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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A readable, humorous and thought provoking book,
By Thomas W. Christopher (Pulaski, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Genesis Factor (Paperback)
This is one great book. It covers a very difficult subject (sociobiology) with great humour and great insight. It challenges many sacred cows such as Why we love our children, morality and IQ in as respectful a way as possible under the circumstances. Wallace's conclusions will make you stop and reexamine your world view and to question many truisms of modern man.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some insights, but author then reverses himself,
This review is from: The genesis factor (Hardcover)
Overall I think this book is worth reading in a light sort of way, but as a primer on sociobiology it is not.
The author correctly points out that we human beings - both individually and collectively - are largely the product of our genetic inheritance, and he skewers a fair amount of political correctness (as of the publication date of 1979 anyway) as being too quasi-Marxist and 'blank slate' in their wishful thinking. But, he indulges in too much personal speculation and often goes off base. Wallace, to his great credit, strongly defends Arthur Jensen and Edward O. Wilson from the de rigeur emotional and personal attacks by leftists in and out of academe. The attacks almost never aim at the substantial points offered by both men, and instead seem to have the purpose of creating a sort of climate of intellectual terror to dissuade others from pursuing sociobiology or intelligence testing. A major flaw in this author's book is his speculation as to solutions to the human dilemma. He engages in his own wishful thinking as well as reverses himself in his earlier advocacy of adhering to our fundamental natures, when he suggests that we jettison our identities and ethnicities and apply big and coercive government to meld us all into one vast melted ooze of humanity in order to eliminate conflict. That is utterly silly but it is typical of so many who wish to endlessly compromise on these issues of human inheritance and who try to please everyone. He also advocates a globalist interlacing of economies and economic interests, in order to make each racial and ethnic group interdependent of each other, again to (he hopes) eliminate conflict. The only result of this, of course, would simply be to accelerate the eradication of individual and group identity. The overall problem with these speculative solutions of Wallace, would be to eliminate from the gene pool the best and finest elements of human evolution, thus erasing hundreds of thousands of years of nature's work. This is not sociobiology, but rather an erasure of the wisdom of same. Wallace very briefly mentions Robert Ardrey. I have read all of Ardrey's books and he is an excellent source on this subject of human genetic inheritance and sociobiology (albeit before the term itself was coined, apparently by Wilson I believe, he being the author of the massive textbook SOCIOBIOLOGY which came out about the same time as Wallace's book). Really Ardrey did the work of accumulating the behavioral studies and providing an overall synthesis of what they mean for human nature and human society and (sensible) social-political policy. Ardrey's books include AFRICAN GENESIS, THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, and THE HUNTING HYPOTHESIS. All are excellent and 'must' reads for anyone seriously interested in this area. Next on one's reading list I would place Edward O. Wilson himself, including his books SOCIOBIOLOGY, CONSILIENCE, and various other works which he has authored more recently. Wallace, on the other hand, is not a 'must' read and really could be left towards the END of one's reading list.
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