Overstepping Science

...When he tells us that races probably differ in genotype, he warns us not to attach invidious distinctions to any behavioral manifestations that might follow from the difference...

...So far, so good...

...A shallow treatment of the culture-biology interaction is compounded by Wilson's apparently arbitrary notion of genetic boundaries...

...Just remember that it is contrary neither to the laws of the state not to the "laws" of human nature for a scientist to compose a work frequently verging perilously close to being science fiction...

...In the process, he promotes a half-knowledge that in less careful hands could be not merely obfuscating but dangerous...

...Moreover, how does the author square his views on genetic codes for reproduction and survival with his assertion that sociobiology will provide new proof of the psychic unity of mankind...

...For our anthropological cultures—our rules and modes of behavior—are also our laboratory cultures, the environments where as members of the species we are born, grow and die like so many fruit flies...

...His conclusion is sure to satisfy those who'd like to believe that the ERA is contrary to universal law, and that it is science which tells us so...

...Wilson strongly implies as well that the caste system itself reflects an earlier genetic advantage, either because the genetic cream rose to the top, or because, more specifically, social power was unwittingly serving biological ends...

...Perhaps I am stretching to the point of absurdity Wilson's insistence that sociobiological phenomena can be reduced to genetic explanations...

...But there is no evidence that caste is based on genes...

...Consider one of the specific cases cited by Wilson: hypergamy in the Indian caste system, the pattern whereby women sometimes marry upward and out of their castes, but men never do...

...It seems that most every population segment can transmit different gene pools and genetic codes...

...Since we have been given no rules on what constitutes a genetic group, we could argue that those at the top are the products (or the source) of a genetic advantage in the probabilistic distribution of intelligence, while among workers we would expect to find a greater proclivity toward altruism—in Wilson's view, a genetically induced readiness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the larger social unit...

...Furthermore, he is erudite, with a good sense for the apt citation...

...Using Wilson, we could further explain that this pattern itself emerged because it was also good for the species as a whole, in a genetic or biological sense...

...The attempt to shed light on human nature by trying to identify universals in the dazzling variety of social settings is eminently worthwhile—and sensible...

...there is an appropriate sense of wonder and fascination in his discussions of the accomplishments of primates...

...Wilson fails, though, to consider the different patterns of occupation and activity in various societies, and ignores the astonishing variety of vocation and avocation in modern culture, along with the constantly diminishing premium modernity places on sheer physical strength...

...At the same time, he emphasizes that the genetic and biological properties we developed then still constrain us...

...no evidence of significant genetic difference between Indian men of higher and lower castes...

...The cost is biological, perhaps ultimately genetic...

...Still, it should be pointed out that although Wilson does confuse scientific with moral discussion, sometimes in ways he does not seem to have understood, his conscious preaching is that of a man of good will...

...To begin with, Wilson's argument relies too much on the fact that, until now, the human species has perpetuated itself...

...This book is worth reading if only as a fine basis for dialogue and disagreement, for sharpening our own thought...

...So are races—but Wilson euphemistically defines a race as a residue of a distinct historico-geogra-phical distribution of gene patterns...

...A mean-spirited man could have used the ideas expressed in On Human Nature to write a mean-spirited book...

...To make his point, he treats the interaction between biology and culture in a rather unsophisticated way...

...Sociobiology, Wilson tells us, "is an explicitly hybrid discipline that incorporates knowledge from ethology (the naturalistic study of whole patterns of behavior), ecology (the study of the relationships of organisms to their environment), and genetics in order to derive general principles concerning the biological properties of entire societies...

...He writes vigorously and assuredly, with a genuine flair for translating scientific findings and principles into terms that are accessible to any intelligent layman...

...There are passages of fine nature-writing, too, in the author's treatments of bees or mosquitoes or sharks...

...He tells us, for instance, of a cost that must be paid by any society wishing to equalize "outcomes" and opportunities for both men and women...

...Similarly, while he does not offer us any biological reasons for why we ought not hold prostitutes in contempt, just a few pages later he does do so for homosexuals...

...so are Indian upper-caste males, and males in general as distinct from females...

...Some mean-spirited person almost certainly will...

...Reviewed by Bernard E. Segal Professor of Sociology, Dartmouth College The best thing about On Human Nature (the final book in a trilogy meant to constitute the core of the new interdisciplinary science of sociobiolo-gy) is Edward O. Wilson's style...

...Yet however impressive the aim, the execution is badly flawed...

...Sifting and sorting, Wilson shows us differences and similarities between human societies and other kinds, makes a start at specifying what is at once universal and unique to humans and suggests that one day we shall find in genetics the explanation for the unique universal...

...He suggests that women would not be able to get womanly satisfaction, or men manly satisfaction, thereby contravening the natural order of male dominance and threatening the survival of their society...

...This, we are told, provides a genetic advantage to higher-caste men, because they have better opportunities than those on the lower rungs to breed with healthy-looking females...

...He can do no more than offer examples to support his hypothesis—and as an old Yiddish proverb has it, "For example is no proof...

...We could go on to add, in a manner akin to that of the old school of social science functionalists or medieval Catholic theologians, that the social pattern we have identified existed because it was good for the welfare of the entire social body...

...More generally, when he wishes to replace myth with science, it is not merely for the sake of greater accuracy, but in order that we better appreciate our universality and begin overcoming the weaknesses that separate us...

...Throughout the second half of On Human Nature—which deals with aggression, sexuality, altruism, and religion—Wilson reminds us that the link between human nature and culture was closer when we were evolving in the Pleistocene than it is now...

...And his only evidence that race so defined has a significant impact on behavior is one study of Chinese-American infants, another of young children from the same group, and a third of Navajo babies...

...Yet that is not hard to do when we read such gems as the following: "Thus does ideology bow to its hidden masters the genes...

...referring to the Mao cult...

...Quotations from Maimonides on families versus prostitutes, or James Joyce on the rush of love, help to create the impression that here is a scientist who has an appreciation of the humanities and possesses a remarkable ability to weave together different types of material...

...I shall remember that the next time I hear one of our trustees explain why it is imprudent for my college to divest itself of holdings in corporations doing business with South Africa...

...and not one of his references to social science either relies upon or adds to that baggage of abstruse conceptual elaboration that is often nothing more than noise...

...and "The biological formula of terri-torialism translates easily into the rituals of modern property ownership...

...and no evidence that the higher survival rates of upper-caste men have become either wholly or in part a basis for an evolutionary upgrading...

...But Wilson emphasizes that despite the limits our biology places on us, those limits are not so tight as to prevent us from exercising reason to construct environments that are more generous to other people and more satisfying to our own nature...

...Thus the isolated primitive band is an example of a bounded group...

...This alone serves as evidence for him that the very purpose of the species is reproduction, or in his terms, that "the brain exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication of the genes that direct its assembly...

...Wilson out-reaches his data, speculates rather than proves...

...What about classes...