624
PARTISAN REVIEW
the name "ethology," and was fin all y legitimized offi ciall y by the
award of a Nobel Prize to Lorenz and to two o ther earl y pioneers, Karl
von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen. In the 1960s, the ra ther qualita–
tive, somewhat fuzzy evolutionary reasoning that Lorenz h ad brought
to etho logy came to be given a more quantitative and sharper formul a–
tion . In thi s lau er-day development the theory of " kin selection "
played a central rol e. According to tha t theory, the evolutionary fitness
of the behavior of an animal is not given solely by the extent to whi ch
tha t behavior serves the reproductive success of the animal; it takes into
account al so the extent to whi ch the reproducti ve potenti al of close
rela tives is served. Kin selection can thus account for the superfi ciall y
counterselecti ve origin of the alarm call of birds. For though by
drawing allention to itself the alarmi st reduces its own chances of
leaving o ffspring, its self-sacrifi cial behavior does raise the ,rep roduc–
tive success of its close relatives in the flock, and hen ce augments what
is now call ed its " inclusive fitness" as a social animal. This conceptual
advance led to the development of an etholog ical subdi scipline specifi–
call y con cerned with the social behavior of animals, for whi ch Edward
O . Wilson 's monumental treatise
Sociobiology,
publi shed in 1975,
provided bo th a name and an authoritative, comprehensive account.
Admilledl y, there exist differences of opinion among biologists regard–
ing the accomplishments of this young subdi scipline, ran gin g from the
view of one of the leading contemporar y students of evo luti on, Ri chard
Lewontin , that current sociobiology is littl e more than a cari ca ture of
Darwini sm, to the vi ew of one of the leading contemporary sociobiolo–
gists, Ri chard Al exander, that he and his coll eagues h ave produced the
most important advance in the understanding of evo lution since
Darwin. But regardl ess of any pas t achi evements of socio biology, it
would be downri ght cranky for an y bio logist to deny tha t the p rofessed
general scientifi c goal of sociobiology is not intrinsica ll y worthwhil e.
Wh y then did the publication of Wil son 's scholarl y treati se cause
such a hull abaloo? Why was Wilson made the obj ect of laudatory
fea ture stori es in the Es tablishment news medi a, as well as the target of
in vecti ve from the politi cal Left, and even of p ersona l assault ? Because
in a minor part of his trea ti se, otherwi se devo ted mainl y to insects and
other lower orders, Wil son cl aimed tha t the methodo logy and findings
of sociobiol ogy are applicable also to the social beh avi or of our own
species,
H omo sapiens.
Thus Wil son proposed tha t the " new synthe–
sis" of sociobiology can provide for the sociall y relevant human
sciences, such as anth ropo logy and sociology, a firm, and presumably
o bj ecti ve, scientifi c bas is. A few months la ter, Conrad Waddin gton, an
