2) Selection experiments carried out with a number of species, inadvertently or intentionally, have shown that it is possible to select for behavioral traits (see for example Scott and Fuller 1965, Scott 1966, Lagerspetz 1964, Dobzhansky and Spassky, 1967.)
3) Comparative studies have shown that some human capabilities, (speech, bipedal walking, patterns of smiling, etc.) are species-specific traits and as such have a genetic basis. While we cannot specify the particular genes underlying these or other complex behaviors, there can be no doubt that such genes exist. Because we cannot, and should not, conduct breeding or selection experiments on humans, it may be some time before we are able to map the complex interactions between genes, and between genes and environments, that underly the development of such behaviors. In this respect behavioral traits are not different from metrical traits such as height. Indeed, the distinction often made between behavioral traits and physiological or morphological traits is essentially spurious. We can show that genetic (as well as environmental) factors regulate hormone production, and that hormones in turn influence mating and dominance. But our effort to distinguish a behavioral and a non-behavioral part of this chain does not reflect a real ontological distinction. As Spuhler (1968) correctly observes, "In some sense, most, if not all, of the many thousands of loci in the human genome are concerned with behavior." 7 Rather, the distinction between behavioral and non-behavioral traits reflects a naive, dichotomous perception of mind and body. Thus the contention of Wilson's critics that it is "an unproven assumption that genes for behavior exist" is not only incorrect by conventional standards of scientific demonstration, but also reflects an uncritical assumption that mind and body, structure and process, can be clearly distinguished.
Growing out of this naive perception is another false notion. The critics appear to believe that a theory which talks about substances (genes-bits of DNA) must be more deterministic than one which talks about processes (climatic or nutritional influences, etc.). Clearly there can be no such thing as a purely genetic theory of life or behavior. Moreover, a theory which invokes gene-environment interactions in the causation of behavior, as advanced by Wilson and many others, is not necessarily more deterministic than is a purely "environmental" theory (which is also an impossibility). The critics' misunderstanding is basic: a casual model is deterministic only to the extent that it narrowly specifies possible outcomes from an interacting system of variables. For example, a model which interprets differential infant mortality rates as due to differences in parental economic status alone, might be more deterministic or less deterministic than a model which interprets such rates as resulting from effects both of genetic background and environmental context.
A priori, sociobiological models do not necessarily imply a greater constriction of the possibilities for constructive social change than do "environmental" models proposed by cultural materialist writers such as Marvin Harris.
It is surprising that individuals concerned with social change have summoned such a battery of misleading arguments against Wilson's presentation of a body of scientific theory which may, either in confirmation or falsification, help us better understand how to effect these changes.
Sociobiology's most prominent critics earned my respect during the late sixties for their rejection of an ideology that saw Vietnam as a moral war and Harvard as an Ivory Tower. Harvard is no more an Ivory Tower today, but in attacking E.O. Wilson, the critics now seem to be fabricating a reactionary, not fighting a real one.
Martin Etter is a student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, studying social anthropology.
Footnotes
1. Sociobiology, 1975, p. 567.
2. ibid, p. 565.
3. Alland, The Human Imperative, 1972, p. 143.
4. ibid, p. 165.
5. ibid, p. 161.
6. ibid, p. 165.
7. Spuhler, "Sociocultural and Biological Inheritance in Genetics: Biology and Behavior Series, Rockefeller University Press. New York.