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It's been 25 years since E. O. Wilson wrote Sociobiology, naming a new science and starting it off with a bang--and a firestorm of protest. "Nurture!" and "Nature!" came the cries from every corner of the academic world, as the book became a causus belli for sociologists, feminists, human geneticists, and psychologists. -- Mary Ellen Curtin amazon.com This book enthralls and enchants...If you have this book...you can begin getting your mind ready for the illuminations about human society. -- Lewis Thomas Harper's Rarely has the world been provided with such a splendid stepping stone for an exciting future of a new science. -- John Tyler Bonner Scientific American Its contents do indeed provide a new synthesis, of wide perspective and great authority...Wilson's plain uncluttered prose is a treat to read, his logic is rigorous, his arguments are lucid. -- V. C. Wymne-Edwards Nature This book will stand as a landmark in the comparative study of social behavior. Quarterly Review of Biology Sociobiology is an excellent book, full of extraordinary insights, and replete with the beauty and poetry of the animal kingdom. Times Literary Supplement It is impossible to leave Wilson's book without having one's sense of life permanently and dramatically widened. -- Fred Hapgood The Atlantic Sociobiology explores the possibility that animal social behaviour--group living, kinship, attraction and mating, reciprocity and sharing, cooperation, conflict, and cheating, to name just the most familiar--has a genetic basis and can be shaped by natural selection: genes can be shaped by natural selection: genes can code for social behaviours in the same way that they code for body parts such as hands, hooves, eyes, antlers and ears. But, in an audacious final chapter, Wilson extended the analysis to humans: biology had grabbed our kinship, cooperation, mate preferences and the rest. Some branded Wilson and his ideas fascist, others as racist or guilty of genetic determinism. They are none of these things and, two Pulitzer Prizes later, Wilson has been vindicated...Wilson's Sociobiology laid the foundations for a lifetime of meditations. -- Mark Pagel Times Higher Education Supplement Sociobiology, a new concept, is one with extraordinary potential value for understanding and explaining human behavior. Practical Psychology A towering theoretical achievement of exceptional elegance...Like most great books, Sociobiology is unpedantic, lucid, and eminently accessible. -- Pierre L. van den Berghe Contemporary Sociology
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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. This book is widely known as the object of bitter attacks by social scientists and other scholars who opposed its claim that human social behaviour, indeed human nature, has a biological foundation. The controversy surrounding the publication of the book reverberates to the present day. In the introduction to this 25th anniversary edition, the author shows how research in human genetics and neuroscience has strengthened the case for a biological understanding of human nature. Human socio-biology, now often called evolutionary psychology, has in the last quarter of a century emerged as its own field of study, drawing on theory and data from both biology and the social sciences. From its illustrated descriptions of animal societies, and as a crucial step forward in the understanding of human beings, this volume should be of interest to a new generation of students and scholars in all branches of learning.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Put aside your bibles, thinkers of the world, and take unto yourselves the whole content of this Book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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11 reviews
47 of 50 people found the following review helpful
A must for every professional bookshelf, but dated
8 July 2000
Format:Paperback
I have felt for years that this is probably the best single reference on behavioural ecology up through 1975 & actively seek out used copies to give my students, so it is nice to see a relatively cheap re-print. SOCIOBIOLOGY has a massive Lit. Cited (up to date of original publication) and contains all the really useful bits of Wilson & Bossert's very useful PRIMER OF POPULATION BIOLOGY. It also has some lovely examples of pioneering studies in behavioural ecology that in some cases have been taken to very exciting "next levels" over the past quarter century & in other cases still lie fallow. Wilson's style is readable and I still feel that this book makes a good foundation block for a personal library, but it is essential that one gets more recent stuff as well, including both the critics and the elaborators. This is the beginning only.
33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Good read, but more like a science textbook
2 April 2004
Format:Paperback
Having been a science major, this book at times reminded me of reading a biology textbook. At other times though, the author does use his literary skills and story telling ability and keeping things humourous; especially when he tells of the murder, deception, treachery, intrigue and chemical warfare of his beloved ants.
There is A LOT of theory in this book. He will typically describe an organisms behavior or behavioral trends and then desrcibe the competing hypothoses for these trends, phenomena or divergance from these typical trends.
Like I said though, this book is technical. Don't attempt reading it unless you have completed 2 courses of undergrad biology and calculus, as well as chemisty (most of the chemicals used by ants and the like involve simple organic compounds I was a chem major myself.)
In other words, this is not like On Human Nature or Journey to the Ants: This is more like a 3rd or 4th year advanced biology course textbook.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
The Tests of Time
12 Jan 2005
Format:Paperback
Dr. Wilson's "Sociobiology," together with "The Insect Societies" and "On Human Nature" (that three volume set is essential to any thinking man's library) is sufficient to challenge and focus any perspective on Evolution and Society. These volumes, even after 30 yrs., simply do not allow themselves to be ignored. Someone without both concentration and some technical background will have a tough time with "Sociobiology." Dr. Wilson presents a very detailed argument, quite reminescent of "Insect Societies." That said, the writing style is engaging and clearly directed at the non-professional reader. The Point: I gave copies of all three volumes to my children when they left home for the university.
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