Eric wrote:
>>To get ahead of myself on posts here, this will get many of you jumping
up and down. Don't bother. You _think_ you know what sociobiology is
about, because you've seen some nut indulge in a psuedo version of it so
that they might slag off blacks, women and so on. I've looked at its
seminal text<<
I have also read Wilson's book, but you are trying to have it both ways. If Wilson's book is to be a standalone entity, taken outside the context of the surrounding literature, then you can't claim that terms are "used" just because Wilson uses them. If we're going to say that the sociobiologists are a coherent enough group that their use of technical terms needs to be respected, then you can't dismiss the racists and sexists as isolated nuts.
Kevin MacDonald is a member of the Human Behaviour & Evolution Society, with numerous papers published in the field and he has written three books on the subject of how Jews look after one another to the detriment of Gentiles for genetic reasons (He also testified as a witness for David Irving on this subject at the libel trial). EO Wilson was happy to appear at HBES meetings where he was secretary, and his books (Sample title: "A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy") have attracted favourable notices in journals of sociobiology.
Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer are also members in good standing, and have also attracted favourable reviews from Steven Pinker for their thesis that women need to be educated not to stir the natural desires of men which lead to rape. These are not strange nuts at the fringe of the field; they are much closer to the mainstream of sociobiology than, say, JK Galbraith is to the mainstream of economics.
The nuts are there, and they find support in sociobiology for their nutty views. I say that this is because sociobiology is a nutty theory. Or at the very least, it is anadaptive environment for nuts, and it is an environment in which being a nut is adaptive.
dd
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