Customer Reviews

On Human Nature

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On reading this again after a couple of decades, I am struck with how brilliantly it is written. The subtlety and incisiveness of Wilson's prose is startling at times, and the sheer depth of his insight into human nature something close to breath-taking. I am also surprised at how well this holds up after twenty-three years. There is very little in Wilson's many acute observations that would need changing. Also, it is interesting to see, in retrospect, that it is this book and not his monumental, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), that continues to serve as an exemplar for later texts. For example, Paul Ehrlich's recent book on evolution was entitled On Human Natures (2000), the plural in the title demonstrating that it was written at least in part as a reaction to Wilson. I also note that some other works including Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.(1993), Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (1994), and most recently, Bobbi S. Low's Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior (2000), are organized intellectually in such a manner as to directly update chapters in Wilson's book.

On Human Nature was written as a continuation of Sociobiology, greatly expanding the final chapter, "Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology." In doing so, Wilson has met with reaction from some quarters similar to the reaction the Victorians gave Darwin. Wilson's sociobiology was seen as a new rationale for the evils of eugenics and he was ostracized in the social science and humanities departments of colleges and universities throughout the United States and elsewhere. Rereading this book, I can see why. Wilson's primary "sin" is the unmitigated directness of his expression and his refusal to use the shield and obfuscation of politically correct language. Thus he writes on page 203, "In the pages of The New York Review of Books, Commentary, The New Republic, Daedalus, National Review, Saturday Review, and other literary journals[,] articles dominate that read as if most of basic science had halted during the nineteenth century." On page 207, he avers, "Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young."

In the first instance, he has offended the intellectual establishment by pointing out their lack of education, and in the second his incisive expression sounds a bit elitist. But Wilson is not an elitist, nor is he the evil eugenic bad boy that some would have us believe. He is in fact a humanist and one of the world's most renowned scientists, a man who knows more about biology and evolution than most of his critics put together.

I want to quote a little from the book to demonstrate the incisive style and the penetrating nature of Wilson's ideas, and in so doing, perhaps hint at just what it is that his critics find objectionable. In the chapter on altruism, he writes, "The genius of human sociality is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute" (p. 163). Or similarly on the next page, "It is exquisitely human to make spiritual commitments that are absolute to the very moment they are broken." Or, "The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool" (p. 167). He ends the chapter with the stark, Dawkinsian conclusion that "Morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function" than to keep intact the genetic material.

In the chapter on aggression, he posits, "The evolution of warfare was an autocatalytic reaction that could not be halted by any people, because to attempt to reverse the process unilaterally was to fall victim" (p. 116). On the next page, he quotes Abba Eban on the occasion of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, "men use reason as a last resort."

In the chapter on religion, he argues that the ability of the individual to conform to the group dynamics of religion is in itself adaptive. As he avers on page 184, "When the gods are served, the Darwinian fitness of the members of the tribe is the ultimate if unrecognized beneficiary."

It is easy to see why some people might be offended at such a frank and penetrating expression. But one of the amazing things about Wilson is that he can be bluntly objective about humanity without being cynical. I have always found his works to be surprisingly optimistic. He has the ability to see human beings as animals, but as animals with their eyes on the stars. In the final chapter entitled, "Hope," Wilson presents his belief that our world will be improved as scientific materialism becomes the dominate mythology. Note well this point: Wilson considers scientific materialism, like religion and the macabre dance of Marxist-Leninism, to be a mythology. His point is that there is no final or transcending truth that we humans may discover; there is no body of knowledge or suite of disciplines that will lead us to absolute knowledge. There are only better ways of ordering the environment and of understanding our predicament. He believes that toward that end scientific materialism will be a clear improvement over the religious and political mythologies that now dominate our cultures.

No one interested in evolutionary psychology can afford to miss this book, even though it is twenty-three years old. It is a classic. Anyone interested in human nature (yes, one may profitably generalize about human nature, as long as one understands what a generalization is, and appreciates its limitations) should read this book, one of the most significant ever written on a subject of unparalleled importance.

An oldie but a goodie. Published in 1978, On Human Nature completes Wilson's self-declared "trilogy" (The Insect Societies, 1971, and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 1975) that proposes the scientific search for genetic explanations for social behavior in animals, including humans.

Then and now, Wilson has been criticized by both religious and atheistic folks for reducing human behavior to the cold and limiting science of genetics. However, I didn't read it that way at all. Over and Over Wilson emphasizes the complexity, and that these are merely tendencies that are indeed influenced by environment (nurture). Consider that men tend to be faster than women, but that a female Olympic runner will always beat the average man in a race.

Some people in my book club had difficulty with some of the science, but I didn't at all (partially due to a minor in anthropology, and a cultivated layman's interest in science), so I doubt the average skeptic would have difficulty reading and fully understanding this book.

While this book was rather groundbreaking when it first came out, further developments in evolutionary psychology make it look rather dated, as do passages like these:

"There is, I wish to suggest, a strong possibility that homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important element of early human social organization. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some of mankind's rare altruistic impulses. The support for this radical hypothesis..."

Hmmm, not so radical these days. This one's even better:

"...note that it is already within our reach to build computers with the memory capacity of a human brain. Such an instrument is admittedly not very practical: it would occupy most of the space of the Empire State Building and draw down an amount of energy equal to half the output of the Grand Coulee Dam. In the 1980's, however, when new "bubble memory" elements already in the experimental stage are added, the computer might be shrunk to fill a suite of offices on one floor of the same building."

Tee hee hee.

But most of Wilson's book still have powerful and provacative messages for today's readers. The preface and first four chapters prove to be a bit of a slow setup, but the next four: "Aggression", "Sex", "Altruism", and "Religion" vividly suggest naturalistic explanations for moral and ethical tendencies in each of these areas. Wilson deals with all the juicy issues: racism, male-female roles, good-n-evil, etc. This is great stuff to memorize for debates with absolute moralists. The chapter on "Religion" is sort of a precursor to Daniel Dennet's new book Breaking the Spell. Although Wilson's ultimate conclusion is clear: no amount of naturalistic explaining of religious belief will stop people from believing. Here's a bold statement coming from a scientific humanist:

"The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature."

Wilson spends a good amount of time explaining and giving examples of an interesting concept called "hypertrophy" or as it is defined in the Glossary:

"The extreme development of a preexisting structure. The elephant's tusk, for example, represents the hypertophic enlargement and change in shape through evolution of a tooth that originally had an ordinary form. In this book it is suggested that most kinds of human social behavior are hypertrophic forms of original, simpler responses that were of more direct adaptive advantage in hunter-gatherer and primitively agricultural societies."

It is fascinating, to say the least, to read about the enslavement of women compared to an elephant's tusk (hypertrophy via genetic tendency plus extreme cultural exaggeration). Almost as cool as seeing human self-sacrifice compared with that of bees and wasps.

Let me add my econium for this wonderful book, which received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, and is likely the best introduction into the emergent field of sociobiology (of which E. O. Wilson is progenitor).

The book is deftly, wittily, and elegantly written with great confidence and assuredness. The first half of the book introduces the reader to the promising field of evolutionary psychology, which, for the first time, promises to ground psychology on science rather than ideology. The book rings the death knell to Freud, Jung, pop-psychology, and other pie-in-the-sky notions that have mascaraded as a "human science."

The second half of the book addresses four of the most focal concerns of human nature: Aggression, sex, altruism, and religion, on the basis of sociobiology theory. The emergence of this endeavor begins with genes, evolution, and human enculturation, not with theories about infantilism, phallocentrism, and neuroticism. The topics are sufficiently covered in enough detail to keep the reader's interest and sustain the arguments, but with the intent of being introductory and accessible rather than sallying into the esoteric and academic.

The consequence is a wholly different orientation toward what is meant by "human nature." The concept is no longer the stuff of speculative metaphysics by armchair philosophers and psychologists, but a true science evolving out of the science of evolutionary theory and genetics. The implications are not quasi-scientific, but truly scientific. Humans do indeed have a "nature," and it is based on nature, not in the imaginations of wishful thinkers.

No one, not already exposed to sociobiology, will finish reading this book unaffected for the better. Wilson, the author of "Sociobiology," "Consilience," "The Future of Life," and other enjoyable works, will find a plethora of other authors and books flooding the market with scientific insights into man's true "human nature," including "The Adaptive Mind," "The Moral Animal," "Non-Zero," and "Unto Others."

E.O. Wilson composed this towering essay nearly 25 years ago to further develop ideas and relationships proposed in the final pages of his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. A quarter of a decade later, it continues to startle: in the clarity of its exposition, the aptness of its metaphors, the range of its learning, and, finally, the monumental power marshaled in support of its argument--that human behavior is largely controlled by our species' biological heritage.

For social scientists, one of Wilson's most provocative, and useful, proposals is that biology should serve as the "anti-discipline" to the social sciences; that is, evolutionary biology is at an adjacent level of disciplinary organization, operating underneath the social sciences with the potential for reorganizing the disciplines above it according to its own principles. To a great extent, in the ensuing quarter decade, largely because Wilson and his colleagues have successfully defended the perspective of sociobiology, this has become the case in at least two fields: the new discipline of evolutionary psychology has flourished, and a new generation of anthropologists have also taken up evolutionary biology as part of their methodological toolbox. On the other hand, economists, political scientists, and sociologists have arguably lagged behind in making the relevant connections.

To understand where the social sciences need to go in the 21st century, On Human Behavior remains an indispensable key (together with and Mitch Waldrop's Complexity, still the most successful introduction to complexity science, although the competition is strong). Moreover, this book (and Waldrop's) should be on every undergraduate's reading list. Even if you decide you disagree with Wilson's argument and conclusions, in toto or in part--and I do (in part), believing, for example, that Wilson lets reproductive strategies overdetermine human behavior, leading him to undervalue cultural evolution (although I surmise he would deny this)--you should purchase this book for the elegance of its writing, which will ease you into a confrontation with your own dearly held views about the constituents of "human nature."

This book is destined to remain a classic. The quest to understand the role of humanity in Nature will be ongoing for some time to come. Edward Wilson's synthesis tells us why the study of human evolution should be pursued to its fullest extent. Discussing the roots of human behaviour and why we need to study them in greater depth, Wilson's book is an appeal for extensive research and comparative analysis.

Wilson's literary and scientific skills are brought fully to light as he takes us through the universals of human behaviour. He addresses the topics of heredity, aggression, religion, altruism and other aspects of what we are in nature. He isn't constricted to simply delineating where we came from, he sees the entire exercise as providing guideposts for our future existence. As he argues, "The only way forward is to study human nature as part of the natural sciences, in an attempt to integrate the natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities."

At the outset, he acknowledges how formidable his proposed task is for those who will likely be effected by it. Sociology, anthropology, psychology are all well-established disciplines that will be discomforted by what he's proposing. As the concluding book in his trilogy to build a definition of the science of sociobiology, he's already suffered reaction to his ideas. Wilson, however, is seeking construction, not dissolution. A new field of study on human behaviour can only be achieved by a merger of the established research areas. He knows that the study of humans is almost a divine mandate in the eyes of its practitioners. They have already contended that there isn't enough data to build a new science. He acknowledges that existing evidence is scanty, but suggests that our ignorance is the fullest reason to pursue the work. We mustn't be constrained by those who argue against the existence of our natural roots. With admirable foresight he anticipates his later critics. As he puts it, ". . . no intellectual vice is more crippling than defiantly self-indulgent anthropocentrism."

His final chapter, Hope, is his message about the future. Having examined religion as a human universal, he notes its failures through splintering and conflicts. Objects of worship have shifted from the divine to the philosophic. "Visionaries and revolutionaries set out to change the system" which has proven too arbitrary and absolutist. "Human nature," he stresses, is the "potential array" that can be applied by knowledgeable societies to consciously design a better future than appears likely now. The principal task is to measure biological constraints on decision making, to understand them and apply cultural evolution to biological evolution to create a "biology of ethics." The result, Wilson argues, will be a "more deeply understood and enduring code of moral values."

These are challenging concepts, requiring serious, dedicated effort. Wilson recognizes that old mythologies, particularly "self-indulgent anthropocentrism," must be swept away. A new and better mythology, the evolutionary epic, will emerge. It will be forged from the biological and social sciences, thereby forcing honesty and reject dogma. He paints an appealing image for scholars and researchers to consider. Many have done so, but die-hards remain entrenched. Those who will benefit the most from his ideas are those who avoid heeding the "small number of [those] who are committed to the view that human behaviour arises from a very few unstructured drives." In other words, avoid the false spectre of "genetic determinism" raised by Wilson's critics and read him directly. There are many rewards in this book and it deserves careful attention. It deserves a place on your shelf to help you along your path to a valid future, untrammeled by false mythologies or barran reasoning.

In a superb synthesis of the biological and social siences, Wilson attempts to explain the core principles of our shared humanity as the accumulated result of evolutionary processes over millions of years. His account is remarkable in that it includes comparisons and examples from a diverse range of life-forms, human cultures, and branches of human knowledge. Wilson's empathy with his subject is compelling; his fundamental understanding of socio-biological principles, and sometimes deeply intuitive application of them to other fields is always thought-provoking if not entirely convincing. A worthy and mind-broadening book

I concur with all of the other reviewers that this is a splendid book, one of the best in its field, elegantly written and closely argued.

Especially good, in my opinion, is Wilson's discussion of the 'two dilemmas' of our post-Darwinian age. The first is the loss of transcendental goals and hopes due to the scientific deconstruction of religion. Unlike many positivists who see nothing but good in the end of illusion, Wilson acknowledges (correctly, I believe) the tremendous psychological and social burdens that it imposes.

The second dilemma concerns our discovery of the intractable circularity of ethics: we must choose among the elements of human nature in accordance with intuitions that well up in us due to... the elements of human nature. Wilson faces up to this conundrum, and boldly makes his calls: for universal human rights, for the preservation of diversity, and for the transference to the scientific project of the psychic energy formerly organized around myth.

The final few sentences, a quotation from Aeschylus, could keep you thinking for the rest of your life.

Edward Wilson is probably the best writer on scientific subjects since Thomas Henry Huxley. He writes in a style that combines trenchant lucidity with mastery of exposition. Even the subtlest and most confusing intricacies of human nature are rendered easily accessible by Wilson's deft and engaging pen. He is especially good at providing apt metaphors to illustrate what might otherwise be difficult scientific conceptions. Behavioral tendencies in human nature are described, for example, as various channels, some of which are shallow (and can therefore more easily be overcome), while others are much deeper (and therefore much more resistant to efforts to counteract them). As befitting a man of science, Wilson supports his views, not with abstruse argumentation, but with facts collected and verified by practicing scientists.

Yet despite the solidity of Wilson's research, when "On Human Nature" first came out, it was viciously attacked by left-wing ideologues who violently disagreed with Wilson's conclusions regarding the limitations of man's nature. The Left, of course, wants to believe that human nature is largely fluid and malleable. Man, leftists argue, is the product, not of genetics or biology, but of social conditions, which can be changed. Under a "just" society, human nature would become transformed and evil would virtually disappear from the world. Wilson's "On Human Nature" thoroughly demolishes all these sterile hopes for man's secular salvation. Using scientific evidence, he demonstrates that most human behavior is genetic (or related to or influenced by genetics) and therefore unalterable. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto has probably described this view of man most trenchantly when he wrote: "The centuries roll by, and human nature remains the same!" In "On Human Nature," Wilson shows us why Pareto is right.

I read this book a number of years ago and loved Wilson's overview of human nature through his observations of human behaviour across cultures. I am amazed at how the previous reviewer politicized Wilson when he is anything but political. Wilson does not exclude the influences of societal attitude and the changes in human behaviour from small to large groups. His review of treatment of women in different societies -- from equal partner in small groups to chattel as the struggles for power emerge in larger groups is an example of Wilson's wonderful eye for human behaviour. Although Wilson is the father of sociobiology, he does not exclude such patterns of human nature that can be attributable to societal interactions, not unlike Jane Goodal's observations of chimpanze behaviour as situational. While it is clearly obvious that our essential makeup is genetic, it is equally clear that as learning beings, our behaviour also has a nurture element, and Wilson is clear about this.

One must read Wilson with an open mind,not cluttered by political preconceptions as the previous reviewer. Wilson makes a point of not politicizing science, and to find a political context to "On Human Nature" one must create it as Wilson certainly does not.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this book in providing a basis for understanding our very selves, and the world that we have created.

With surgical precision, Wilson dissects the motivations behind those behaviors most troublesome to our evolution: agression, sex, altruism and religion, and plainly shows their value in serving the ultimate purpose of our genetic promotion.

Human behavior has a sound basis in human physiology and its evolution, and the open acknowledgement of this is the first step toward moving the hard sciences and the humanities forward, united. Science can no longer play the aloof wallflower. The Humanities cannot proceed floating on scientific air, without sound biological substantiation. Their futures lie intertwined, converging.

Understanding our sociobiological mental underpinnings does not take away from our humanity, any more than understanding botany takes away the beauty of the flower. To the contrary, we stand all the more awe-struck in our understanding of how we have come to be what we are, and why we behave as we do.

Sociobiology in general, and this masterful work in particular, are nothing less than the key to understanding who we are, and we are greatly enriched in the knowing.