A perennial debate about human nature, pitting the idea that behavior is culturally conditioned against the notion that human actions are innately controlled, was rekindled in 1975 when Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis introduced a new scientific discipline.

Sociobiology is defined by Wilson as "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior" and can be described as a science that applies the principles of evolutionary biology to the social behavior of organisms, analyzing data from a number of disciplines, especially ethology (the biological study of behavior), ecology, and evolution. It employs two chief postulates. The first is the interaction principle, the idea that the action of any organism, including man, arises as a fusion of genotype and learning or experience. The second is the fitness maximization principle, the notion that all organisms will attempt to behave in a manner that passes copies of their...