The Prospect for a United Sociobiology
According to Wilson, the term sociobiology was used by John Paul Scott in 1946. In 1950 Scott suggested sociobiology as a term for the “interdisciplinary science which lies between the fields of biology (particularly ecology and physiology) and psychology and sociology”. Between 1950 and 1970 the term sociobiology appeared in a number of journal articles, but the terms biosociology and animal sociology were also used. In 1971 Wilson titled the last chapter in The Insect Societies “The Prospect for a United Sociobiology”.
The study of social behavior has long been dominated by those who consider the explanations of that behavior to lie in individual experience and particular environmental conditions. If you look at textbooks in sociology and social psychology, you will find few discussions of possible biological and hereditary factors related to social behaviors. In most mentions of possible hereditary factors, the comments range from slighting to outright derision. It might also be noted that most social psychologists, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists have an extremely limited knowledge of non human social behavior. We hope that this situation is being changed, at least in some programs. Although it is not the whole story, part of the negative attitude of social psychologists and sociologists toward biological and hereditary factors in behavior stems from a long-standing suspicion or fear of hereditary elite.
Most proponents of sociobiology come from a tradition different from that of the sociologists, social psychologists, and cultural anthropologists. Sociobiologists’ backgrounds are generally in the study of non human behavior. Thus they may feel free to concentrate on the behaviors as they exist, without any external criteria for what behaviors may be desirable from some philosophical position.
To get an idea of how some Sociobiologists might approach a problem, let’s consider the relationship of human adults to infants. Emphasis might be placed on those aspects of adult responses to infants that are common to human groups. One such common element is that infants are attractive to adults of both sexes. This characteristic is shared by most other highly developed primates. There are some local and situational variations in expressions of this human attraction (as there are in monkey troops of the same species); nevertheless, the basic relationship remains. Here, then, is a critical element in many types of social organization. If this element is considered solely from the standpoint of the environment and culture, you may get one sort of answer. If, as the Sociobiologists suggest, you view both hereditary factors and culture and environment, you may get a modified or even different answer to the basis of similarities and differences in the relationship of adults to infants.
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