I don’t like to rock the boat. I prefer to go along to get along.<\/p>\n
I don’t know much about biology, just a concept here and there, and sure, at times, they seem useful for understanding society, but I know my place. I don’t want to cause trouble.<\/p>\n
Mustn’t grumble! <\/p>\n
I will follow the directions of my social betters.<\/p>\n
Always follow your rebbe!<\/p>\n
When I walked around the block the other day, I learned that applying concepts from biology to human society is a very touchy matter to urban elites (the more removed people are from the facts of animal breeding, the more touchy they get about the importance of genetics).<\/p>\n
The signature of God is truth, however. I must carry on even if hostility to the biological reality underpinning human society runs deep. The field is called biosocial science or evolutionary psychology when applied to behavior, and sociobiology when applied to social structures. The backlash against it has been fierce and often coordinated.<\/p>\n
Modern elite institutions, particularly in academia, rest on a foundational assumption that human beings are shaped almost entirely by culture, history, and social structures. This view is called the Standard Social Science Model, and it dominated the 20th century. If you accept it, then inequality, crime, group differences in outcome, and social hierarchy all trace back to oppression, discrimination, and structural injustice. The remedies follow logically: policy, education, and social engineering can fix nearly anything.<\/p>\n
Biosocial science threatens that entire framework. If human behavior has a heritable component, if traits like aggression, status-seeking, cooperation, and even certain cognitive tendencies have evolutionary roots, then some human variation is not simply a product of injustice. That does not mean inequality is justified or permanent, but it does mean the progressive reform project becomes far more complicated and far more uncertain.<\/p>\n
The famous case is E.O. Wilson<\/a>. When he published Sociobiology<\/a> in 1975, a group of Harvard colleagues signed a letter condemning it as a tool of racism and fascism. They dumped water on him at a scientific conference. Wilson was not a racist. He was a careful scientist, and he knew it. The attacks were political, not scientific.<\/p>\n The pattern repeats. Lawrence Summers lost the Harvard presidency partly for suggesting biological factors might contribute to gender gaps in elite science. Charles Murray became untouchable for presenting behavioral genetics data. The scientists who study this territory often self-censor, frame findings carefully, or face professional consequences.<\/p>\n The honest position is that nature and nurture interact in ways science is still mapping. Biology sets ranges and tendencies; culture and environment shape how those tendencies express themselves. That is not a controversial claim in behavioral genetics, but it remains career-threatening in many humanities and social science departments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t like to rock the boat. I prefer to go along to get along. I don’t know much about biology, just a concept here and there, and sure, at times, they seem useful for understanding society, but I know … Continue reading