ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Disciplinarity under Review: Sociobiology and its reception, 1975-1978

• In Event: Book Reviewing and (Inter)disciplinarity in Postwar Science

English Abstract

This paper examines around 50 book reviews that appeared in the years after the publication of E.O. Wilsons Sociobiology. The New Synthesis (1975). Unusually, these reviews were not needed to popularize the book as it was the center of very public debate and had already garnered significant press and scientific attention before any reviews in specialized journals were published. As a result, Sociobiology’s reception is remarkable in its disciplinary diversity with evaluations of its content and disciplinary ambitions in major journals from fields ranging from animal behavior to the sociology, political science and economics. Whereas in the public debate themes revolving around genetic determinism were central, inter-disciplinary reviews centered its disciplinary implications, often seeing it as an example of biological reductionism and scientism. Consequently, Wilson’s attempt to offer a common biological framework for understanding behavior invited engagement but rarely collaboration. What looked like synthesis from Wilson’s side often appeared as conceptual overreach or methodological naivety from theirs. In analyzing these inter-disciplinary reactions, we learn more about why sociobiology failed to find its disciplinary footing.

Author

• Cora Stuhrmann, LMU Munich