Abstract
E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology, the New Synthesis has received ebullient critical acclaim as a breakthrough in science in relation to its own claim to be a “new synthesis” of various biological and social sciences. It has elicited equally ebullient critical attack for its immeasurable failure to understand human cultural and social organization, a failure based on a biologically and socioculturally misconceived human nature, as well as on some basic misconceptions in biology itself. In what follows, I treat only the question of human nature which I conceive to be central to Wilson’s book and to most of the issues raised by its attackers, for whom that question is also a central, unresolved problem.
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Leeds, A. (1984). Sociobiology, Anti-Sociobiology, Epistemology, and Human Nature. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Methodology, Metaphysics and the History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 84. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6331-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6331-3_8
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