On 6/2/05, Justin answered: > Because sociobiology offers a powerful if partial explanation of various aspects of human behavior. It doesn't have much much to contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of capitalism ... but if you are interested in why women have (the equipment to) orgasms, what other explanatory resources would you deploy? Intelligent design? Cultural construction? What is the allergy to biological explanation? Yes, I know, it is often used for conservative purposes. But the, economics isn't?<
There's a logical slip in the middle of this paragraph, i.e., the implied equation of "sociobiology" with "biological explanation." Others have mentioned S.J. Gould, who had a biological explanation but wasn't a sociobiologist. There are a lot of others, though sociobiology is quite fashionable these days.
The logical slip then implies that the only alternatives to the sociobiology school are silly (intelligent design, cultural construction) and that I might suffer from an "allergy to biological explanation."
Why do you say that sociobiology offers a "powerful" explanation? As one alternative biological explanation, we could turn to Levins & Lewontin, who point to three "moments" (my word) of such an explanation. (1) individual parts of a biological system (e.g., individual genes) create the whole [the sociobiological "moment"]; (2) the whole (e.g., an organism) shape the effects and role of the parts; and (3) these two form a dynamic system. They see this not as a formula for pre-packaged answers, but as a heuristic (a tool for investigating the world) and a weapon against dogmatism.
The sociobiologists willfully ignore the second "moment," hoping to attain a totally reductionist explanation. They end up with essentially static understanding, since (3) is largely a matter of "external shocks" (environmental change).
Relatedly, sociobiology wants to reduce everything to natural selection, ignoring such matters as genetic drift. One-cause theories are always popular, but are akin to the crude-Marxist explanation of all society by the "economic base" which itself explained totally by the "forces of production."
> Bottom line: we are animals, descended from
> Pleistocene hunter gatherers, whose central nervous
> systems are basically designed for life that sort of
> life in small groups in the African veldt.
FWIW, _The Madness of Adam and Eve: How Schizophrenia Shaped Humanity_ by David Horrobin, M.D., argues that people are descendents of people who lived by rivers and lakes.
>The ten or
> fifteen thousand years we've been civilized is
> evolutionarily irrelevant, no significant natural
> selection can take place in such a period (apart from
> out not-too-improbable self-extinction).
instead, cultural (including technological) evolution has taken the center stage, limitng and shaping the role of biological evolution (natural selection).
> We are not just animals, we are social beings and our
> social interactions explain a lot of our behavior
> holding the biology constant. But it would be pretty
> strange if 2.2 million or so years of evolution had no
> explanatory relevance to our behavior. Particularly
> when biologically central questions are concerned. And
> if orgasm isn't biologically central, what is?
again, this falls for the logical slip referred to above, the equation of sociobiology with biological explanation.
As for biological explanation of female organism, I gave mine a while back: males and females are essentially the same kinds of creatures, co-evolving almost as a unit and sharing many characteristics (nipples, orgasms). They are clearly different, too, distinguished by the various hormones that flow through are veins as a result of the extra X or the substitute Y chromosome. (Pre-op male-to-female transexuals suppress testosterone (etc.) and take estrogen (etc.) and end up being pretty "feminine" despite having a diversified set of sex chromosomes.) -- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.