V. The Case for and against Neo-Darwinism,
Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology
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A. The case for the "Neos" and the
"Super-Neos"
 The
Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture.
Barkow,
J., Cosmides, L., and Tooby, J., Editors.
New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
The
"bible" for evolutionary psychology, this is an excellent
compilation revealing its subject's
two faces-on one hand, considerable strengths for certain large
and overdue aspirations,
but on the other, the woeful standard fixation on truncated "first
half" Darwinism,
manufacture of straw men to belabor, and shallow bashing of everybody
else's social
science from A to Z.
The
Selfish Gene.
Dawkins,
R.
New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
The
engaging, well written "flagship" book for the selfishness
paradigm on which sociobiology
and evolutionary psychology became fixated.
The
Blind Watchmaker.
Dawkins,
R.
New
York: Norton, 1987.
Again
Dawkins displays the gift for an arresting but questionable metaphor,
this time for the operation
of natural selection and random variation as the be-all and end-all
mechanism for human
as well as prehuman evolution.
Sociobiology:
The New Synthesis.
Wilson,
E.O.
Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975.
The
engaging original "bible" for sociobiology - historically
important as a pioneering work
in
prodding the laggard science of the 20th century to refocus on the
importance of studies
of
moral evolution in a world in crucial need of it.
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B. The case against the Neos and the Super-Neos
Ever
Since Darwin.
Gould,
S. J.
New
York: Norton, 1980.
The
opening gun for Gould's battle against the "biological determinism"
of sociobiology and evolutionary
psychology. Also notable in beginning the development of Gould's
perceptive linking
of the rise of these two fields to the political and economic shift
to conservatism and the
"culture of greed" and runaway corporatism in America.
Not
in Our Genes.
Lewontin,
R. C., Rose, S., and Kamin, L.
New
York: Pantheon, 1984.
Written
by a leading biologist, neuroscientist, and psychologist, this was
the next big gun in the
battle of established and advanced social science against the attack
of sociobiology.
The
Nature of Human Aggression.
Montagu,
A.
New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
The
battling anthropologist Montagu's earlier blast at "survival
of the fittest" Darwinists both prior
to and simultaneous with the rise of sociobiology.
Alas,
Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology.
Rose,
H., and Rose, S., (Eds.).
New
York: Harmony, 2000.
The
chapters in this book by its editors, sociologist Hilary Rose and
neuroscientist Steven Rose,
make a forceful case for the opposition.
Darwin's
Blind Spot.
Ryan,
F.
New
York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2002.
In
contrast to emphasis on selfishness, Ryan develops the case for
symbiosis. Notable also for
a rare probe of the social devastation of the neoDarwinian paradigm.
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