III Complex Continuities

The case for simple continuities of pre-evolutionary thinking in the works of such authors as Galton, Kretschmer, and Sheldon is easily made—so easily that many critics of contemporary biological determinism dismiss important contemporary authors with a polemical but perhaps too derisive wave of the hand. The Sociobiology Study Group, for example, dismisses E. O. Wilson’s statements about humans in an article titled “Sociobiology—New Biological Determinism” (1977).

Such an approach will not win the day. There are indeed continuities between pre-evolutionary and contemporary biological determinist views of humans, but the issue is not therefore simple. A number of contemporary thinkers have made good-faith efforts to treat humans in accordance with what they conceive to be the requirements of an evolutionary perspective, only to continue key elements of preand nonevolutionary thought against their own intentions. This complex kind of continuity can be seen in E. O. Wilson’s human socio-biology and Marvin Harris’ cultural materialism, among many other contemporary biologically based approaches.

Two mistakes are often made in attacking such efforts. The most common is to assume that these scholars are acting in bad faith, that they are nefarious conspirators against the truth. The reduction of scientific controversy to a battle between the good guys and the bad guys is a strategy usually employed when intellectually based criticism seems too weak for the task. To assume that such thinkers are operating in bad faith is both intellectually sterile and overoptimistic. More frightening to contemplate is the possibility that intelligent, sincere, well-trained scientists can expend their efforts on these problems and then unknowingly reproduce quite predictable pre- and nonevolutionary views. This possibility suggests that a powerful and durable cultural system, rather than some personal failure of rationality and good faith, lies at the center of the problem.

Equally important is the consistent failure to set contemporary thinkers in an adequate intellectual/historical context.¹ Were I now to discuss Wilson and Harris directly against the backdrop of Hippocrates, Jean Bodin, and Francis Galton, I would be treating them stereotypically. Their arguments are detailed, complex, and keyed to a restricted range of biological and evolutionary issues—the evolution of social forms for Wilson and the relation between social practices and ecological adaptation for Harris. To treat them as if they were global biological determinists is to miss the subtlety of their arguments. Such an approach also fails to account for the attractiveness of their arguments to many academic audiences, unless we believe that these audiences also share social class interests with the authors.

To cope with these problems, it is necessary to pose such contemporary thinkers as Wilson and Harris against analyses of some of their legitimate pre-evolutionary counterparts. A fair comparison is one in which the specific subject and the level of detail of the pre-evolutionary view are on a par with those of the contemporary author’s effort. For this reason, Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate in detail how humoral/environmental theories have been deployed socially to explain and legitimate particular social arrangements.² In the first case, they are used to support a hierarchical system through a strong emphasis on genealogical arguments; in the second, a more egalitarian system is supported by a view that centers, in part, on assertions about the requirements of successful accommodation to the environment. In these detailed contexts, which elaborate considerably the arguments I have already made about humoral/environmental theories, I set the works of E. O. Wilson (Chapter 6) and Marvin Harris (Chapter 7).