An Eye on the Core: Dawkins and Sociobiology

Abstract ‘Sociobiology’ is a term that triggers different reactions in different people. For some, sociobiology simply denotes a field devoted to research in animal social behavior, a new integrative discipline that emerged during the second part of the twentieth century. For others, because of its perceived implications for humans, this term is fraught with political connotations: genetic determinism, political conservatism, racism, and sexism. As a result, many researchers, especially those in would-be ‘human sociobiology’ are avoiding the term, calling themselves instead behavioral ecologists, evolutionary psychologists, Darwinian anthropologists, and what have you. For a third, more militant group, sociobiology is indeed a new discipline—a new scientific way of looking at behavior, maybe even a new world view, mobilizable against all kinds of obfuscation.