Re: rounding up posses

On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

> > 1) What specific findings in the realm of human genetics are people who
> > call themselves sociobiologists responsible for (some posters have
> > virtually equated sociobiology with genetics, others have made the
> > opposite claim that it's nothing more than a logical exercise)?
> 
> I have been arguing mainly on logical grounds against sweeping dismissals
> of an entire research program.  I am not familiar with the field in any
> detail, but I do know that the theorists and researchers are not mainly
> fascists, or even crypto-fascists.

Aside from the fact that it is far from clear whether the term "fascist"
possesses any utility in today's world, fascism is not the issue here.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that all sociobiologists are
fascists (since recent "arguments" claim to have "proved" this beyond a
shodow of a doubt).  I want to know how this fact impacts on their
scientific practice.  Do they produce novel findings concerning the impact
of genes on social life?  Do such findings receive independent
confirmation?  Have ANY of the researchers in question changed their
original hypotheses as a result of their research?  Answering these
questions in the affirmative would mean that the science of sociobiology
has developed independently of the facsist ideology which spawned it
(there is nothing which says, after all, that a fascist cannot by
definition be a good scientist - just look at Heisenberg, who fits the
definition of a fascist much better than most right-wingers do today).
If, on the other hand, the research program has remained confined to
"logical grounds", we have no basis for concluding that it is not an
ideology.

> > 2) Which sociobiologists define their work as the study of the 
>interaction
> > of human, social and material agency? (I know Wilson speaks of the
> > interaction of genetics and the environment, but his program of
> > consilience explicitly advocates material reductionism and an absorption
> > of the social and human sciences by the hard sciences).
> 
> I offered a quote from Wilson's "Consilience" to exactly this effect in
> the last go-round. 

Fine.  He also says that the success of Western science is owed to its
adoption or "reductionism and physical law" (_Consilience_, p.34) - a
highly dubious proposition in the age of science studies - and then goes
on to argue that the future of the social sciences lies in their ability
to make positive predictions (ch. 9).  In speaking of culture, he subjects
it to the laws of genetic evolution and links it to genes through the
mechanism of the brain (a link which, by his own admission, remains
"unmeasured" and "torturous" [p.138]).  So in practice, I see a lot of
reduction and no interaction.

> But even if that is not the top priority of the
> evolutionary psychologists, we social scientists can pursue the
> interactions.

No doubt, but it is THEIR research program which is question here.

> Personally I am in favor of focusing our disciplinary war
> against (mainstream) economics. 

Fair enough, but let's not apply a double standard (one can just as easily
claim that, like it or not, the principles of market economics are here to 
stay and use this argument as a defence of "mainstream" economics as you
have used genetics in defence of sociobiology).

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bc70219@binghamton.edu