- Email: [email protected]
Altruism and aggression: Biological and social origins
Book
reviews
395
All in all, the volume covers almost every issue which has arrested Bohm’s intellect in the past four decades. I found the article by Bohm and the interview to be the best summaries of his thought. It is good to commence with the essays by Vigier et al. and D’Espagnat in order to capture the technical issues of QM. In respect to the wider implications, one may start with the essays by Briggs, Rosen, and Pribram. I find the volume inflicted with two conspicuous shortcomings. There is no contribution which connects Bohm’s idea of the historical process to biological evolution in general, and another contribution which relates it to human evolution in particular. My identification of Bohm’s QM with hermeneutics is an attempt to remedy the situation and make his thought germane to biologists and social scientists. References Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Khalil, E. L. (1987). ht. J. Social Econ., 14(3-5), 118-131.
Science, Hermeneutics
and Praxis.
Elias L. Khalil Department of Economics-GF, New School for Social Research, New York, NY 10011, USA
Violence Paragon Altruism E. Mark 337 pp.
and Aggression: A Physiological Perspective. By K. E. Moyer. New York: House Publishers, 1987. 237 pp. and Aggression: Biological and Social Origins. Edited by Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, Cummings & Ronald Iannotti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
The main foci of these two books are the same: violence and aggression. Moyer’s book considers their origins in the nervous and endocrine systems, and the latter collection their origins mostly in early childhood. Both books are well integrated, broad, and current, even though the former cites research that (horrors!) was done as long ago as the 1930s and the latter derives from a conference at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1982. What is truly timely are the authors’ successful efforts to probe deeper than the age-old and contemporary exhortations to peace and friendship and the never ending, ever vivid media reports of violence in the Middle East, in southern Africa, in religious communes, and families. Both books advocate a more peaceful world, but they do not insist or even say that it is easy for all us human beings to hold hands. In writing style, Moyer more consistently than Zahn-Waxler et al.-even in describing some rather intricate brain phenomena-uses the English language rather than the cant of the psychological priesthood. He nicely defines aggression as “overt behavior involving intent to inflict noxious stimulation.” (But why not: aggression is intentional inflicting of harm to person or damage to property?) In the Zahn-Waxler collection, punishment is defined as the “use of power-assertive techniques of discipline”. (But why not a more generic: causing pain or loss for wrongful behaviour? Is a mother who withdraws affection asserting her power any more than the wayward child she disciplines?) These books would be even more influential if both were written in plain English.
396
Book reviews
Walter Cannon, a brilliant pioneer in neurophysiology in the 1920s and 30s wrote simply and clearly about intricate, complex, brain research. John Eccles, who discovered the synapse, likewise wrote clearly. So did William James and Harry Harlow. The books are nonetheless major contributions. One ingredient that makes them quietly exciting in the 1980s is their freedom from the simple dogmas that have unwittingly surfaced in the “scientific” presumptions of the 1950s (mankind are innately aggressive) and of the 1970s (mankind’s selfish genes generously serve the survival needs of the species). These books have replaced such scientific simplism with their recurrent themes on causality: it is multiple and reciprocal. The organism, the child, the adult may some times act with even very destructive aggression and other times very constructive altruism, and, one might add, aggression can (as in some wars, like the American Civil War and World War II) be not just destructive but also constructive. Altruism sometimes becomes self-destructive, benefiting neither the individual, nor his/her family, nation, nor conspecifics. Both books refer continuously and often explicitly to the elemental fact that all behaviour is interactive. They reflect the reasonable assumption that, at least since the Big Bang, there has never been a solitary cause of any event. Moyer avoids the easy conclusion that aggression is an innate drive or that it is altogether a product of social learning. The latter bias is perhaps traceable to the enormous influence of stimulus-response psychology and to environmental determinism that has so grossly prevailed in philosophy since John Locke and in the social sciences since Marx and Pavlov. Moyer’s book is a quantum leap ahead of his 1971 Physiology of Aggression. It is a superb summary of five decades of relevant brain research and behavioural biology. Not only does he discuss how different nerve systems interact with each other and with endocrines; he also reports specific cases, like the elevation of hormone levels in male primates in the presence of female primates and the lowering of these levels in males defeated in fighting. Organism and environment are in intense interaction as they reciprocally affect behaviour. While avoiding acceptance of the notion of innate aggression, Moyer does say that it has “an inborn physiological basis”. However, he does not indicate directly, in either his reports on research or his discussion of theory, what the inborn basis is that leads to overt aggression. He mentions the classic theoretical work of The Yale Group (Dollard et al.), Frustration and Aggression (1939), but he does no better than they did half a century ago in discussing just what innate drives produce aggression when frustrated. He and they mostly seem to regard aggression as learned and instrumental, without discussing what drives aggression is instrumental to. However, he nicely limits that moribund cliche, the Territorial Imperative, to a small scientific acreage. He avoids considering sociobiologists, perhaps on grounds that their acquaintance with vertebrate behaviour is so casual. Contributors to the NIMH-based book consider various aspects of individual development (adequate nutrition, affection, and self-imaging in addition to cognitive development). They also emphasize that individuals can be both altruistic and selfish, “prosocial” and aggressive, even occasionally at the same time. They thus avoid saying that affectionate parents are never violent or violent ones never affectionate. At least by implication they suggest that peaceful nations can go to war and after fighting become peaceful again. They also point out interconnections: affection may facilitate self-assertion and autonomy, but too-close identification may so blur the boundary between self and other that self-identity and autonomy suffer. One contributor (Staub) suggests that there may
Book reviews
397
be an innate component in the lifelong tendency to separate ingroups and outgroups: the infant’s anxiety in the presence of strangers may be only the first manifestation of deep-rooted apprehension about people (and events and ideas) that are ethnically, nationally, culturally, or religiously unfamiliar. And they point out reciprocal, escalating causation: stress leads to violence, which leads to further stress, which leads to further violence, in reciprocating, feedback sequence. If these two books do prolong a common deficiency in the behavioural sciences, it is a disinclination to consider that there are any innate motivations beyond .survival and association. They do not seem even to be aware of the work of motivational psychologists, from William James and Sigmund Freud to Henry Alexander Murray and Abraham Maslow. Both books, so to speak, consider what Murray called ‘harmavoidance’, but only peripherally at best do they separate out a consideration of what innate roots are involved in self-imaging from the environmental soil in which self-images are nurtured and degraded. The enormous cerebral cortex and the resultant phenomenon of introspection, self-consciousness, seem to be necessary innate aspects of self-imaging; Carolyn Zahn-Waxler says that behavioural scientists need to incorporate the collective wisdom of philosophy, religion and literature. She might have added history, of not only psychology and physiology as disciplines but also political theory. Kenneth Moyer makes the offhand statement that Hitler achieved control of Germany “with no more than verbal techniques”. In addition to damaging the self-image of Germans, such a statement might surprise victims of the Holocaust and other Europeans and lead them to think that their suffering resulted just from oratory, from audiences like those that Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator turned on and off like radios. Reactions in Germany were to more than words: to the deprivations, frustrations, and the prevailing national humiliation which Hitler expressed and exploited. Also, those people, inside and outside Germany, who doubted Hitler’s message were encouraged to believe or at least to accept it, by such non-verbal techniques as were used by Stormtroopers, the Gestapo, and the German armies. So these volumes are not final achievements in the unending process of finding causes of violence, aggression, and altruism. But both are big, firm steps forward. James Chowning Davies University of Oregon, 1560 Prospect Drive, Eugene, OR 97403, USA
The Stages of Human Evolution, Human and Cultural Origins, 3rd Edn. By C. Loring
Brace. Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1988. xi + 154 pp. Paperback.
Palaeoanthropologist C. Loring Brace recently revised his successful textbook on hominid evolution. The slim volume, geared toward undergraduates in introductory courses such as human evolution, palaeoarchaeology, and physical anthropology, offers an engaging overview of the key discoveries and the frequently controversial interpretations of hominid artifacts and fossils. Indeed, Brace is at his best in recounting the tales of
reviews
395
All in all, the volume covers almost every issue which has arrested Bohm’s intellect in the past four decades. I found the article by Bohm and the interview to be the best summaries of his thought. It is good to commence with the essays by Vigier et al. and D’Espagnat in order to capture the technical issues of QM. In respect to the wider implications, one may start with the essays by Briggs, Rosen, and Pribram. I find the volume inflicted with two conspicuous shortcomings. There is no contribution which connects Bohm’s idea of the historical process to biological evolution in general, and another contribution which relates it to human evolution in particular. My identification of Bohm’s QM with hermeneutics is an attempt to remedy the situation and make his thought germane to biologists and social scientists. References Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Khalil, E. L. (1987). ht. J. Social Econ., 14(3-5), 118-131.
Science, Hermeneutics
and Praxis.
Elias L. Khalil Department of Economics-GF, New School for Social Research, New York, NY 10011, USA
Violence Paragon Altruism E. Mark 337 pp.
and Aggression: A Physiological Perspective. By K. E. Moyer. New York: House Publishers, 1987. 237 pp. and Aggression: Biological and Social Origins. Edited by Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, Cummings & Ronald Iannotti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
The main foci of these two books are the same: violence and aggression. Moyer’s book considers their origins in the nervous and endocrine systems, and the latter collection their origins mostly in early childhood. Both books are well integrated, broad, and current, even though the former cites research that (horrors!) was done as long ago as the 1930s and the latter derives from a conference at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1982. What is truly timely are the authors’ successful efforts to probe deeper than the age-old and contemporary exhortations to peace and friendship and the never ending, ever vivid media reports of violence in the Middle East, in southern Africa, in religious communes, and families. Both books advocate a more peaceful world, but they do not insist or even say that it is easy for all us human beings to hold hands. In writing style, Moyer more consistently than Zahn-Waxler et al.-even in describing some rather intricate brain phenomena-uses the English language rather than the cant of the psychological priesthood. He nicely defines aggression as “overt behavior involving intent to inflict noxious stimulation.” (But why not: aggression is intentional inflicting of harm to person or damage to property?) In the Zahn-Waxler collection, punishment is defined as the “use of power-assertive techniques of discipline”. (But why not a more generic: causing pain or loss for wrongful behaviour? Is a mother who withdraws affection asserting her power any more than the wayward child she disciplines?) These books would be even more influential if both were written in plain English.
396
Book reviews
Walter Cannon, a brilliant pioneer in neurophysiology in the 1920s and 30s wrote simply and clearly about intricate, complex, brain research. John Eccles, who discovered the synapse, likewise wrote clearly. So did William James and Harry Harlow. The books are nonetheless major contributions. One ingredient that makes them quietly exciting in the 1980s is their freedom from the simple dogmas that have unwittingly surfaced in the “scientific” presumptions of the 1950s (mankind are innately aggressive) and of the 1970s (mankind’s selfish genes generously serve the survival needs of the species). These books have replaced such scientific simplism with their recurrent themes on causality: it is multiple and reciprocal. The organism, the child, the adult may some times act with even very destructive aggression and other times very constructive altruism, and, one might add, aggression can (as in some wars, like the American Civil War and World War II) be not just destructive but also constructive. Altruism sometimes becomes self-destructive, benefiting neither the individual, nor his/her family, nation, nor conspecifics. Both books refer continuously and often explicitly to the elemental fact that all behaviour is interactive. They reflect the reasonable assumption that, at least since the Big Bang, there has never been a solitary cause of any event. Moyer avoids the easy conclusion that aggression is an innate drive or that it is altogether a product of social learning. The latter bias is perhaps traceable to the enormous influence of stimulus-response psychology and to environmental determinism that has so grossly prevailed in philosophy since John Locke and in the social sciences since Marx and Pavlov. Moyer’s book is a quantum leap ahead of his 1971 Physiology of Aggression. It is a superb summary of five decades of relevant brain research and behavioural biology. Not only does he discuss how different nerve systems interact with each other and with endocrines; he also reports specific cases, like the elevation of hormone levels in male primates in the presence of female primates and the lowering of these levels in males defeated in fighting. Organism and environment are in intense interaction as they reciprocally affect behaviour. While avoiding acceptance of the notion of innate aggression, Moyer does say that it has “an inborn physiological basis”. However, he does not indicate directly, in either his reports on research or his discussion of theory, what the inborn basis is that leads to overt aggression. He mentions the classic theoretical work of The Yale Group (Dollard et al.), Frustration and Aggression (1939), but he does no better than they did half a century ago in discussing just what innate drives produce aggression when frustrated. He and they mostly seem to regard aggression as learned and instrumental, without discussing what drives aggression is instrumental to. However, he nicely limits that moribund cliche, the Territorial Imperative, to a small scientific acreage. He avoids considering sociobiologists, perhaps on grounds that their acquaintance with vertebrate behaviour is so casual. Contributors to the NIMH-based book consider various aspects of individual development (adequate nutrition, affection, and self-imaging in addition to cognitive development). They also emphasize that individuals can be both altruistic and selfish, “prosocial” and aggressive, even occasionally at the same time. They thus avoid saying that affectionate parents are never violent or violent ones never affectionate. At least by implication they suggest that peaceful nations can go to war and after fighting become peaceful again. They also point out interconnections: affection may facilitate self-assertion and autonomy, but too-close identification may so blur the boundary between self and other that self-identity and autonomy suffer. One contributor (Staub) suggests that there may
Book reviews
397
be an innate component in the lifelong tendency to separate ingroups and outgroups: the infant’s anxiety in the presence of strangers may be only the first manifestation of deep-rooted apprehension about people (and events and ideas) that are ethnically, nationally, culturally, or religiously unfamiliar. And they point out reciprocal, escalating causation: stress leads to violence, which leads to further stress, which leads to further violence, in reciprocating, feedback sequence. If these two books do prolong a common deficiency in the behavioural sciences, it is a disinclination to consider that there are any innate motivations beyond .survival and association. They do not seem even to be aware of the work of motivational psychologists, from William James and Sigmund Freud to Henry Alexander Murray and Abraham Maslow. Both books, so to speak, consider what Murray called ‘harmavoidance’, but only peripherally at best do they separate out a consideration of what innate roots are involved in self-imaging from the environmental soil in which self-images are nurtured and degraded. The enormous cerebral cortex and the resultant phenomenon of introspection, self-consciousness, seem to be necessary innate aspects of self-imaging; Carolyn Zahn-Waxler says that behavioural scientists need to incorporate the collective wisdom of philosophy, religion and literature. She might have added history, of not only psychology and physiology as disciplines but also political theory. Kenneth Moyer makes the offhand statement that Hitler achieved control of Germany “with no more than verbal techniques”. In addition to damaging the self-image of Germans, such a statement might surprise victims of the Holocaust and other Europeans and lead them to think that their suffering resulted just from oratory, from audiences like those that Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator turned on and off like radios. Reactions in Germany were to more than words: to the deprivations, frustrations, and the prevailing national humiliation which Hitler expressed and exploited. Also, those people, inside and outside Germany, who doubted Hitler’s message were encouraged to believe or at least to accept it, by such non-verbal techniques as were used by Stormtroopers, the Gestapo, and the German armies. So these volumes are not final achievements in the unending process of finding causes of violence, aggression, and altruism. But both are big, firm steps forward. James Chowning Davies University of Oregon, 1560 Prospect Drive, Eugene, OR 97403, USA
The Stages of Human Evolution, Human and Cultural Origins, 3rd Edn. By C. Loring
Brace. Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1988. xi + 154 pp. Paperback.
Palaeoanthropologist C. Loring Brace recently revised his successful textbook on hominid evolution. The slim volume, geared toward undergraduates in introductory courses such as human evolution, palaeoarchaeology, and physical anthropology, offers an engaging overview of the key discoveries and the frequently controversial interpretations of hominid artifacts and fossils. Indeed, Brace is at his best in recounting the tales of