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Just in case there are any others still out there on WSN land who are still
unsure about the debate over sociobiology because they: A) believe that humans
are biological but (B) don't like some of the sexist, racist, anti-working class
statements associated with sociobiology, but (A) they don't want to appear to be
"Against Biology" --- here is a simple distillation (I hope it's reasonably
accurate) of some of the far more eloquent explanations given by Andy,
Boris, Mark, Steve, Wojtek, and numerous others.
(I've heard this argument and so have many of you, I'm sure)
The moon exerts enormous gravitational force on the Earth. Millions and
millions of tons of water are "pulled up" from the Earth's surface, what we
call "tides" , by the tremendous force of the moon's gravity. So now that
we know that celestial bodies can exert such an enormous impact on millions of
tons of water, it seems obvious that the position of Mars and Jupiter, lined up
with Venus, could certainly have an impact on people's behavior. After all, they
would only have to affect very tiny amounts of biochemicals in people's brains,
for example. Much less than the millions of tons of water pulled by the moon.
Therefore, the study of ASTROLOGY is a realistic form of empirically verifiable
science, and anyone who rejects Astrology is simply blinded by ideology and is
in the same category of those superstitious people who deny the existence of
gravity.
Furthermore, female mammals have various biological cycles that have
somewhat regular time intervals. In fact lots of animals have biological cycles.
Therefore, the "science" of Biorhythms, which asserts that all humans have three
cycles -- emotional, physical, and mental-- based on various intervals
of 28, 29, and 31 (or something like that) should be embraced by the
social and medical sciences. For example, people should be careful of
exerting themselves when they are having "critical" down days in all three
categories. And anyone who refuses to accept the study of Biorhythms as a
science is simply in ideological denial of biology. They are against
biology because biology has shown that there are some rhythms.
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Most on this list would dismiss both arguments. (As a side point,
notice how both of these are really just [slightly] cruder versions of
the same kind of fatalism-determinism found in sociobiology!)
We would dismiss those arguments because it is too much of a stretch
to assert such specific consequences from such general theories.
So for those of you, like me, who are deeply interested in biology and have
a deep respect for science, ---yes, you can feel confident that you can reject
the philosophical musings of a man (EOWilson) who watched bugs and
anthropomorphised their behavior to suit his ideology and then took his
anthropomorphised statements about the bugs and other critters and applied it
back to humans -- in other words circular reasoning dressed up
and disguised by metaphor --- well, you can feel confident that you can
reject the nonsensical, theological fatalism. It doesn't make you "Against
Biology."
It means that you understand biology in a holistic, dialectical sense as
being internally complex, dynamic, and changing and externally
interconnected-interactive with other forces. It simply means that you
reject the style of argument that takes a "Glittering Generality" and
mechanistically applies it to situations far more complex than the "Glittering
Generality" can grasp.
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Alan ("Show me the DNA and its interaction with the environment")
Spector
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