On Human Nature (Paperback)

by Edward O. Wilson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Although Wilson is best known for his book Sociobiology, the one I like best is On Human Nature, which expresses his ideas about human behaviour and our evolutionary heritage most clearly, and in a style that sits easy on the eye. Many people have been hyped as 'the new Darwin'; Wilson is the only person who even comes close to living up to that description. (Kirkus UK)

Take the controversial parts of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, add an occasional qualifying "I strongly believe," and you have the substance of this lively summary of Wilson's speculations on human nature, a book guaranteed to inflame feminists, Science-for-the-People groups, and others opposed to Wilson's brand of genetics determinism. The arguments that human societies are characterized by male-dominance, aggression, incest taboo, pair bonding, division of labor, etc., are the laminar extrapolations from the animal and tribal studies of Tiger, Fox, Lorenz, and others. Wilson believes that sociobiology, the discipline he called into being, will absorb the social sciences and put them on the firm scientific basis of biology and genetics. He asserts that we are the product of natural selection which adapted us for life in the last Ice Age. The genetically programmed individual "strives for personal reproductive success foremost and that of his immediate kin secondarily: further grudging correlation represents a compromise struck in order to enjoy the benefits of group membership." Critics will argue that extrapolation from other species and statistical sampling are inadequate to describe human behavior and that the favored themes of the ethologists - aggression, territoriality, sex, etc. - omit much and may tell more about the writers than about mankind. To be fair, Wilson discusses religion and myth-making and is concerned about the dilemma of the failure of organized religion. His own faith and optimism are revealed in a final chapter in which he argues that the choices available in cultural evolution should aim at diversification in the gene pool and universal human fights. His belief that science itself may take over as the shaper of a new human ethics may be the most optimistic belief of all. . . or express the most hubris! (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
Wilson is a sophisticated and marvelously humane writer. His vision is a liberating one, and a reader of this splendid book comes away with a sense of the kinship that exists among the people, animals, and insects that share the planet. (New Yorker 20041219)

Compellingly interesting and enormously important...The most stimulating, the most provocative, and the most illuminating work of nonfiction I have read in some time.
--William McPherson (Washington Post Book World 20050301)

A work of high intellectual daring...Here is an accomplished biologist explaining, in notably clear and unprevaricating language, what he thinks his subject now has to offer to the understanding of man and society...The implications of Wilson's thesis are rather considerable, for if true, no system of political, social, religious or ethical thought can afford to ignore it.
--Nicholas Wade (New Republic 20071124)

Twenty-five years after its first publication, Harvard University Press has re-released Edward O. Wilson's classic work, On Human Nature. A double Pulitzer Prize winner, Wilson is a writer of effortless grace and stylish succinctness and this is one of his finest, most important books...[A] highly influential, elegantly written book.
--Robin McKie (The Observer )

A seminal, groundbreaking, informative, thought-provoking, enduringly valuable, and highly recommended read. (Bookwatch ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 15, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060175966
• ISBN-13: 978-0674634428
• ASIN: 067463442X
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #433,727 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

131 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Without euphemism, June 3, 2001

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: On Human Nature (Hardcover)

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.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boethius, Move Over: The Dawn of New Understanding, June 11, 2002

By	D. S. Heersink "D. Stephen Heersink" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: On Human Nature (Mass Market Paperback)

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."

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars About "On Human Nature" by Edward O. Wilson, August 28, 2004

By	Arno Arrak (Dix Hills, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

About "On Human Nature" by Edward O. Wilson.

Wilson considers "On Human Nature" (1978) to be part of a trilogy that began with "Insect Societies" (1971) and includes his "Sociobiology - The New Syntheses" (1975). He describes the inception of this third book of the trilogy as follows:
"The aftermath of the publication of Sociobiology led me to read more widely on human behavior and drew me to many seminars and written exchanges with social scientists. I became more persuaded than ever that the time has come to close that famous gap between the two cultures, and that general sociobiology, which is simply the extension of population biology and evolutionary theory, is the appropriate instrument for the effort. On Human Nature is an exploration of that thesis."
About the book itself he says:
"To address human behavior systematically is to make a potential topic of every corridor in the labyrinth of the human mind, and hence to consider not just the social sciences but the humanities, including philosophy and the process of scientific discovery itself. Consequently, 'On Human Nature' is not a work of science; it is a work about science, and about how far natural sciences can penetrate into human behavior before they will be transformed into something new."
This is a theme he was later to pursue also in his "Consilience - The Unity of Knowledge" (1998). Discussing the great branches of knowledge in it he says: "The greatest enterprse of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities. The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarsip." I find myself in total agreement with that. "Consilience" subsequently inspired the New York Academy of Sciences to organize a three day conference entitled "Unity of Knowledge - The Convergence of Natural and Human Science" in June 2000. Wilson was the keynote speaker and when it came time for questions, the first question out of the box was about his support for eugenics. Marxists have always been trying to pin that label on him ever since "Sociobiology" came out. This is part of the ongoing Marxist attack on Wilson and sociobiology which he himself referred to as "The aftermath of the publication of Sociobiology..." The full account of that attack which has lasted more than a quarter century and is still going strong is found in "Defenders of the Truth - The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond" by Ullica Segerstråle. She was originally against him, even attended meetings of the Sociobiology Study Group as an observer, but has come to feel that Wilson has been vindicated.

"On Human Nature" covers aggressioin, sex, altruism and religion as well as heredity, development and emergent behavior brilliantly. He is extremely persuasive and has a very humane approach to these topics. To find out about him as a person you can read his memoir "Naturalist." And for those who truly desire a more in-depth analysis I recommend that they also take in Wilson's "Consilience" and Segerstråle's "Defenders of the Truth."