What sociobiologists said

[gadfly at exitleft.org]

Quoting Eric Franz Leher <fr102anz at netvigator.com>:
> 
> I never said anything like that. You don't get it, do you? The terms
> under discussion (altruism, selfishness, genetic fitness etc.) are
> fundamental technical terms in evolutionary biology. They're standard
> concepts for Darwinism _in general_ (i.e. not particular to
> sociobiology). If you want to talk about evolution, you need to use
> these terms.
> 

is this really the case? you mention "genetic fitness". but the
father of the theory, charles darwin, who wrote the definitive
book "origin of species" was unaware of the existence of genes,
wasnt he? the term "genetic" does not need the concept of a
"gene", i guess, but has it not been stated in the history of
evolutionary biology that unlike mendel, darwin did not say
much about this? perhaps referring to darwin is inappropriate?
any modern text on evolutionary biology, which restates and
expands on darwin's original work, will no doubt rely
on the notion of genes and genetic fitness. but once again i am
not sure that terms such as altruism or selfishness are
fundamental... it seems to me that one can construct a fairly
good description of evolution without these terms. perhaps i
should try to do so, in order to convince myself that such is
not the case?

           --ravi