The religion of sociobiology
From: Michael Ragland (ragland37_at_webtv.net)
Date: 09/25/04
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Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 21:18:46 +0000 (UTC)
SOCIOBIOLOGY: THE NEW RELIGION
Dr. Richard J. Blackwell Department of Philosophy St. Louis University
[This paper was presented at the ITEST Conference on The State of the
Art in March, 1980. Dr. Blackwell is well versed in the philosophy of
science and has written many papers on various aspects of that field.]
In 1971 E.O. Wilson, a prominent entomologist at Harvard, published a
book entitled The Insect Societies. In the last chapter of that book
Wilson suggested that it may be fruitful to attempt to extend to the
world of vertebrate animals the set of principles which he had found to
be operative in the intricate behaviors of social insects. Following his
own advice, he published four years later his enormous study entitled
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. The twenty-seventh and last chapter of
that book recommended the fur- ther extension of these same principles
to the human species. The result was a third book, On Human Nature,
which appeared in 1978.
The last two books in this trilogy1 have caused a storm of controversy
of an extent rarely seen in scientific circles. There is a special
reason for this, which we wish to explore in this paper.
Briefly, in the pursuit of his scientific investigations Wilson
gradually came to confront the bed- rock questions of what is the
meaning of human life and what values should govern it, which, to say
the least, are delicate issues. Moreover, Wilson's efforts to answer
these questions touched an extremely raw nerve which has been implicit
in the fabric of scientific culture since its inception in the
Seventeenth Century. In short, Wilson has argued that, if we
relentlessly pursue science as the only avenue to the understanding of
reality, then man must be reduced in significance to a point for below
what most of us, including most scientists, would like to see.
To make matters more challenging, Wilson writes with an engaging style
and with an over-abundance of fascinating accounts of aspects of animal
and human life-styles which seem to make his analysis compelling. How
should we evaluate his view of human nature?
The first and most strident wave of criticism came from the academic
political left. Wilson was accused of elitism, racism, sexism,
anti-feminism, a denigration of the powers of institutional and social
change, and in general of being a reactionary advocate of the social and
political status quo.2 Wilson's reply to these critics is that they have
not under- stood his message, and also that they in turn are wrong in
thinking that environmental factors alone, independently of genetics,
determine social behavior. There are limitations imposed by our genetic
inheritance outside of which manipulation of the social and political
environment is really useless as a lasting tool for social betterment.
Wilson clearly rejects a purely environmental model of the causes of
human behavior, in which category he places his political opposition.
It might be mentioned in passing that this exchange is the most recent
instance of a long history of using extra-scientific political, social,
or religious norms to judge the correctness of a scientific theory. It
also seems from this exchange that the present American academic climate
is much more tolerant of external, environmental determinism for man
(e.g., Skinner) than of internal, genetic determinism (e.g., Wilson). In
neither case is there any genuine human freedom; Wilson is closer to
some of his critics on this point than appears on first sight.
A second, and more technical, criticism of Wilson has come from various
scientists and philosophers of science who charge that his argumentation
is frequently subject to the fallacy of equivocations.3 The reason for
this is that the primary tool of investigation in sociobiology is
detailed comparison of social behaviors in a wide range of animal
species, including man.
In the process the same term is often used by Wilson to refer to
behaviors which are at least as different as they are similar. To
mention only the most famous case, altruism or self-sacrifice in the
behavior of termites or ants is quite different in basic ways from
altruism or self-sacrifice in human relations. Lacking a developed
theory of analogous predication, Wilson's version of sociobiology is
fatally flawed in its most basic methods of comparison and inference
patterns between highly diverse animal species.
Another version of this same objection applies to Wilson's program for
the unity of the sciences. The ideal to be approached here is an
absorption by biology of the social sciences and eventually the
humanities, including religion, as the ultimate goal. The name
`sociobiology“ was coined to reflect the first stage of this
reduction. During the past generation philosophers of science have
shown4 rather conclusively that, for one discipline B to be reduced to a
more basic discipline A, two requirements are necessary. First the
descriptive terms used in the laws and theories of B must be translated
without remainder into the descriptive terms used in the laws and
theories of A. Secondly the laws and theories of B must be deducible
from those of A. Translatability and deducibility, in that order, are
the necessary conditions. For sociobiology this would mean the
translation of terms referring to social behavior in animals into terms
referring to the basic microbiological categories of genes, DNA,
proteins, enzymes, etc. It is clear from reading Wilson“s books that
he is a very long way away from such a translation, and as a result his
remarks about the reductive unity of the various sciences and humanities
are at present very premature and at best state only an abstract and
hoped-for goal.
Considering Wilson's reply, mentioned above, to his critics on the left,
should one conclude that he is arguing for the notion that human
behavior is determined solely by our genes? Certainly not; although
there are some stray passages which give this impression. For example,
Wilson states:
The central idea of the philosophy of behaviorism, that behavior and the
mind have an entirely materialist basis subject to experimental
analysis, is fundamentally sound. . . The learning potential of each
species appears to be fully programmed by the structure of its brain,
the sequence of release of its hormones, and, ultimately, its genes.5
(emphasis added)
However the overwhelming majority of comments in Wilson's writings make
it quite clear that his view is that human behavior is the joint product
of both internal genetic causes and external environmental influences.
He offers neither a purely genetic nor a purely environmental model of
behavior. Rather he argues quite reasonably that human genetic structure
imposes constraints on our behavior. Outside of these constraints we
either cannot act at all (e.g., we cannot fly like the birds on our own)
or we cannot sustain an action successfully (e.g., a human slavery
system modeled after insect societies must ultimately fail of its own
weight). Within these constraints our genes determine various genuine
capacities or potentialities for behavior, and which of these
possibilities become actuated is determined by the added influence of
the physical and social environment. Thus the biological evolution of
our genetic make-up, which occurs according to Darwinian principles, is
complemented by the cultural evolution in our social environment, which
is governed by Lamarckian principles. The former is much slower, lasting
over millions of years up through the present, while the latter is much
faster and has occurred primarily over only the latest phases of the
history of the human species. To quote Wilson:
I do not for a moment ascribe the relative performances of modern
societies to genetic differences, but the point must be made: there is a
limit, perhaps closer to the practices of contemporary societies than we
have had the wit to grasp, beyond which biological evolution will begin
to pull cultural evolution back to itself.6
In short, human social behavior is the shared product of both genetic
and environmental causes. This seems quite reasonable in itself, and
there is an enormous amount of scientific evidence, gathered by Wilson,
to support this view. So if we leave aside the political and
methodological objections to sociobiology and focus on its conceptual
context, why should this view of human nature and human behavior have
caused so much controversy? This brings us to the crux of the problem,
the raw nerve mentioned earlier.
Sociobiology unequivocally claims to be a scientific study of human
behavior. As such it is destined to conclude that man is a machine.
Rightly or wrongly, when modern science came into existence in the
Seventeenth Century, it consciously adopted the machine model for its
fundamental mode of understanding. This has been pursued relentlessly
and successfully ever since through a wide range of physical and
chemical phenomena. But as time passed, it became more and more feasible
to extend the methods of scientific investigation to human behavior, to
the social sciences, and ultimately the humanities. Sociobiology is the
latest and most sophisticated version of this thrust, which extends back
through Comte and the French Encyclopedists to Hobbes and to Cartesian
biology. The scientific image of man, to use a helpful phrase from
Sellars, is that man is a machine, a physical, chemical, genetic
mechanism. If we add the further restriction that only scientific
knowledge is genuine knowledge, the claim of scientism, then man is no
more than a machine.
This is where the most basic controversy over sociobiology lies. As a
machine, man is determined and his behavior is predictable in principle,
it making little difference in the last analysis whether the causal
determination is all external (environmentalism) or internal
(geneticism) or some combination of the two (Wilson's version of
sociobiology). In all these cases human freedom and the conscious self
are unreal; they are vestigial notions from our pre-scientific days. If
Wilson were to pursue the logic of his position to its full limits, he
should advocate sociophysics, not sociobiology. For why should we carry
the analysis of our behavior only down to the level of human genes when
we know that they in turn are complexes of more basic chemical and
physical units? To focus so sharply on human genes is to be guilty of
anthropocentrism in science, a charge which Wilson frequently brings
against the social sciences and the humanities.
Now of course there are images of man other than the machine model. Of
primary interest here as an alternative is what we will call the "active
agent" model of man. This view agrees with sociobiology that causal
influences are exerted on human behavior by both genetic and
environmental factors. That point is not in dispute. But the active
agent model goes further to add a third irreducible factor in the
analysis, namely, an assertive and self-initiating agent acting within
the constraints of the genetics and the environment in which it finds
itself. This raises the critical question of the status to be assigned
to the human mind and the human will. It is worth quoting Wilson on this
at length.
The great paradox of determinism and free will which has held the
attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for
generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: if our
genes are inherited and our environment is a train of physical events
set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent
agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction
of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is
only a self-delusion. In fact, this may be so.7
Of course, if the agent is an effect produced by the interaction of
genes and environment, then it has no independent status, and the
"active agent" model has been rejected. "The mind will be more precisely
explained as an epiphenomenon of the neuronal machinery of the brain,"
as Wilson says later. In Chapter IV of On Human Nature Wilson is
noticeably hesitant to affirm the machine model of mind unequivocally.
We read such phrases as "this may be so," "schemata within the brain
could serve as the physical basis of will," "the mind could be a
republic of such schemata," "will might be the outcome of the
competition, requiring the action of neither a `little man“ nor any
other external agent. There is no proof that the mind works in just this
way."9 (emphases added)
Why this hesitation? The last phrase explains why. "There is no proof."
The limits of scientific decidability have been reached. In many places
Wilson makes it quite clear that he considers an hypothesis to be
scientific only if it has competitors and if each member of the set is
verifiable or at least falsifiable by empirical testing.10 Does the
machine model of mind fit these requirements? According to Wilson
apparently it does not. If we add to this the doctrine of scientism,
i.e., that science is the only genuine mode of knowing, then we have
passed beyond knowledge into faith. As a result Wilson's advocacy of and
commitment to what he calls the "mythology of scientific materialism" is
in the last analysis an act of faith. Why this belief rather than belief
in the "active agent" hypothesis which apparently is equally beyond
scientific decidability? Of course, no reason can be given to
conclusively settle this issue, but the machine model of mind is clearly
more congenial to the scientific frame of reference.
So at the critical juncture of dealing with the presence of mind and
will in human behavior, sociobiology must abandon reason for faith. It
has evolved into a belief system, into a form of religion, the religion
of scientism, the religion of reductionistic scientific materialism.
Wilson even formulates the credo of the new religion for us as follows:
The core of scientific materialism is the evolutionary epic. Let me
repeat its minimum claims: that the laws of the physical sciences are
consistent with those of the biological and social sciences and can be
linked in chains of causal explanation; that life and mind have a
physical basis; that the world as we know it has evolved from earlier
worlds obedient to the same laws: and that the visible universe today is
everywhere subject to these materialist explanations. The epic can be
indefinitely strengthened up and down the line, but its most sweeping
assertions cannot be proved with finality.
What I am suggesting, in the end, is that the evolutionary epic is
probably the best myth we will ever have. It can be adjusted until it
comes as close to truth as the human mind is constructed to judge the
truth.11
The characterization of sociobiology as a form of religion can be made
more specific by looking at Wilson's comments about traditional
religions.12 He begins by remarking that religions constitute a critical
challenge to sociobiology because human religious behavior has no
analogue in the animal kingdom.
Nevertheless a biological account of religion is still in order.
According to Wilson human beings have a strong susceptibility for
indoctrination which has become genetically ingrained in us because of
its clear adaptational advantage for both the individual and the group.
The reason for this is that stability of social structures is greatly
enhanced if individuals are selected who tend to act in traditional,
uniform ways. The specification of this tendency for indoctrination
takes on a myriad of actual forms as various mythologies are culturally
evolved to deal with the fundamental human concerns of the meaning of
creation and life, of human suffering, of death, of personal identity
and survival. At any rate various religions originate from the
interaction of a genetically selected indoctrinability and culturally
evolving mythological traditions. For example, the Judeo-Christian
tradition shows all the characteristics of its origins in our Ice Age
ancestors of the middle East who lived in a hunter-gatherer social
structure. Such societies are "highly mobile, tightly organized, and
often militant, all features that tip the balance toward male
authority."13 So God is male, the pastoral imagery of the Bible is
derivative from the herding habits of these ancient people, etc.
But what is more important for our concerns is that if Wilson's argument
be granted, then the net effect is a naturalistic account of traditional
religions, and the consequent installation of sociobiology as a sort of
meta-religion since it can explain, and thus explain away, traditional
religious behavior. As Wilson puts it:
If this interpretation is correct, the final decisive edge enjoyed by
scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional
religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material phenomenon.
Theology is not likely to survive as an independent intellectual
discipline. But religion itself will endure for a long time as a vital
force in society.14
Wilson's concession in this last sentence is significant. It is not
based only on the biological claim that the religious tendency is deeply
ingrained in our genetic baggage. More importantly he sees traditional
religion as more energetic than the belief system of scientific
materialism since the latter has nothing to compare to the power of the
idea of a creating and caring God and the idea of personal immortality.
For the near future at least he sees sociobiology as parasitic on this
vitality.
Like other religions sociobiology also has a distinctive moral code. In
analogy to traditional natural law ethics, Wilson enunciates three
primary moral precepts.15 The first ethical imperative is "the survival
of human genes in the form of a common pool over generations."16 The
second is the maintenance of diversity in the gene pool to ensure
adaptability to changes in the environment. The third imperative is
universal human rights, not because of its intrinsic worthiness, but
because of its long range genetic advantage. All other values are
classified as secondary and instrumental to the attainment of these
primary moral standards. The ethics of sociobiology, in short, is a
utilitarian calculus of genetic advantage. If Wilson follows his recent
pattern of writing his next book on themes suggested at the end of the
last one, the next topic for research should be the fleshing out of this
ethics to prepare man to take over the direction of his own biological
evolution through a program of eugenics.17
In characterizing sociobiology as a form of religion, we in no way mean
to belittle its significance. Actually, just the opposite is the case.
Religions have always been prominent and powerful elements in human
culture. Sociobiology as a religion has many faithful followers and
converts; it cannot be ignored. Moreover Wilson has performed an
important service in carrying the implications of reductionistic
scientific materialism and scientism far beyond the point where many of
its adherents are content to leave it. What are the consequences for the
meaning of human life if one makes a serious commitment to the belief
system of scientific naturalism? Wilson has spelled them out in
uncomfortable detail. The individual human person is reduced to, and is
not more than, a temporary and ultimately insignificant way station
serving merely as a transitory conduit for a portion of the gene pool.
It is a stark picture. The individual human person has only an
instrumental value and is ultimately insignificant. Only the genes
really count. Sociobiology as a religion involves an enormous act of
faith, little room for charity, and no personal hope for survival. It is
not accidental that Wilson's major book begins and ends with foreboding
quotations from Camus on suicide and human alienation. In the very first
paragraph of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis he states his view of life
in quite unequivocally reductionistic terms as follows:
In a Darwinian sense the organism does not live for itself. Its primary
function is not even to reproduce other organisms; it reproduces genes,
and it serves as their temporary carrier... Samuel Butler's famous
aphorism, that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg,
has been modernized: The organism is only DNA's way of making more
DNA.18
To conclude on a more positive note, we should point out that, whatever
the ultimate fate of sociobiology as a science or as a religion, its
primary thrust is a redrawing of the lines between genetics and culture,
between emotion and reason, between the various sciences, between
science and religion, between man and the other animals. Its constant
message is that there is a much larger biological component in these
divisions than we have allowed ourselves to admit in the past. And this
is probably quite true. It is certainly a point worthy of careful
thought and reflection.
ENDNOTES
All three of these volumes were published by Harvard University Press.
For a convenient anthology containing these political objections and
Wilson's reply to them, cf. Arthur L. Caplan (ed.), The Sociobiology
Debate (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1978), Part V.
For example, cf. Richard Lowentin, "Sociobiology -A Caricature of
Darwinism," in P. Asquith and F. Suppe (eds.), PSA 1976 (East Lansing,
Michigan: The Philosophy of Science Association, 1977), Vol. 2, pp.
22-31.
For an introduction to this literature, cf. Ernest Nagel, The Structure
of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), Chapter 11;
Robert L. Causey, Unity of Science (Dordrecht, Holland Boston, U.S.A.:
D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1977); David Hull, Philosophy of Biological
Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974), Chapter 1.
Hull argues that even within biology the attempt to reduce Mendelian
genetics to molecular genetics is so massively complex as to be unworthy
of the effort; it is a case of replacement rather than reduction (p.
44).
Edward O. Wilson,
On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p.
65.
Ibid., p. 80.
Ibid., p. 71.
Ibid., p. 195.
Ibid., p. 71; pp. 76-77.
For Wilson's most direct statement on this, cf. Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 27-31.
On Human Nature, p. 201.
Ibid., Chapter 8.
Ibid., p. 190.
Ibid., p. 192.
Ibid., Chapter 9.
Ibid., pp. 196-197.
cf. Ibid., p. 208.
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, p. 3.
"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
Bacteria do quite well without it."
Stephen Hawking
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