Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate

by Ullica Segerstrale (Author)

22 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0192862150

ISBN-10: 0192862154

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When Edward O. Wilson published Sociobiology, it generated a firestorm of criticism, mostly focused on the book's final chapter, in which Wilson applied lessons learned from animal behavior to human society. In Defenders of the Truth, Ullica Segerstrale takes a hard look at the sociobiology controversy, sorting through a hornet's nest of claims and counterclaims, moral concerns, metaphysical beliefs, political convictions, strawmen, red herrings, and much juicy gossip. The result is a fascinating look at the world of modern science.
Segerstrale has interviewed all the major participants, including such eminent scientists as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard C. Lewontin, Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, Nobel Laureates Peter Medawar and Salvador Luria, and of course Edward Wilson. She reveals that most of the criticism of Wilson was unfair, but argues that it was not politically motivated. Instead, she sees the conflict over sociobiology as a drawn-out battle about the nature of "good science" and the social responsibility of the scientist. Behind the often nasty attacks were the very different approaches to science taken by naturalists (such as Wilson) and experimentalists (such as Lewontin), between the "planters" and the "weeders." The protagonists were all defenders of the truth, Segerstrale concludes, it was just that everyone's truth was different.
Defenders of the Truth touches on grand themes such as the unity of knowledge, human nature, and free will and determinism, and it shows how the sociobiology controversy can shed light on the more recent debates over the Human Genome Project and The Bell Curve. It will appeal to all readers of Edward O. Wilson or Stephen Jay Gould and all those who enjoy a behind-the-scenes peek at modern science.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ullica Segerstrale's splendid book on the controversies over sociobiology-a book 20 years in the making, and well worth the waiting." -- Alison Jolly, Science

"Segerstrale has given us an authoritative account of how it all began."--Science & Technology

"The author...has written an expansive and objective account of the controversy....she provides a thorough overview of one of the most contentious and publicized academic skirmishes in recent years. For larger public and all academic libraries."--Library Journal

"Segerstrale begins at the start of the clash, with Harvard titans Wilson and Richard Lewontin; backtracks to Britain in the mid-1960s, with a population biologist's investigations of altruism; and zooms forward to the 'Science Wars' of the mid-1990s and the international slugfest over The Bell Curve. Partisans in these controversies will likely find something here to make them angry; they will also learn much they didn't know. Even those who might dispute Segerstrale's conclusions will appreciate her assiduous chronology of these tangled issues and her accounts of what many of the participants thought they were doing in their 'battle for the soul of science in one of the few fields where it might still be fought.'"--Publishers Weekly

"Segerstrale gives us a blow-by-blow account of the sociobiology feud and a multilevel analysis of its components and historical setting."--Science

About the Author

Ullica Segerstrale is Professor of Sociology at Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago. She holds advanced degrees in organic chemistry and biochemistry, in communications, and in sociology. Born and raised in Finland, she now lives in Chicago.

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Product details

Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press (May 31, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0192862154
ISBN-13: 978-0192862150
Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.3 x 4.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Average Customer Review: 22 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,923,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #946 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Anthropology > Physical
- #6952 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Anthropology
- #9468 in Books > Science & Math > History & Philosophy

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Jennifer Hoffman

Intriguing without any strong biases

June 4, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I purchased this book for a review presentation in my Evolution course. Segerstrale does an eloquent job of providing the different sides revolving around the Sociobiology debate without providing her own heavy biased opinion (which is very hard to find involving this issue it seems!). I felt her writing was very easy to follow and quite smooth. I love her style because it gets right to the point without fluffing up any of the background information. She spent a lot of her life finding the answers behind the debate, and it felt like I was taking a trip into her life's work when I read this compilation of "evidence" regarding the debate. Though this is a book on the lengthier side, I would highly suggest reading this if you are at all curious about the sociobiology debate and where you stand in it. Segerstrale does a great job of providing information for you to take your own stance, and I think that is absolutely crucial when trying to figure out your own opinion. Definitely would recommend this read!

One person found this helpful

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A wonderful instant replay but a more problematic scorecard

December 20, 2001

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

My mentor Bill Drury once said that "real scientific controversies never get resolved, the participants simply get old and die, and the rest of us wonder what the fuss was all about". This may be the case in the "sociobiology wars" certainly the tone of many reviewers here is that Segerstrale has written an epitaph for the debate, but one can't help wondering -especially given the increasingly shrill claims of the "evolutionary psychologists" if what we have in DEFENDERS OF TRUTH isn't more of a cautionary tale of the effects of hubris. In any case Segerstrale has done us all an enormous service with this highly readable look behind the scenes at one of the most violent arguments in biology in the 20th Century. Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the book is the personal glimpses that we get of the primary players, but Segerstrale doesn't scrimp on the science within the battle or the contexts within which it is played out. I have found a great deal of useful lecture material for a number of courses here and I also find the book a valuable debunker of many of the legends that have grown up over the years. I also find Segerstrale's discussion of the essential unity of Wilson's work quite compelling -the outer shell changes, the fundamental core hasn't. My only quibble would be in terms of the conclusion "It ain't over till it's over..."

6 people found this helpful

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James R. Mccall

Or Benders of the Truth?

May 1, 2003

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a lovely book - for a certain type of person. First of all, you must care about the long-running nature/nurture controversy that swirled around the publication, in 1975, of E.O. Wilson's book Sociobiology. Also, ideally, you have long sympathized with Wilson as against his main critics, Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould. That is, you must have long felt that Wilson's assertions in that book and later ones about the heritability of cultural and mental traits in humans were reasonable-perhaps wrong in some details, but certainly interesting, and good starting points. Finally, you should find it intriguing that these three biologists were all at Harvard, and had offices in the same building.
I fit the bill. In 1979 I read Michael Ruse's book "Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense?" (Sense, he concluded.) I had no sympathy for using Marxism to critique work in science or anyplace else, which is where Lewontin and (less-blatantly) Gould were coming from. Moreover, there was something so right about the idea that humans have predilections that work themselves out in culture, and so exciting about the prospects for this kind of self-knowledge, that I felt the critics of the sort of research that Wilson was proposing were spoilsports, indeed.
But the time was not right. The critics got the best of things early on, and the name "sociobiology" acquired such a stigma that those who wished to do research (and get funded) in genetic influences on the human mind were advised to tread lightly and call their work something else. But things changed. What emerged in the 1990's was something called "evolutionary psychology", a new name for bad old "sociobiology", now respectable and in tune with current public attitudes, which have made a massive shift to a gene-centered view of - well, of just about everything.
Have I just given away the game? Perhaps, but you will have to take my word for it that this book is fun to read - if you enjoy the thrust and parry of ideas and the clash of egos. And, of course, scientists' pettiness and careerism is more entertaining than their usual posturing on pedestals engraved with "The Noble Search for Truth".
In 1980 and 1981 a young (I assume) Ullica got interviews with the main protagonists in the debates - Wilson, Lewontin, Levins, and others in America, plus various of the British contingent as well, such as Dawkins and Maynard Smith. Her area of study was the sociology of science, and she did some shaking and baking early on, using her material for contingent articles. But she kept a weather eye on how things were going in what was really a clash that exposed cultural fault lines in evolutionary biologists who were, fundamentally, on the same side. (Creationists they were not. Some of them might want to refine Darwin, but certainly none of them wanted to reject him!)
Now is a good time to sum up the course this debate has taken over the last quarter-century. The original political rationale seems quaint, and the focus has shifted to concern about how genetics and environment interact - it being more or less agreed that both are crucial. (Thus, an Hegelian synthesis of the dialectical process!) If you wish to know the history and drama of issues such as genes vs. environment, kin selection, group selection, the place of moral responsibility in a world of genetic "determinism", then this is the place to come. These and other issues are explored in a quietly comprehensive way. The personalities also come out, and the whole has the feel of a story, which of course it is, to its main players. And to you, too, if you take it up.

23 people found this helpful

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