an elegant theoretical foundation for sociobiology in the future, once its turbulent past is appropriately understood.

 
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 16 July 2008 15:25