Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 15:39:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: s_sanderson <SKSANDER@grove.iup.edu>
Subject: sociobiology and right-wing politics
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
Recently there has been a debate on this net concerning the alleged right-wing
nature of sociobiology.  Particiipants and other interested parties would do
well to consider the following

2.  Concerning the alleged politics of sociobiology, Pierre van den Berghe
(1981; quoted in Segerstrale, 1992:201) has said the following: "Actually, a
review of the politics of leading sociobiologists would lend more credence to
the contention that sociobiology is a Communist conspiracy: J.B.S. Haldane, who
is generally credited for having first hit on the notion of kin selection -- a
theoretical cornerstone of sociobiology -- was a leading member of the British
Communist Party; so was John Maynard Smith.  E.O. Wilson and most other leading
sociobiologists are left-of-center liberals or social democrats.  'Racist'
Trivers is even married to a Jamaican and is heavily involved in radical black
politics."  Van den Berghe, the leading sociobiologist among sociologists, has
long been a foe of racism and social inequality, and I suspect that if the
members of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society and the European
Sociobiological Society, the two leading associations of sociobiologists in the
Western world, were polled, most of them would be shown to be left-of-center
politically.  In reading the works of sociobiologists for a quarter of a
century my impression has always been that their writings are remarkably free
of any political content whatsoever, suggesting that their overwhelming aim is
scientific understanding, not political action of any kind.
	In a closely related vein, Ullica Segerstrale (1992) tells the
following story.  In May of 1976 the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for
the People held a meeting at which they tried to persuade Noam Chomsky, a
well-known political radical, to write a statement strongly denouncing
sociobiology.  The group's members discovered, however, much to their chagrin
and embarrassment, that Chomsky was actually in favor of the view that there is
such a thing as a constant human nature.  Moreover, Chomsky thought that the
postulation of human nature would actually be helpful to the radical cause in
fighting for a better society.  As Segerstrale points out, under such
circumstances it can hardly be surprising that Chomsky was unwilling to write a
critique of sociobiology.

Reference
Segerstrale, Ullica.  1992. "Reductionism, 'bad science,' and politics: A
critique of anti-reductionist reasoning."  Politics and the Life Sciences
11:199-214.

The above is a footnote in a book I'm writing in which I am trying to join
elements of sociobiology with, among other things, elements of Marxian conflict
theory in sociology.  An impossible task, you say?  No, not at all.

Stephen Sanderson