Research Article: Have Sociobiologists Proved That the Mechanisms of the Inheritance and Development of Human Physical, Mental, and Behavioral Traits Are Essentially the Same as for Other Animals

Viewpoint: Yes, sociobiologists led by E. O. Wilson have offered convincing evidence that the mechanisms of the inheritance and development of human physical, mental, and behavioral traits are essentially the same as for other animals.

Viewpoint: No, sociobiologists fail to account for many observable phenomena and invariably support a version of biological determinism.

In popular usage, the term sociobiology is used for the assumption that all mechanisms that account for the inheritance and development of physical, mental, and behavioral traits are essentially the same in humans and other animals. According to Edward O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), sociobiology is "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior." Wilson, the Pellegrino University Research Professor at Harvard, was widely recognized as an authority on the social insects. In the first chapter of his controversial book, The Morality of the Gene (1984), Wilson noted that,...
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