Sociological Criticism Of Sociobiology

The authors point out that “much of the criticism leveled against sociobiology appears to target a straw man (148).” What the authors mean by this is that many sociological critics of sociobiology, who are ill-informed about its fundamental principles, wage critiques against sociobiology that are unfair and misguided. They misunderstand—or ignoring—the research in support of sociobiology. And thus their warnings against its dangers are not grounded in reality, nor addressed to sociobiologists, themselves; but to their own false, or misguided understandings of what sociobiology actually is. -----------------

As the authors point out, many introductory sociology books tend to fault sociobiolgy for “its perceived ideological and political implications; its putative failure to adduce evidence pertinent to its

The latter sees room for development in that biology, and that biology as being a component of a much larger sea of variables changing over time, accounting for the diversity in human nature we see currently, but may continue to see over time. The sociobiologist also sees certain evolved tendencies to not discount the assertions of the SSSM model, but actually complement them. Ignoring this, the ignorant critic of sociobiology only attacks a straw man.----------------- In closing, my own take on the author’s argument about the relation between biology and culture is that is more comprehensive than either the SSSM or EGDM model, alone. It seems to add another dimension or level of considerations to the SSSM model, and give further support to that model, especially. And to ignore or misunderstand the role of human biology, or evolution of human biology, in the kind of situations humans create seems to hurt the progress of sociology as well as ignore a huge part of what makes us