>Mine. You still haven't answered Brad's point. S.R. either tells a
>deliberate
>lie or he doesn't know what he is talking about. Wilson did not "remake
>himself"
okey!!! Whoever calls Steven Rosenthal a "lier" either does not have
any slightest notion of who Steven Rosenthal is or has not digested
his article completely. "Lier" is an uprofessional and disgusting
accusation, Rod! The fellow is an "honest" Marxist and a sociologist, who
has put his years on this topic. I am presenting "again" the context of
Steven's discusssion of Wilson, and the reasons why he thinks Wilson is
insincere when he remakes himself as an enviromentalist. Let's pay
attention to Wilson's main argument here rather than spending gas over
whether he prentends to be an enviromentalist or not.Even if we assume
that he is an enviromentalist (which is not sincere anway), this does not
justify his "real" side that "At my core, I am a social conservative, a
loyalist. I cherish traditional institutions, the more venerable and
ritual-laden the better." or when he talks about Rwandan genocide in 1994
as an example of "ethnic rivalry run amuck," reflecting our genetically
based tribal instincts" (quotes are from Steven's article).what an
enviromentalist bio-diversity!
Since it is asked, Steven says the following about Wilson's
enviromentalist side (refer to article):
>Wilson put these arguments into Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,
>published in 1975 by Harvard University Press and widely promoted by
>the popular media. Many natural and social scientists exposed human
>sociobiology as an unscientific attempt to defend the capitalist
>status quo as natural and unchangeable.
>Because of these sharp critiques, Wilson reinvented himself as an
>environmentalist concerned about bio-diversity. A quarter century
>and five books later, Wilson today poses as a reasonable advocate of
>genetic and cultural "co-evolution" and as a proponent of
>genetic/environmental interaction. He pretends to reject biological
>determinism, social Darwinism, and eugenics. The ruling class has
>extolled Consilience as the crowning achievement of a visionary elder
>statesman of capitalist science. The New York Times and The Wall
>Street Journal lavishly praised his call for the subjugation of the
>social sciences and the humanities to the natural sciences, and for
>the elevation of his pseudo-science to state religion. The Atlantic
>Monthly interviewed Wilson and published excerpts of Consilience.
I continue:
Moreover, Edward Wilson says the following in introduction to _What
is Sociobiology_:
"Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological
basis of all forms of social behavior, including sexual
and parental behavior, in all kinds of organisms including humans. As
such, it is a discipline inevitable discipline,
since there must be a systematic study of social behavior.
Sociobiology consists mostly of zoology. About 90 percent
of its current material concerns animals, even though over 90 percent
of the attention given to sociobiology by
nonscientists, and especially journalists, is due to its possible
applications to the study of human social behavior.
There is nothing unusual about deriving principles and methods, and
even terminology, from intensive examinations of
lower organisms and applying them to the study of human beings. Most
of the fundamental principles of genetics and
biochemistry applied to human biology are based on colon bacteria,
fruit flies, and white rats. To say that the same
science can be applied to human beings is not to reduce humanity to
the status of these simpler creatures".
(http://www.runet.edu/~lridener/courses/SOCBIO.HTML)
(From Edward O. Wilson, "Introduction: What is Sociobiology?" In
Michael S. Gregory, Anita Silvers, and Diane Such (Eds.). 1978.
Sociobiology and Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary
Critique and Defense. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass, pp.
1 - 12.)
Mine
