Rating: 
Summary: An extremely useful & interesting book
Review: Segerstrale has done everyone an enormous service by actually looking into the entire "sociobiology debate" in complete historical detail. Everything is here, "spandrels" and all.The story is well-told, and I couldn't find any errors in the telling. At the end, you may come to realize that there was almost never any substantive criticism of the science in sociobiology, and that the critics only objected to what they perceived as moral failings which must inhere in any person embracing such a theory. What were these failings? Basically, sociobiology put paid to "environmental determinism" (an article of liberal faith), and it also put paid to "equality" in the sense of "all persons are born literally equal" -- another article of liberal faith. However, if (like me) you don't see any particular difficulty in admitting that genes have some importance, and that people are not all "equal" in the sense of "emerging from the same exact cookie-cutter," you may come away from the tale of the "debate" with a sensation of "sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Rating: 
Summary: Assassins of an infant science
Review: Segerstrale has done science and the reading public a tremendous service with this account of the "sociobiology wars." Two decades of interviews and a forty page bibliography are vivid testimony to her research abilities. However, this book isn't a just pedantic exercise. Her views of the participants impart a sincere personal account of how she views the collision of ideals among scientists. Segerstrale's approach is amazingly dispassionate. Her Introduction, a fine summary of the issues, states that "the participants are all defenders of the truth." Their views are adhered to passionately with Segerstrale presenting their assertions openly without comment. Later, when she analyzes their motivations, does background meaning become clear as to why this debate hasn't closed. Sociobiology's path has been pretty bumpy during the generation since E.O. Wilson's book was published. Almost immediately a hue and cry arose from academics and the public alike. Segerstrale carefully presents the views of all the important participants, with special focus on Harvard's Richard Lewontin. It was Lewontin who characterized Wilson's book as "bad science" without suggesting what "good science" might be in addressing the issue. Even the "scientific traditions" of field naturalist versus laboratory experimentalists are examined in the debate's context. Adding to the complexity of personalities and methods is Segerstrale's ongoing discussion of the political status of the period. With race relations, women's issues and other social causes intruding on the scientific debate, the contenders avoid simple pigeonholing. Segerstrale goes to some length in presenting the debate in a broader social context and accomplishes it with finesse.
In the final analysis, it is E.O. Wilson who emerges vaguely from the fray with enhanced stature. While his critics appear mildly panic-stricken from
the tenets of sociobiology, Wilson continued his work. Publishing several works embellishing his original ideas, he summarized his efforts and much of the debate in his autobiography, Naturalist. Wilson's critics over the years attacked his "facts" in a "utilitarian" sense - i.e., what impact does a scientific find have on society. As a field researcher, Wilson found this interpretation of science disquieting. The issue then, wasn't "bad science" but "bad interpretation" of scientific results. Segerstrale's analysis of this issue makes compelling reading, bringing the book to a well-structured conclusion. Those wishing to understand what the sociobiology debate [not the science itself] is all about should obtain this book. It's a stunning resource.
Rating:
Summary: Or Benders of the Truth?
Review: 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.
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