'Sociobiology'--An Old Synthesis

E.O. WILSON has been on the defensive lately. Just the other da when I called him to ask about his "Sociobiology: The New Synthesis" he didn't seem to want to talk--until I mentioned that I meant to draw some similarities between his work and Herbert Spencer's turn-of-the-century synthesis of sociology and biology. He told me to come over as soon as I could. And by the time I had arrived at his fourth floor office in the new wing of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he had already "jotted down a few notes" to counter my anticipated arguments.

To start I told him that the book seems to me to be a sophisticated update of Herbert Spencer's antiquated Synthetic Philosophy, published in six volumes between 1862 and 1893. Both Spencer and Wilson combine the study of social structures and existing evolutionary theory on their syntheses. Spencer and Wilson support a biological explanation of individualistic natural selection for some elements of human behavior. Spencer contends in his writings that intelligence, aggression, revenge, justice, generosity, humanity, veracity, obedience, industry, temperance, altruism and a host of other characteristics can be inherited. Wilson has in his own synthesis identified certain peculiar characteristics of a universal human nature, including aggression, territoriality, and altruism, as possibly being controlled by genetic factors.

The same problems plague both hypotheses. And both authors deal with them in the same way. For instance, if men are supposed (by nature) to compete with each other with the best man winning out, as an individualistic natural selection model dictates, then both Spencer and Wilson must find ways to explain why some humans are inclined to altruistic acts that appear to be entirely selfless. Wilson and Spencer provide elaborate scientific justifications for these acts of human kindness. Spencer launches into a lengthy passage in "The Date of Ethics" showing, through a network of cost benefits, how an individual betters his fitness by aiding his offspring. Wilson's tactics are similar. He shows that the altruist is really looking out for his long-run interests, maximizing his own reproductive success and increasing the spread of his own genes.

Where Spencer and Wilson seem most alike is in their insistence that a study of animal behavior paves the way to investigating human society. First, both theorists draw parallels between societies and animal organisms, then biological processes and evolutionary theory are applied to social structures. As Spencer notes:

A society as a whole, considered apart from its living units, presents phenomena of growth, structure and function analogous to those of growth, structure and function in an animal...

Wilson in turn uses extensive studies of animals to give clues to human behavior. He sees the behavior of slave ants and ants in castes as the possible forerunners of similar behavior in primates. He uses patterns of aggression and territoriality in other species to show that such behavior is both natural and universal in man. His contention in Sociobiology is that these animal metaphors serve as successful tests to the "underlying hereditary base of social behavior."

The other day Wilson said that he did not know that much about Spencer, but he cautioned against a comparison of Spencer's unscientific synthesis with his heavily-researched synthesis of Sociobiology. Spencer, Wilson says, had a much narrower base of study, while Sociobiology is the recent work of thousands of investigators. "Sociobiology really is a scientific discipline and not a view of nature," he says, while Spencer set out to find a scientific order justifying the state of his society. Wilson says his own synthesis is both objective and dispassionate. "Spencer gave an explanation of a splendid Victorian world," Wilson said. "We are now dealing with the precise theories on the evolution of altruism."

Latter-day sociobiologists cannot contest the impact that Spencer's sociology-biology had on nineteenth-century society. The Social Darwinism of the time, much of which was rooted in Spencer's principles, gained popular acceptance and provided a handy justification for the status quo and for a repudiation of state interference on behalf of society's welfare. Because Spencer's society was evolving naturally, any such tampering would result in disaster. These theories, embraced by upper and middle classes alike in America, provided these classes with a rationale for opposing all social reform. The phrase "survival of the fittest," taken from Spencer's work, suggested that those on the top and bottom deserved to be there and that such a division was both natural and good for society.

As the political climate in the nation changed from one of conservatism to one of relative liberalism, Spencerian theory rapidly lost its credence. Educators and policy-makers began to see it for what it was, a self-serving, scientifically-bankrupt explanation for maintaining the status quo.

WILSON'S SYNTHESIS has itself run into opposition, some of it from within the Harvard faculty. His detractors say that culture and not biology is the chief determinant for human behavior and type Wilson's Sociobiology as simply the latest manifestation of the Spencerian notion. An explanation for the persistence of these theories, a group of Boston scientists wrote late last year in the New York Review of Books, is that such theories "consistently tend to provide a genetic justification of the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race, and sex."

Wilson says he does feel a responsibility to warn those who would politically misuse his theories as a justification of the status quo. But he cannot keep people, if they represent the ruling interests in a society, from seizing on his theories as a defense for the currently unequal distribution of justice, income, services and goods.

"The Lewontin group of radical environmentalists has attempted to caricature me," says Wilson, referring to his colleague Richard C. Lewontin '50, Agassiz Professor of Biology and a member of Science for the People, which opposes Wilson. "They say that I believe in a rigidly determined system and that I am therefore making a defense of the status quo." Wilson says he thinks that such an attack is levelled at a "straw man"--in fact he believes that only some fraction of human behavior, maybe about 10 per cent, is genetically determined, while all other differences can be culturally explained. He says his views reflect the notion that "God has not entirely abandoned man to the caprice of cultural revolution." As long as we have a biological foundation of human nature, Wilson says, "We can undergo a lot of social changes without losing humanity."

Wilson rejects the position that he says Science for People has foisted on him: "To believe in a certain amount of genetic determination makes you a reactionary, and a means to further the interests of the ruling classes." He also wonders whether the group represents the consensus of the radical left. For instance, Wilson notes that Marxist Herbert Marcuse wrote in the sixties that he believes in some form of biological determinism. And, Wilson cites passages in the recently published "Reflections on Language" by the leftist Noam Chomsky, as indicating that the radical environmental notion of man being infinitely plastic is probably both incorrect and dangerous:

A deeper look will show that the concept of the "empty organism," plastic and unstructured, apart from being false also serves naturally as the support for the most reactionary of social doctrines. If people are, in fact, malleable and plastic beings with no essential psychological nature, then why should they not be controlled and coerced by those who claim authority, special knowledge, and a unique insight into what is best for those less enlightened?

"There is a fundamental difference on the radical left," Wilson says, over the question of the primacy of the environment or an innate nature in determining behavior. "Human nature is an unproved question," he goes on. A debate between radicals on the issue would "wash out the political views" and show that the argument is not a political one, Wilson says. Until such depoliticized discussions occur, says Wilson, he is afraid that he will "have to keep saying 'No, I'm not a reactionary,' and 'No, I'm not for Reagan,'" to those who question his objectivity.

But if Sociobiology is accepted outside the biology labs in social science, as Spencerian logic was, and if the government sees fit to write off present social inequalities as extensions of genetic determinance, all of Wilson's afterthoughts about political neutrality won't change minds. Late apologetics will not serve as a barrier to political misuse of his hypothesis. Like it or not, the new synthesis may be the twentieth century's excuse for radical laissez faire and rigid status quo.