On Human Nature (1978; second edition 2004) is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson, in which the author attempts to explain human nature and society through sociobiology. Wilson argues that evolution has left its traces on characteristics such as generosity, self-sacrifice, worship and the use of sex for pleasure, and proposes a sociobiological explanation of homosexuality. He attempts to complete the Darwinian revolution by bringing biological thought into social sciences and humanities. Wilson describes On Human Nature as a sequel to his earlier books The Insect Societies (1971) and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979.
Summary
2004 Preface The conundrum of human nature, as I and a few others saw it in 1978, can be solved only if scientific explanations embrace both the how (neurosciences) and why (evolutionary biology) of brain action, with the two axes of explanation fitted together. In The Insect Societies (1971), I proposed that a coherent branch of biology might be constructed from a synthesis of social behavior and population biology. In 1975 I expanded the conception of the discipline outlined to include vertebrate animals. The result was Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, a double-column, 697-page account of theory based on an encyclopedic review of all known social organisms. In a 1989 poll the officers and fellows of the international Animal Behavior Society ranked it the most important book on animal behavior of all time. Many scientists and others believed it would have been better if I had stopped before the last chapter on Homo sapiens. There could not have been a worse time than the mid-1970s for the inauguration of human sociobiology. The Vietnam War had created a student protest movement of the revolutionary left. Race was a radioactive issue. Talk of the inheritance of IQ and human behavior were punishable offenses. The blank-slate interpretation of the brain sheltered the social sciences and humanities from the storms of biology and vouchsafed their independence as two of the three great branches of learning. In the popular media, sociobiology came to mean the theory that human behavior is determined by genes. The final chapter of Sociobiology should have been a book-length exposition.
Chapter 1. Dilemmas As a species we have no particular place to go. Human emotional responses have been programmed to a substantial degree by natural selection over thousands of generations but which should be obeyed and which ones might be better curtailed? And how do the different disciplines that explore human nature interact? Those working at a lower level often assume that those at a higher level should eventually be reformulated in their own terms: they form an antidiscipline for the next level, but with the passage of time they become fully complementary. Reduction is only half the scientific process: the recognition of novel emergent phenomena is as important.
Chapter 2. Heredity Sociobiology is a hybrid discipline that incorporates knowledge from ethology to derive the principles of the biological properties of entire societies. It attempts to view humanity simultaneously with an array of other social experiments. Societies are not infinitely malleable. We share certain traits with the majority of great apes and monkeys, however less with birds or rodents. And there are a huge number of social traits that occur in every human society. He examines the similarities and differences with chimpanzees in more detail. He then discusses the incest taboo (cultural) with possible underlying genetic explanations. There is no reason to suppose that all genetic variability for behavior has been exhausted. In fact the opposite is true. The chapter concludes with a discussion of identical twin studies and possible racial differences.
Chapter 3. Development Is the wiring diagram of the brain of a newborn baby an all-purpose device, adaptable through learning to any mode of social existence as those who believe in a tabula rasa assume? Does sociobiology imply that development is deterministic, producing insect-like behavior? His view is that genetic factors act as a set of biases in development, nudging it one way or another with a potentially large cumulative change. He comments on Chomsky's view of grammar and Skinner's of learning, and prefers Piaget’s approach. The mind isn't a tabula rasa but rather an autonomous decision-making instrument.
Chapter 4. Emergence The threat to our free will is that someone may be able to calculate exactly how our brain works. But the extraordinary complexity and difficulty of exact measurement may mean that that is never the case. The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality, but intentionality. The compromise between Russian dolls and vitalism lies in recognizing plans, or schemata. These can create patterns in the mind that aren't altogether present in reality and can form the physical basis of will. Yet our behavior is determined in a weaker sense: we can make broad predictions with confidence. Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and much faster than Darwinian. But culture cannot diverge too far from its biological base. For example, slavery has existed in much of history but humans ultimately refuse to act like slave ants. We need to bear in mind the typical behaviors of people in the last few million years. But with the emergence of Homo sapiens, brain size increase leveled off being replaced by cultural expansion.
Chapter 5. Aggression Humans are innately aggressive. Even the most peaceful tribes have a more violent past and probably future. But the Freudian concept of an innate aggressive drive, adapted by Konrad Lorenz, is incorrect. Wilson identifies seven types of situation in which aggression occurs, such as territorialism. But people are also capable of learning from their mistakes and changing, as happened to the Maoris in New Zealand.
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