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The sociobiological imagination
REVIEWS
The Sociobiological Zmaginatian, edited by Mary Maxwell. Albany, NY: State University of New York press, 1991, xi +- 376 pp., paperback, $16.95 Reviewed by Thothp Crippen, Department ington CoIlege, Fredericksburg, VA 22401
of Sociology
and Anthropology,
Mary Wash-
Mary Maxwell’s edited volume on The Sociobiohgical Imagination offers a series of brief, but stimulating, glimpses into the manner in which theoretical developments in behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology% and ~pulation genetics have raised innovative questions and have yielded fresh insights in various social science and humanities disciplines. The purposes of the book are (1) to illustrate how sociobiological reasoning has influenced the nature of inquiry in a wide array of academic disciplines, (2) to demonstrate that many of the most intriguing insights in human sociobiology have been developed in recent years by researchers and scholars working outside the traditional domain of the biological sciences, and (3) to serve, by supplementing basic texts and monographs, as an introduction to the fundamental principles of sociobiology. On these terms, the work is a noteworthy success Maxwell’s “Introduction” sets the stage nicely. She succinctly traces the intellectual heritage of modem sociobiology, emphasizing its debt to the fields of ethology and population genetics. She goes on to discuss briefly some recent developments in theories of geneculture coevolution, a topic of considerable importance in analyses of the influence of sociobiology on studies of human behavior. These introductory comments are supplemented with an eleven page glossary of key terms. Taken together, the introduction and glossary will be enormously helpful to the uninitiated reader. The bulk of the volume is divided into eighteen chapters that offer state of the art reviews of how sociobiologi~al insights are transforming, in various degrees, t~ditional areas of inquiry in the social and behavioral sciences and in the human~ties~ The chapters (with authors’ names noted) cover, in order of appearance, the fields of psychiatry (R. M. Neese), law (J. H. Beckstrom), management theory (J. G. Bernhard and K. Glantz), anthropology (W, Irons), economics (R. H. Frank), primatology (B. Galdikas and P. Vasey), history (L. Betzig), political science (R. D. Masters), ethical philosophy (J. Chandler), cognitive psychology (D. Kenrick and R. Hogan), epistemology (M_ Ruse), the socioecology of religion (V. Reynolds), studies of conflict (J. M. G. van der Dennen), Marxist thought (R. Karpinskaya), aesthetics (C. J. Lumsden), sociology (P. L. van den Berghe), linguistics (J. R. Hurford), and psychology (C. Crawford). Given such breadth of coverage, the current review cannot do justice to each selection. Nonetheless, I would note that The Sociobiological Imagination does not suffer from a flaw common to many edited volumes-that is to say, Maxwell has done a superlative job of Journal of Social and Evolurionap ISSN: 1061-7361
Sprems
15(4):4431-438.
Copyright 0 1992 by JAI Press, Inc. AI1 rights nf reproduction in any form reserved.
431
432
-
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMS
communicating editorial intentions to her authors; and, for their part, the authors have done a masterful job of briefly and cogently summarizing the ways in which sociobiology has infhrenced their respective areas of expertise, The result is a volume in which the entries both stand nicely as independent essays and suitably complement their companion chapters. Maxwell’s accomplishment, with the able assistance of her contributors, is commendable. Beyond the obvious pedagogical value of the volume, there are at least two other audiences who will benefit from careful inspection of the book’s content. First, although specialists are unlikely to learn much from the chapters that touch on their areas of expertise, they will be pleasantly surprised by several reveahng insights in chapters that deal with topics beyond their usual range of attention. For example, as an evolutionarily inclined sociologist who has done a fair amount of reading over the years in arrthropoiogy, history, political science, primatology, psychology, and religion, I found the selections on psychiatry, law, management theory, economics, aesthetics, and linguistics to be especially instructive. Second, and perhaps more important, the book will benefit those in the social and behavioral sciences and in the humanities who continue to resist efforts to integrate evolutionary reasoning into their disciplines. For wary scholars who fret about the prospects of a resurgent Social Darwinism, about the alleged threats of “biological imperialism” and reductionism, or about other presumed intellectual sins attending the sociobioiogical analysis of human behavior, the selections in this volume will be enlightening. Nearly all of the chapters reveal the subtle insights and the productive fines of inquiry that may be pursued by examining convent~on~ problems in the social and behavioral. sciences through the prism of modern evolutionary theory. Upon reading these chapters carefully, even the most skeptical of readers will recognize that evolutionary approaches to the study of human behavior are not couched in the heavy-handed language of genetic determinism, are not (and, by logical necessity, cannot be) insensitive to the manner in which environmental factors shape and even contravene behavioral d~s~osi~ons instalfed through the process of naturaf selection, and are not ~~~en~ng to the special intehectual domains of traditional social science and humanities disciplines. The sciences of human behavior, no longer as youthful as their practitioners are wont to insist, are at a theoretical crossroads. On the one hand, research and scholarship in the social and behavioral sciences can follow the path that their practitioners have trod over the last several decades. ff so, they shall continue to pursue the development of fact-rich but, unf~~ately~ theory-poor disciplines. On the other hand, students of the so&a1 and behavioral sciences have an opportunity, already grasped by some, to enhance the theoretical rigor of their disciplines by reference to the sophisticated and subtle insights of modem evolutionary biology. The latter strategy, as Maxwell’s volume capably documents, is proving itself to be quite robust, generating a substantial number of productive hypotheses that both sharpen and complement conventional approaches to a wide range of problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Of course, some disciplines have progressed much further than have others in forging an evolutionary synthesis of the sciences of human behavior. Indeed, one of the more instructive features of Maxwell’s volume is that it illustrates the variable degrees to which sociobioiogicai insights have transformed the traditional social and behavioral sciences. For example, the chapters on anthro~~ogy, p~rnato~ogy~ and cognitive psychofogy illuminate the enormous influence of modern evolutionary reasoning on these fields of inquiry. The chapters on psychiatry and political science reveal that the influence in these areas has been more modest and tentative, and yet very promising. Finally, the chapters on conflict, sociology, and
Reviews
-
433
linguistics indicate that, thus far, the influence of sociobiology in these fields has been d~sap~inting~y slight. The theoretical convergence of &heevotutionary life sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, and the humanities, although not uniformly developed, is a trend that is becoming well established and that holds considerable promise. Maxwell, in conjunction with the contributors, has produced a volume that both illustrates and assesses the current state of affairs. The product is laudable and complements Maxwell’s severat earlier efforts to reorient the theoretical foundations of studies of human sociai and cultural behavior toward explieitty stated evolutionary principles. The issues raised in this book, along with their many implications, are significant and merit a wide audience. As noted in her introductory remarks, the title that Maxwell selected for this volume self-consciously echoes C. Wright Mills’ influential treatment of “the sociological imagination.” The mimicry is clever; moreover, the social and behavioral sciences would be well served if T&e ~~c~~~~~~~gic~lZrn~gi~ur~~~receives the same degree of attention and stimulates as much scholarly reflection as did the book that inspired its title.
The Lefthander
Syndrome,
by Stanley Coren. New York: The Free Press, 1992
Reviewed by Marc A. UIsban, 14802
Division of Social Sciences Alfred University,
Alfred, NY
One is tempted to dismiss Stanley Coren’s The tefihmder Syndrome as hucksterism dressed up in a tab coat. Coren argues that le~handers suffer from sjgni~~antly higher mortality rates than righthanders, and hence they are drastically under-represented in the oldest age categories. He further argues that “for a certain percentage of people, iefthandedness may be caused by pathological conditions or may indicate the presence of pathological conditions.” These conditions result in a cohort of southpaws less fit than their physiologically correct counterparts. The result is that the percentage of lefthanders decreases as a function of age until by age 80 the few ~main~ng lefties resemble a valiant but doomed band of statistical outhers. The main problem is that none of Coren’s work is based on random samples of the general population to which he claims his findings apply. His research showing a decreasing percentage of lefthanders in aging populations relied on the membership lists of various organizations he contacted. Maybe the smaller percentage of lefthanders he found in senior citizens groups compared with that found in high schools derives from the fact that independent southpaws tend to shun voIuntary affiliations. Maybe Iefthandedness tends to be underreported by those elderly who have been more stigmatized by their condition than today’s youth. Coren’s research design is unable to assess the extent of such self-selection. One survey that asked about the handedness of recently deceased relatives claimed to show that righthanders outlive lefthanders by an average of nine years. Yet in a separate study7 Coren reports that the majority of high-sch~~-aged sons and daughters incorrectly identified their lefthanded parents as righthanded. That finding alone should go a long way toward explaining the “missing” lefthanders. Coren’s study .is flawed in such a variety of ways that it would be admirably suited for use in a research methods course to illustrate common pitfalls. Coren’s credibility is further eroded by references to the generally dis-
The Sociobiological Zmaginatian, edited by Mary Maxwell. Albany, NY: State University of New York press, 1991, xi +- 376 pp., paperback, $16.95 Reviewed by Thothp Crippen, Department ington CoIlege, Fredericksburg, VA 22401
of Sociology
and Anthropology,
Mary Wash-
Mary Maxwell’s edited volume on The Sociobiohgical Imagination offers a series of brief, but stimulating, glimpses into the manner in which theoretical developments in behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology% and ~pulation genetics have raised innovative questions and have yielded fresh insights in various social science and humanities disciplines. The purposes of the book are (1) to illustrate how sociobiological reasoning has influenced the nature of inquiry in a wide array of academic disciplines, (2) to demonstrate that many of the most intriguing insights in human sociobiology have been developed in recent years by researchers and scholars working outside the traditional domain of the biological sciences, and (3) to serve, by supplementing basic texts and monographs, as an introduction to the fundamental principles of sociobiology. On these terms, the work is a noteworthy success Maxwell’s “Introduction” sets the stage nicely. She succinctly traces the intellectual heritage of modem sociobiology, emphasizing its debt to the fields of ethology and population genetics. She goes on to discuss briefly some recent developments in theories of geneculture coevolution, a topic of considerable importance in analyses of the influence of sociobiology on studies of human behavior. These introductory comments are supplemented with an eleven page glossary of key terms. Taken together, the introduction and glossary will be enormously helpful to the uninitiated reader. The bulk of the volume is divided into eighteen chapters that offer state of the art reviews of how sociobiologi~al insights are transforming, in various degrees, t~ditional areas of inquiry in the social and behavioral sciences and in the human~ties~ The chapters (with authors’ names noted) cover, in order of appearance, the fields of psychiatry (R. M. Neese), law (J. H. Beckstrom), management theory (J. G. Bernhard and K. Glantz), anthropology (W, Irons), economics (R. H. Frank), primatology (B. Galdikas and P. Vasey), history (L. Betzig), political science (R. D. Masters), ethical philosophy (J. Chandler), cognitive psychology (D. Kenrick and R. Hogan), epistemology (M_ Ruse), the socioecology of religion (V. Reynolds), studies of conflict (J. M. G. van der Dennen), Marxist thought (R. Karpinskaya), aesthetics (C. J. Lumsden), sociology (P. L. van den Berghe), linguistics (J. R. Hurford), and psychology (C. Crawford). Given such breadth of coverage, the current review cannot do justice to each selection. Nonetheless, I would note that The Sociobiological Imagination does not suffer from a flaw common to many edited volumes-that is to say, Maxwell has done a superlative job of Journal of Social and Evolurionap ISSN: 1061-7361
Sprems
15(4):4431-438.
Copyright 0 1992 by JAI Press, Inc. AI1 rights nf reproduction in any form reserved.
431
432
-
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMS
communicating editorial intentions to her authors; and, for their part, the authors have done a masterful job of briefly and cogently summarizing the ways in which sociobiology has infhrenced their respective areas of expertise, The result is a volume in which the entries both stand nicely as independent essays and suitably complement their companion chapters. Maxwell’s accomplishment, with the able assistance of her contributors, is commendable. Beyond the obvious pedagogical value of the volume, there are at least two other audiences who will benefit from careful inspection of the book’s content. First, although specialists are unlikely to learn much from the chapters that touch on their areas of expertise, they will be pleasantly surprised by several reveahng insights in chapters that deal with topics beyond their usual range of attention. For example, as an evolutionarily inclined sociologist who has done a fair amount of reading over the years in arrthropoiogy, history, political science, primatology, psychology, and religion, I found the selections on psychiatry, law, management theory, economics, aesthetics, and linguistics to be especially instructive. Second, and perhaps more important, the book will benefit those in the social and behavioral sciences and in the humanities who continue to resist efforts to integrate evolutionary reasoning into their disciplines. For wary scholars who fret about the prospects of a resurgent Social Darwinism, about the alleged threats of “biological imperialism” and reductionism, or about other presumed intellectual sins attending the sociobioiogical analysis of human behavior, the selections in this volume will be enlightening. Nearly all of the chapters reveal the subtle insights and the productive fines of inquiry that may be pursued by examining convent~on~ problems in the social and behavioral. sciences through the prism of modern evolutionary theory. Upon reading these chapters carefully, even the most skeptical of readers will recognize that evolutionary approaches to the study of human behavior are not couched in the heavy-handed language of genetic determinism, are not (and, by logical necessity, cannot be) insensitive to the manner in which environmental factors shape and even contravene behavioral d~s~osi~ons instalfed through the process of naturaf selection, and are not ~~~en~ng to the special intehectual domains of traditional social science and humanities disciplines. The sciences of human behavior, no longer as youthful as their practitioners are wont to insist, are at a theoretical crossroads. On the one hand, research and scholarship in the social and behavioral sciences can follow the path that their practitioners have trod over the last several decades. ff so, they shall continue to pursue the development of fact-rich but, unf~~ately~ theory-poor disciplines. On the other hand, students of the so&a1 and behavioral sciences have an opportunity, already grasped by some, to enhance the theoretical rigor of their disciplines by reference to the sophisticated and subtle insights of modem evolutionary biology. The latter strategy, as Maxwell’s volume capably documents, is proving itself to be quite robust, generating a substantial number of productive hypotheses that both sharpen and complement conventional approaches to a wide range of problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Of course, some disciplines have progressed much further than have others in forging an evolutionary synthesis of the sciences of human behavior. Indeed, one of the more instructive features of Maxwell’s volume is that it illustrates the variable degrees to which sociobioiogicai insights have transformed the traditional social and behavioral sciences. For example, the chapters on anthro~~ogy, p~rnato~ogy~ and cognitive psychofogy illuminate the enormous influence of modern evolutionary reasoning on these fields of inquiry. The chapters on psychiatry and political science reveal that the influence in these areas has been more modest and tentative, and yet very promising. Finally, the chapters on conflict, sociology, and
Reviews
-
433
linguistics indicate that, thus far, the influence of sociobiology in these fields has been d~sap~inting~y slight. The theoretical convergence of &heevotutionary life sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, and the humanities, although not uniformly developed, is a trend that is becoming well established and that holds considerable promise. Maxwell, in conjunction with the contributors, has produced a volume that both illustrates and assesses the current state of affairs. The product is laudable and complements Maxwell’s severat earlier efforts to reorient the theoretical foundations of studies of human sociai and cultural behavior toward explieitty stated evolutionary principles. The issues raised in this book, along with their many implications, are significant and merit a wide audience. As noted in her introductory remarks, the title that Maxwell selected for this volume self-consciously echoes C. Wright Mills’ influential treatment of “the sociological imagination.” The mimicry is clever; moreover, the social and behavioral sciences would be well served if T&e ~~c~~~~~~~gic~lZrn~gi~ur~~~receives the same degree of attention and stimulates as much scholarly reflection as did the book that inspired its title.
The Lefthander
Syndrome,
by Stanley Coren. New York: The Free Press, 1992
Reviewed by Marc A. UIsban, 14802
Division of Social Sciences Alfred University,
Alfred, NY
One is tempted to dismiss Stanley Coren’s The tefihmder Syndrome as hucksterism dressed up in a tab coat. Coren argues that le~handers suffer from sjgni~~antly higher mortality rates than righthanders, and hence they are drastically under-represented in the oldest age categories. He further argues that “for a certain percentage of people, iefthandedness may be caused by pathological conditions or may indicate the presence of pathological conditions.” These conditions result in a cohort of southpaws less fit than their physiologically correct counterparts. The result is that the percentage of lefthanders decreases as a function of age until by age 80 the few ~main~ng lefties resemble a valiant but doomed band of statistical outhers. The main problem is that none of Coren’s work is based on random samples of the general population to which he claims his findings apply. His research showing a decreasing percentage of lefthanders in aging populations relied on the membership lists of various organizations he contacted. Maybe the smaller percentage of lefthanders he found in senior citizens groups compared with that found in high schools derives from the fact that independent southpaws tend to shun voIuntary affiliations. Maybe Iefthandedness tends to be underreported by those elderly who have been more stigmatized by their condition than today’s youth. Coren’s research design is unable to assess the extent of such self-selection. One survey that asked about the handedness of recently deceased relatives claimed to show that righthanders outlive lefthanders by an average of nine years. Yet in a separate study7 Coren reports that the majority of high-sch~~-aged sons and daughters incorrectly identified their lefthanded parents as righthanded. That finding alone should go a long way toward explaining the “missing” lefthanders. Coren’s study .is flawed in such a variety of ways that it would be admirably suited for use in a research methods course to illustrate common pitfalls. Coren’s credibility is further eroded by references to the generally dis-