Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition - Softcover

Wilson, Edward O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674816242 ISBN 13: 9780674816244

Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 1980

Synopsis

“An evolutionary event” wrote John Pfeiffer in the New York Times Book Review when Sociobiology was published in 1975, “announcing for all who can hear that we are on the verge of breakthroughs in the effort to understand our place in the scheme of things.” Praised by many and damned by some, Sociobiology provided the framework for a new science―the study of the biological basis for social behavior in every species, from the lowliest amoeba colony to modern human society.

In this abridged edition, Edward O. Wilson trims his monumental work to its essential argument and most compelling examples. He retains the full basic structure of the original book, while eliminating the technical discussions and data summaries. Because of the unusual amount of interest and commentary it has generated, the final chapter on human social behavior remains virtually intact. The book has been completely reset to accommodate a convenient 8 1/2 x 11 format, and Sarah Landry's superb drawings of animal societies still accompany the text. New students and general readers can discover for themselves what sociobiology is all about and why there is so much furor surrounding it.

About this title

Review:

E.O. Wilson defines sociobiology as "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior," the central theoretical problem of which is the question of how behaviors that seemingly contradict the principles of natural selection, such as altruism, can develop. Sociobiology: A New Synthesis, Wilson's first attempt to outline the new field of study, was first published in 1975 and called for a fairly revolutionary update to the so-called Modern Synthesis of evolutionary biology. Sociobiology as a new field of study demanded the active inclusion of sociology, the social sciences, and the humanities in evolutionary theory. Often criticized for its apparent message of "biological destiny," Sociobiology set the stage for such controversial works as Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene and Wilson's own Consilience.

Sociobiology defines such concepts as society, individual, population, communication, and regulation. It attempts to explain, biologically, why groups of animals behave the way they do when finding food or shelter, confronting enemies, or getting along with one another. Wilson seeks to explain how group selection, altruism, hierarchies, and sexual selection work in populations of animals, and to identify evolutionary trends and sociobiological characteristics of all animal groups, up to and including man. The insect sections of the books are particularly interesting, given Wilson's status as the world's most famous entomologist.

It is fair to say that as an ecological strategy eusociality has been overwhelmingly successful. It is useful to think of an insect colony as a diffuse organism, weighing anywhere from less than a gram to as much as a kilogram and possessing from about a hundred to a million or more tiny mouths.

It's when Wilson starts talking about human beings that the furor starts. Feminists have been among the strongest critics of the work, arguing that humans are not slaves to a biological destiny, forever locked in "primitive" behavior patterns without the ability to reason past our biochemical nature. Like The Origin of Species, Sociobiology has forced many biologists and social scientists to reassess their most cherished notions of how animals work. --Therese Littleton

From the Back Cover:

Harvard University Press is proud to announce the re-release of the complete original version of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, now available in paperback for the first time. When this classic work was first published in 1975, it created a new discipline and started a tumultuous round in the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Although voted by officers and fellows of the international Animal Behavior Society the most important book on animal behavior of all time, Sociobiology is probably more widely known as the object of bitter attacks by social scientists and other scholars who opposed its claim that human social behavior, indeed human nature, has a biological foundation. The controversy surrounding the publication of the book reverberates to the present day.

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0674816242
• ISBN 13: 9780674816244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384