Wilson, the Naturalist and Lewontin, the geneticist
Look at what I read a couple of days ago! As a caveat,
I thing the Hoover Institution an intellectually dishonest right-wing think-tank.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0101/articles/bethell.html
Copyright (c) 2001 First Things 109 (January 2001): 18-24.
An article entitled "Against Sociobiology" by Tom
Bethell (Senior Editor of the American Spectator and a Hoover Institution media
fellow) says Wilson grew up a "Baptist in Alabama, read the Bible through twice,
began to study science, and then lost his faith."
The controversy goes like "Wilson, the naturalist,
was on the side of the genes, while Lewontin, the geneticist, was on the side
of the environment (to oversimplify)."
"Wilson won the sociobiology war, at least in the
academic departments and in the press, but in another sense it is not over yet.
For there is a book that cries out to be written-a debunking of the whole "genomania"
upon which sociobiology was largely based. Perhaps we should think of it as
the astrology of the modern academy, with the fashionable microcosm now replacing
the heavenly spheres. Just as mysterious emanations from celestial objects were
once thought to shape character (with a role reserved for free will), so today
mysterious emanations from molecular objects are thought to do the same (with
a role reserved for the environment). What we need is a book that tells us what
exactly we do know about genes, what we do not, and whether (as I am beginning
to suspect) the whole concept of the gene is so overburdened that it may have
to be re-thought entirely."
