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Sociobiology, the study of animal behavior with applications to human beings, and psychoanalysis, the study of the mind with application to the biology of human beings, have been isolated from each other like children involved in parallel play. The special knowledge from both fields, which has been outside of each other’s reach, can be bridged by evolutionary principles based on the common origin of animals and humans that is influenced by natural selection of the body and mind. A controversy arose three decades ago that has become a catalyst toward greater use of evolutionary principles and a beginning integration of both fields.
The controversy was in response to an academic book written by Edward O. Wilson, an eminent Harvard University Professor. In 1975, Wilson produced an encyclopedic book on animal behavior entitled Sociobiology: A New Synthesis. Although under normal circumstances textbooks on evolution and animal behavior seldom become best sellers or arouse much media attention, Wilson’s tome was different. In the final chapter of the book, Wilson described how the latest advances in the study of animal behavior, particularly the insights of biologist Robert Trivers who introduced reciprocal altruism and Bill Hamilton who introduced game theory, might explain many aspects of human behavior. He provided biological explanations for a broad array of controversial topics including the differences between the sexes, human aggression, religion, homosexuality and xenophobia. He also predicted that it would not be long before the social sciences were subsumed with the biological science.
Wilson’s book provoked an uproar and launched what is now known as “the sociobiology debate” that raged in the 1970s and 1980s. The critics reacted to Wilson’s initial inroad to the connection of animal behavior and human existence accusing Wilson of supporting an exclusive genetic bias of human characteristics which in the past led to Social Darwinism, Nazism and Eugenics. (Laland