- Email: [email protected]
Brilliant about the sociobiology debate
BOOK REVIEWS discovery of historical patterns has thus become emancipated from the quest for causal processes, which, he asserts, is doomed to yield only ‘untestable scenarios’. Here, I think he is mistaken. The same principle of testing for consilience between independently derived trees can be applied just as effectively to distinct lines of evidence for historical hypotheses about processes. For example, the convergence of the streamlined body and fins of extinct ichthyosaurs with those of various living swimmers, together with the discovery of their fossils in (inferred) marine deposits, make it probable that adaptation to swimming played a part in their evolution. After all, relative probability is all that science can ever pronounce upon. Fortunately, many authors of the essays do not share Gee’s stance, making this book much more catholic and interesting than his own popular account, Deep Time – Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution2, which is marred by much misplaced finger-wagging on this issue. I have to admit that I approached the book with some scepticism because of its limitation to Nature reviews. I imagined no problem on the molecular side because sequencing ‘firsts’ for all sorts of organisms are regularly trumpeted on its pages. But, I had rather thought of cladistic discussions as tending to inhabit more specialist journals. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how much Nature had to offer through the medium of its reviews (presumably reflecting careful editorial cultivation over the years by Gee himself). One of the highlights is a splendidly lucid essay on cladistics by Caro-Beth Stewart; if you are looking for an approachable introduction, start here. Otherwise, the second half of the book offers informative case histories for early land plants, angiosperms, agnathans and jawed vertebrates, early tetrapods, birds, mammals and primates. Too bad about the invertebrates! However, invertebrates do get a look-in in the first half of the book, which deals with perspectives other than phylogeny per se. Here, there are some fascinating reviews of the genetics of development, focusing on the startling discoveries of widely shared sets of genes that variously determine developmental polarity (front and back, and up and down) and lateral outgrowths. Combined with the continually improving fossil record of early metazoans (also reviewed), such clues hold the promise that we will soon be able to sketch in that crucial early evolutionary radiation of eukaryote phyla that was such a mystery to Darwin. All but one of the reviews concern macroevolution (the exception is a disappointing retrospective on punctuated equilibrium by Gould and Eldredge). Considering that they all appeared in the 1990s, the collection effectively celebrates a highly fertile decade for the advancement of our TREE vol. 15, no. 10 October 2000
understanding of macroevolutionary patterns and (sorry, Henry!) processes. I shall certainly find it a useful resource for teaching in this area.
Peter W. Skelton Dept of Earth Sciences, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK MK7 6AA ([email protected])
References 1 Ridley, M. (2000) Genome – The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate 2 Gee, H. (2000) Deep Time – Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution, Fourth Estate
Brilliant about the sociobiology debate Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond by U. Segerstråle Oxford University Press, 2000. £20.00/$30.00 hbk (ix 1 493 pages) ISBN 0 19 850505 1
T
he physicist Richard Feynman once commented that the philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds1. If you add sociology of science and perhaps history of science, you expose what seems to be the attitude of many scientists. To the extent that one can use a sample size of one to say anything general or meaningful, sociologist Ullica Segerstråle has cast doubt upon the validity of this general attitude. More precisely, she has demonstrated the extreme usefulness of applying a perspective from sociology, philosophy and history of science to one of the most bitter and well known controversies of the 20th century: the sociobiology debate. In 20 well written and logically argued chapters, Segerstråle asks: who were the opponents, who said or wrote what, and why did they write it? Also included are some good, short biographies of the various participants in the controversy. Defenders of the Truth (hereafter Defenders) is mainly about the American sociobiology debate, with a strong emphasis on the main opponents Edward O. Wilson and Richard C. Lewontin. It also analyses the British debate, and that between British and American participants (e.g. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould). We learn a lot about the various movements and agendas of Wilson and Lewontin, and Segerstråle convincingly shows how they – and the other participants in the debate –
all fought for the truth. The crucial point is that they had, and still have, different conceptions of where the truth lies. Segerstråle is highly qualified to write a detailed analysis of the sociobiology debate and the continuing controversy up to the present. Her brilliant PhD thesis Whose Truth Shall Prevail? (U. Segerstråle, PhD thesis, Harvard University, USA, 1983), and numerous articles and book chapters on the sociobiology debate, has given a lot of people insight into what this fierce debate is all about. Her contributions are all summarized and extended in Defenders. Defenders offers food for thought for the future. Segerstråle really understands the science she is discussing. This is sociology, philosophy and history of science at its best. The book is of great relevance to everyone interested in the debates around sociobiology, especially for those focused on humans and evolution. For all of us who have lived neither in the USA nor the UK during the debate, or were too young to understand this darwinian soap opera, the book is a clarifying must – hopefully useful for both (all) sides in the debate. Because interpreting and writing history is about power, few are neutral to it. It is brave of Segerstråle to write a sociological and historical analysis of such a broad and hot topic while the conflict is still unfolding and the actors are still alive. She is perfectly aware of this, having followed and commented upon the sociobiology debate for 25 years. Segerstråle will undoubtedly get all kinds of feedback from people who want to correct, nuance or expand her thesis; here are just a few minor comments. It is not my intention to be a citation vigilante, but because Defenders also concerns the history of science, it is relevant to point out that Segerstråle neither mentions Gray’s highly pertinent book on sociobiology2 nor touches upon Ruse’s two recent volumes3,4. Apart from this, she has used relevant extracts of the literature from, and about, the period she analyses. From the American discourse, I think, in general, Segerstråle puts too much emphasis on E.O. Wilson at the expense of the equally prominent, although without such a public profile, biologist Richard D. Alexander. Segerstråle correctly writes that it is Alexander, and not Wilson, who has been training a new generation of human sociobiologists (although for various reasons they do not use that term) over the years. It was from the social environment surrounding Alexander that the largest research society interested in humans and evolutionary biology, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, originally emerged. She also mentions that two books from the Alexander tradition5,6 are almost ‘E.O. Wilson-free’; that is, they do not emphasize gene differences. This is a fact that should
0169-5347/00/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
429
BOOK REVIEWS have been stressed and expanded upon much more in Defenders. If one actually turns to the empirical studies focusing on human behaviour in the light of modern evolutionary theory, these hardly discuss gene differences. Most ‘sociobiologists’ of the 1980s actually thought genetic differences between human populations were not relevant to differences in cultural behaviour2. This is equally true of what today might be called mainstream evolutionary psychology, where the relevant gene differences for universal human traits are supposed to have been used up (‘canalized’) in the Pleistocene7,8. Although Segerstråle discusses differences between sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, she never touches on this important point. Because she traces the history of ideas all the way to the present, it would have been equally relevant to mention that there is no agreement about the mainstream evolutionary psychological position of John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (i.e. that the main ‘genes for’ universal traits are canalized)7,8. In 1994, David Sloan Wilson had already delivered a powerful challenge to that position9 (not touched upon in Defenders), as have behavioural geneticists and psychologists interested in whether some of the genetic variation might be adaptive10. My point in mentioning this is that Segerstråle has left out pertinent scientific topics, origi-
nating from scientists who all defend their positions as ‘the truth’. Including these would have made her book an even better and more complete account of the debates surrounding humans and evolution today. What Ruse11 thought was missing in Brown’s treatise of the sociobiology debate12 seems to abound in Defenders. My minor criticisms aside, with Defenders we now have a good book on the sociobiology controversy, and the debates surrounding evolution and human nature. Although the first part of the clash of opinions is over, the debate itself has evolved in several ways and is still with us, with ever returning criticisms (e.g. Ref. 13). I sincerely hope that Segerstråle keeps scrutinizing these controversies, to show us again in the future that sociology, philosophy and history of science can tell scientists a great deal. Indeed, this approach is obviously more useful to scientists than ornithology is to birds.
Iver Mysterud Dept of Biology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1050 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway ([email protected])
References 1 Kitcher, P. (1998) A plea for science studies. In A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science (Koertge, N., ed.), pp. 32–56, Oxford University Press
2 Gray, J.P. (1985) Primate Sociobiology, HRAF Press 3 Ruse, M. (1996) Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University Press 4 Ruse, M. (1999) Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? Harvard University Press 5 Chagnon, N.A. and Irons, W., eds (1979) Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, Duxbury Press 6 Betzig, L., ed. (1997) Human Nature: A Critical Reader, New York & Oxford 7 Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. (1990) On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: the role of genetics and adaptation. J. Pers. 58, 17–67 8 Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. (1990) The past explains the present: emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethol. Sociobiol. 11, 375–424 9 Wilson, D.S. (1994) Adaptive genetic variation and human evolutionary psychology. Ethol. Sociobiol. 15, 219–235 10 Segal, N.L. and MacDonald, K. (1998) Behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology: unified perspective on personality research. Hum. Biol. 70, 159–184 11 Ruse, M. (1999) Booknotes. Biol. Philos. 14, 471–476 12 Brown, A. (1999) The Darwin Wars: How Stupid Genes Became Selfish Gods, Simon & Schuster 13 Rose, H. and Rose, S., eds (2000) Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology, Jonathan Cape
Chromatic Fantasy. Leaves in the Midst of Change by Thomas Eisner Sinauer, 2000. $18.95 pbk (98 pages, 31 photographs) ISBN 0 87893 160 0
430
0169-5347/00/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
TREE vol. 15, no. 10 October 2000
understanding of macroevolutionary patterns and (sorry, Henry!) processes. I shall certainly find it a useful resource for teaching in this area.
Peter W. Skelton Dept of Earth Sciences, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK MK7 6AA ([email protected])
References 1 Ridley, M. (2000) Genome – The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate 2 Gee, H. (2000) Deep Time – Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution, Fourth Estate
Brilliant about the sociobiology debate Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond by U. Segerstråle Oxford University Press, 2000. £20.00/$30.00 hbk (ix 1 493 pages) ISBN 0 19 850505 1
T
he physicist Richard Feynman once commented that the philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds1. If you add sociology of science and perhaps history of science, you expose what seems to be the attitude of many scientists. To the extent that one can use a sample size of one to say anything general or meaningful, sociologist Ullica Segerstråle has cast doubt upon the validity of this general attitude. More precisely, she has demonstrated the extreme usefulness of applying a perspective from sociology, philosophy and history of science to one of the most bitter and well known controversies of the 20th century: the sociobiology debate. In 20 well written and logically argued chapters, Segerstråle asks: who were the opponents, who said or wrote what, and why did they write it? Also included are some good, short biographies of the various participants in the controversy. Defenders of the Truth (hereafter Defenders) is mainly about the American sociobiology debate, with a strong emphasis on the main opponents Edward O. Wilson and Richard C. Lewontin. It also analyses the British debate, and that between British and American participants (e.g. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould). We learn a lot about the various movements and agendas of Wilson and Lewontin, and Segerstråle convincingly shows how they – and the other participants in the debate –
all fought for the truth. The crucial point is that they had, and still have, different conceptions of where the truth lies. Segerstråle is highly qualified to write a detailed analysis of the sociobiology debate and the continuing controversy up to the present. Her brilliant PhD thesis Whose Truth Shall Prevail? (U. Segerstråle, PhD thesis, Harvard University, USA, 1983), and numerous articles and book chapters on the sociobiology debate, has given a lot of people insight into what this fierce debate is all about. Her contributions are all summarized and extended in Defenders. Defenders offers food for thought for the future. Segerstråle really understands the science she is discussing. This is sociology, philosophy and history of science at its best. The book is of great relevance to everyone interested in the debates around sociobiology, especially for those focused on humans and evolution. For all of us who have lived neither in the USA nor the UK during the debate, or were too young to understand this darwinian soap opera, the book is a clarifying must – hopefully useful for both (all) sides in the debate. Because interpreting and writing history is about power, few are neutral to it. It is brave of Segerstråle to write a sociological and historical analysis of such a broad and hot topic while the conflict is still unfolding and the actors are still alive. She is perfectly aware of this, having followed and commented upon the sociobiology debate for 25 years. Segerstråle will undoubtedly get all kinds of feedback from people who want to correct, nuance or expand her thesis; here are just a few minor comments. It is not my intention to be a citation vigilante, but because Defenders also concerns the history of science, it is relevant to point out that Segerstråle neither mentions Gray’s highly pertinent book on sociobiology2 nor touches upon Ruse’s two recent volumes3,4. Apart from this, she has used relevant extracts of the literature from, and about, the period she analyses. From the American discourse, I think, in general, Segerstråle puts too much emphasis on E.O. Wilson at the expense of the equally prominent, although without such a public profile, biologist Richard D. Alexander. Segerstråle correctly writes that it is Alexander, and not Wilson, who has been training a new generation of human sociobiologists (although for various reasons they do not use that term) over the years. It was from the social environment surrounding Alexander that the largest research society interested in humans and evolutionary biology, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, originally emerged. She also mentions that two books from the Alexander tradition5,6 are almost ‘E.O. Wilson-free’; that is, they do not emphasize gene differences. This is a fact that should
0169-5347/00/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
429
BOOK REVIEWS have been stressed and expanded upon much more in Defenders. If one actually turns to the empirical studies focusing on human behaviour in the light of modern evolutionary theory, these hardly discuss gene differences. Most ‘sociobiologists’ of the 1980s actually thought genetic differences between human populations were not relevant to differences in cultural behaviour2. This is equally true of what today might be called mainstream evolutionary psychology, where the relevant gene differences for universal human traits are supposed to have been used up (‘canalized’) in the Pleistocene7,8. Although Segerstråle discusses differences between sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, she never touches on this important point. Because she traces the history of ideas all the way to the present, it would have been equally relevant to mention that there is no agreement about the mainstream evolutionary psychological position of John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (i.e. that the main ‘genes for’ universal traits are canalized)7,8. In 1994, David Sloan Wilson had already delivered a powerful challenge to that position9 (not touched upon in Defenders), as have behavioural geneticists and psychologists interested in whether some of the genetic variation might be adaptive10. My point in mentioning this is that Segerstråle has left out pertinent scientific topics, origi-
nating from scientists who all defend their positions as ‘the truth’. Including these would have made her book an even better and more complete account of the debates surrounding humans and evolution today. What Ruse11 thought was missing in Brown’s treatise of the sociobiology debate12 seems to abound in Defenders. My minor criticisms aside, with Defenders we now have a good book on the sociobiology controversy, and the debates surrounding evolution and human nature. Although the first part of the clash of opinions is over, the debate itself has evolved in several ways and is still with us, with ever returning criticisms (e.g. Ref. 13). I sincerely hope that Segerstråle keeps scrutinizing these controversies, to show us again in the future that sociology, philosophy and history of science can tell scientists a great deal. Indeed, this approach is obviously more useful to scientists than ornithology is to birds.
Iver Mysterud Dept of Biology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1050 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway ([email protected])
References 1 Kitcher, P. (1998) A plea for science studies. In A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science (Koertge, N., ed.), pp. 32–56, Oxford University Press
2 Gray, J.P. (1985) Primate Sociobiology, HRAF Press 3 Ruse, M. (1996) Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University Press 4 Ruse, M. (1999) Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? Harvard University Press 5 Chagnon, N.A. and Irons, W., eds (1979) Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, Duxbury Press 6 Betzig, L., ed. (1997) Human Nature: A Critical Reader, New York & Oxford 7 Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. (1990) On the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: the role of genetics and adaptation. J. Pers. 58, 17–67 8 Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. (1990) The past explains the present: emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethol. Sociobiol. 11, 375–424 9 Wilson, D.S. (1994) Adaptive genetic variation and human evolutionary psychology. Ethol. Sociobiol. 15, 219–235 10 Segal, N.L. and MacDonald, K. (1998) Behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology: unified perspective on personality research. Hum. Biol. 70, 159–184 11 Ruse, M. (1999) Booknotes. Biol. Philos. 14, 471–476 12 Brown, A. (1999) The Darwin Wars: How Stupid Genes Became Selfish Gods, Simon & Schuster 13 Rose, H. and Rose, S., eds (2000) Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology, Jonathan Cape
Chromatic Fantasy. Leaves in the Midst of Change by Thomas Eisner Sinauer, 2000. $18.95 pbk (98 pages, 31 photographs) ISBN 0 87893 160 0
430
0169-5347/00/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
TREE vol. 15, no. 10 October 2000