> From: "Ellen Dannin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:456] Re: Re: Re: Re: sociobiology and right-wing politics > Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 12:30:01 -0700 > Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Stephen Jay Gould is presently engaged in an intellectual battle against what he calls "Darwinian fundamentalism". This is not the socio-biology of the mid-70s led by E.O.Wilson. It is a much stronger, influential movement, which uses the latest concepts in genetics to argue, with confindence and arrogance, that natural selection is the key cause of evolution and of human behavior. They include Dawkins, Dennett, and others. Gould counters them by insisting that Darwin himself never said that evolution is explainable according to a single factor like natural selection. This is what his theory of "punctuated equilibria" is all about: evolution is mainly characterized by stability with sudden, rapid modifications brought about by accidental environmental happenings. Wilson now has these fundamentalists on his side, and himself recently published a book arguing that all social phenomena is ultimately explainable by biology. Some of you may have seen his two articles in the Atlantic this last spring. ricardo > Ellen J. Dannin > California Western School of Law > 225 Cedar Street > San Diego, CA 92116 > (619) 525-1449 > FAX: (619) 696-9999 > >
