Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature

Abstract

Vaulting Ambition is first extensive and detailed evaluation of controversial claims that sociobiologists have made about human nature and human social behavior. It raises debate to a new level, moving beyond arguments about politics of various parties involved, degree to which sociobiology assumes genetic determinism, or falsifiability of general theory.Sociobiology has made a great deal of noise in popular intellectual culture. Vaulting Ambition cuts through charges and counter-charges to take a hard look at claims and analyses offered by sociobiologists. It examines what claims mean, how they relate to standard evolutionary theory, how biological models are supposed to work, and what is wrong with headline-grabbing proclamations of human sociobiology. In particular, it refutes notions that humans are trapped by their evolutionary biology and history in endlessly repeating patterns of aggression, xenophobia, and deceitfulness, or that inequities of sex, race, and class are genetically based or culturally determined. And it takes up issues of human altruism, freedom, and ethics as well.Kitcher weighs evidence for sociobiology, for human sociobiology, and for the pop sociobiological view of human nature that has engendered controversy. He concludes that in field of nonhuman animal studies, rigorous and methodologically sound work about social lives of insects, birds, and mammals has been done. But in applying theories to human beings-where even more exacting standards of evidence are called for because of potential social disaster inherent in adopting a working hypothesis as a basis for public policy - many of same scientists become wildly speculative, building grand conclusions from what Kitcher shows to be shoddy analysis and flimsy argument.While it may be possible to develop a genuine science of human behavior based on evolutionary biology, genetics, cognition, and culture, Kitcher points out that sociobiology that has been loudly advertised in popular and intellectual press is not it. Pop sociobiology has in fact been felled by its overambitious and overreaching creators.Philip Kitcher is Professor of Philosophy at University of Minnesota, and Director of its Center for Philosophy of Science. He brings a unique combination of training in philosophy, mathematics, and biology to this thorough treatment of sociobiology. Kitcher is author of an equally searching book on Scientific Creationism, Abusing Science, published by The MIT Press in 1982 and available in paperback.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 881 citations exist upstream.