In a long, interesting post, Andy Austin (among other things) disagreed
with my charge that his equating Hitler with Sociobiology was "overkill".
In response:
Fascinating, but I'm still in disagreement. Turn of the century
Eugenics ("What do we do about the burgeoning numbers of genetically
feeble minded?") isn't quite the same thing as Sociobiology ("Why are
children more often killed by step-parents than natural parents?"). I
don't doubt there is some overlap, since both touch on human societies
and genetics, but from my viewpoint they look towards different
questions and come up with different answers. In particular, eugenics
was preoccupied by nasty issues of public policy which sociobiologists
tend to shun and nastier prescriptions.
I'll add that I'm not totally sold on sociobiology as currently preached.
There are great gaping holes in some of its arguments (e.g., the
existence of incest taboos) which are covered over by appeals to what
all good-thinking Euro-American adults learn as children ("Nice people
don't do that, dear"), so I'd have to say the field is less than
philosophically rigorous. Maybe it'll get somewhere in another century;
more likely it's a way station on the way to a more elaborate science--
"life history" analysis, for example.
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ms44278@huey.csun.edu
Mike Shupp
California State University, Northridge
Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology
http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm