Re: Politely written--hoping this doesn't start another round onbiology

Boris asked a legitimate question, and I'll do my best to explain why I said
that in its "essence", most sociobiological theory is really just another
form of "Original Sin" theology. (NOTE: I'm not discussing the correctness
or incorrectness of sociobiology in this note--I'm only trying to explain my
comment as it brought up issues of ideology and social structural
processes.)

Admittedly this is going to be a superficial, skeletal set of comments. I
don't expect to "prove" anything -- just provoke some thinking about these
issues.

1) ON PAPER, sociobiology is the opposite of extreme fundamentalist
Christianity and its doctrine of "Original Sin."  The "OS" doctrine is most
commonly associated with pre-capitalist Roman Catholic theology, but many
conservative, fundamentalist Protestant groups adhere to this also, while
not necessarily using the same rhetoric.

2) While it is important to explore the inner logic of various arguments, it
is especially important to understand that what nurtures socio-political
arguments the most is whether or not someone believes that these arguments
serve certain interests. The most important of these are class interests.
What is the role of particular arguments in supporting various class
interests?

3) Obviously, the doctrines of "Original Sin" and "Predestination" in
general served to bolster the status quo of pre-capitalist societies. I
don't think this statement is controversial enough to require an explanation
here.

4) The capitalist class certainly uses mysticism of various sorts. But it
also uses arguments that have a scientific-sounding tone as well, because
scientific arguments have a certain legitimacy in the public, particularly
among people who cannot be politically won over to support the ruling class
with more mystical arguments.

5) In its essence, sociobiology is just another "Predestination" ideology.
The sociobiologists, along with the psychologists Terman, Burt, Jensen,
Herrnstein, Murray--sociologists like Eckland, physicist Shockley, and
various others, including the precursors to sociobiology -- the
anthropologists Lorentz, Tiger, and Fox (yes, those are their names!) ----
all these social "scientists" want to locate the sources of various social
behaviors in the biology of people, rather than in social (actually
political-economic) structures and processes.

(It is noteworthy that most biologists are not strong advocates of
biological determinism of the sociobiological or IQ/Race philosophy, and
those biologists that are, base it not on their empirical research, but on
the same social arguments that the social scientists to--the biologists just
happen to have biological credentials.)

6) Fair enough! I agree that biology determines a lot including some
behaviors. One can do many correlations to demonstrate that in our current
social structure, one finds  very few severely near-sighted people people
who are strong arm criminals, very few people born paralyzed who are bank
robbers, etc. And if a person has way out of range blood sugar during the
test, it can affect that person's IQ test score. Being prone to lactose
intolerance (a genetic trait) can also affect one's behavior if that person
recently ingested a quantity of lactose (milk sugar) before taking an IQ
test, making a speech, running in a marathon, etc.

7) But that doesn't satisfy the sociobiologists. They are not content to
leave the argument at specific behaviors being a reflection of
demonstratable physical conditions. (Which, by the way, also are often only
relevant in certain environmental contexts.)  The sociobiologists (&
Jensenists, etc.) want to locate these important variable in the biological,
rather than social world, which means that they can't be "fixed" by changing
the social world (i.e., Marxism, or for that matter anything progressive.)

BUT THEY ALSO WANT TO LOCATE IT IN A PART OF THE SO-CALLED "PHYSIOLOGY" THAT
ALSO CANNOT PARTICULARLY BE SPECIFICED, IDENTIFIED, OR REPAIRED. What do I
mean by "repaired?" Well, a near-sighted person can be given a pair of eye
glasses, and then that person is fully the equal of someone with better
eyesight. Not 50% or 90%, but fully the equal. So the bio-determinists speak
of "genes" supposedly "causing" male armies to commit rape, for example.
Much of the sociobiologists' rhetoric actually does explicitly sound like
theology. But even when it is phrased with scientific rhetoric, they are
speaking of something that is supposedly biological, but something that is
so elusive, so difficult to identify as to be "meta" physical, rather than
physical.

And simultaneously, they want have these supposedly biological factors be
the basic explanation for most important social processes, including war,
racism, sexism, and stratification in general.


8) Given the role these ideologies play, and given the structure of their
arguments, and given the "META"physical nature of the supposedly
"biological" factors, I think it is reasonable to say that this is a type of
theology.  I don't mean to imply that "Nazi theory is just another religion"
and I certainly don't mean to say that "Marxism is just another religion."
I don't think that all grand theory should be considered "religion" although
of course there are some common aspects. But I do think that the ways
biological determinism, and especially sociobiology are discussed today do
fufill many of the roles and criteria for being considered a "religious"
doctrine. The "gene" is the "soul", elusive and indefinable (maybe the
Genome Project will help put that to rest, but I doubt it..the meta-physical
biodeterminists won't give up that easily.)

----------
(Again, to those, like me, who DON'T want another round on biology -- I hope
I didn't start that. I was simply trying to answer the question that related
to the role of ideology and social structure.  And to Boris, I think that
you did raise a legitimate question. Whether or not you agree with my
conclusions, it should be apparent that my comments don't reflect a "knee
jerk" reaction.)

At this point, I'm more interested in the list of topics that others,
including Jozsef, proposed.



Cheers,
Alan Spector

=================================================================
-----Original Message-----
From: Boris Stremlin <bc70219@binghamton.edu>
To: Spectors <spectors@netnitco.net>
Cc: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: Sunday, May 21, 2000 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: Politely written--hoping this doesn't start another round
onbiology


>On Sat, 20 May 2000, Spectors wrote:
>
>> The research commonly
>> referred to as "sociobiological" is in fact GENERALLY nothing more than
an
>> "ideological, knee-jerk" updating of "Original Sin" theology.
>
>There are, for once, some interesting topics being discussed on the list,
>so I don't want to waste much time on this, but how, exactly, is
>sociobiology "nothing more than" and updating of original sin theology
>(and I hope I've made my suspicions concerning the former quite plain)?  I
>think there are some theologians subscribed to this list, so perhaps they
>could enlighten us, but I, in any case, am opposed to the knee jerk
>equation of theology (including "original sin theology") with any
>reactionary or determinist social doctrine (properly identified or
>otherwise).
>
>In line with the recent push to make posts on topic, I should add that a
>reexamination of the role of theology is an important feature in the
>structures of knowledge of the contemporary world-system.
>
>
>Boris Stremlin
>bc70219@binghamton.edu
>
>