The Old Determinism
The Old Determinism
This chapter explores the increasingly heated debates over sociobiology. These debates within academic circles had polarized into arguments over nature versus nurture, biology versus culture, as the primary determinants of why humans behave the way we do. Scientists on both sides of the issue accused the other of allowing politics to interfere with clear-headed scientific analysis. Sociobiology's critics mobilized out of a concern that sociobiologists were using their authority as scientists to advance ideas and concepts that at best lacked rigorous proof and at worst reframed social policy in the language of natural order. That sociobiologists did not intend for their theories to be used as the basis for social policy was irrelevant. If the not-so-Cold War had taught scientists anything, sociobiologists' detractors argued, it should have been that they had a moral obligation to choose their research topics carefully. This precept extended to conflicts at home, where courts and politicians used biological and anthropological research to prop up discriminatory social policies, they suggested, as well as abroad, where the efforts of scientists in creating bombs and other weapons of war were deployed to devastating effect.
Keywords: sociobiology, politics, Cold War, social policy, sociobiologists, nature, nurture, biology, culture
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