The Biological Background

Abstract

In this chapter, I want to introduce some fairly basic biological ideas and theory, so that these can then be presupposed for the rest of the book. Obviously, I do not want to introduce the whole of biology, but rather those aspects which have some bearing on sociobiology. Therefore, the guiding thread at this point will be the nature of sociobiology and the way in which it is supposed to relate to the rest of biology. Possibly, some readers interested primarily or exclusively in human behaviour might regret the fullness of my treatment, and they may be tempted to skip ahead. I think this would be a mistake. Perhaps one thing, more than anything, distinguishes both the claims and the style of sociobiologists from previous writers about the biological bases of human social behaviour, namely the way in which the sociobiologists believe that they are the first to approach human behaviour backed by a solid foundation of tested biological theory. Of course, we may conclude later that the links the sociobiologists see both between their work on social behaviour in the non-human world and the rest of biology and between their work in the non-human world and social behaviour in the human world are nothing like as tight as they themselves suppose; but these are things that will have to be investigated, not assumed at the outset. For this reason, consequently, if only out of fairness to the sociobiologists, it is important to establish as solid a biological background as is possible. Let us therefore turn to Wilson’s definition of sociobiology and work backwards to general biological principles.