New York Review of Books

On Saturday we published an essay, by the historians of science Mark Borrello and David Sepkoski, detailing the late evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson’s unpublished correspondence with J. Philippe Rushton, a Canadian psychologist whose spurious research was devoted to proving a racial basis for intelligence, criminality, and sexuality. Wilson’s own career was shadowed by charges of racism and sexism, stemming from his work in “sociobiology,” a field he founded to investigate the genetic and hereditary basis for the social behavior of animals—including, controversially, humans.

In response to a positive review in our pages of Wilson’s 1975 book, Sociobiology: A New Synthesis, a group of scientists from Harvard and MIT, including Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, wrote a letter to the editor protesting the return of “biological determinism” and arguing that such theories uphold existing hierarchies of race, sex, and class. Wilson responded with a letter of his own, decrying what he felt was a “partisan attack” that “diminishes free inquiry.”

This exchange began a decades-long debate in the Review over the scientific legitimacy of sociobiology and its political implications for society. Below, a selection of those reviews, and the responses they provoked, are collected.

Elizabeth Allen, Stephen Jay Gould, et al.
Against “Sociobiology”

“From what we have seen of the social and political impact of such theories in the past, we feel strongly that we should speak out against them.”

Edward O. Wilson
For Sociobiology

“Allen et al. have selected bits from Sociobiology and pieced them together to depict what they claim are my personal and social class prejudices.”

Stuart Hampshire
The Illusion of Sociobiology

The theory holding Wilson’s argument together is that genes establish limits within which culture can develop both as unexamined social convention and as conscious belief.

Stephen Jay Gould et al.
The Politics of Sociobiology

“We expressed concern at the likelihood that pseudo-scientific ideas would be used once more in the public arena to justify social policy. The events of the intervening years have fully justified our initial fears.”

Richard C. Lewontin
Women Versus the Biologists

To admit publicly to outright biological racism is a strict taboo, but the avowal of biological sexism is tolerated as a minor foolishness, unlikely to bring serious consequences.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, reply by Richard C. Lewontin
Women Versus the Biologists: An Exchange

“If women have smaller brains than men, and if smaller brains produce smaller IQ scores, then women should have lower IQ scores than men. But they don’t. So what’s up?”

H. Allen Orr
Darwinian Storytelling

Steven Pinker believes that differences in traits such as those that contribute to personality are at least partly due to differences in genes.

Steven Pinker, reply by H. Allen Orr
‘The Blank Slate’: An Exchange

“A history of the sociobiology wars without spandrels is, after all, like a history of the drug wars without Columbia.”