If I wanted to test sociobiology as a theory with these statistics, I’d be much more interested in the numbers for hunter-gatherer tribes. In particular, I expect the invention of birth control has driven these numbers well away from what sociobiology would predict.
I guess these are a test of whether sociobiology can be applied willy-nilly to make predictions about every facet of our own society, but I hope people don’t think it’s that easy.
Agreed. You can’t say “Sociobiology predicts X for every human society”.
It’s even a bit nonsensical to talk about evidence “against sociobiology”. You can talk about evidence against particular sociobiological theories. But the idea that sociobiology itself is bankrupt, and should not be a field of study—that genetics and evolutionary psychology have no influence on human society—is absurd.
If I wanted to test sociobiology as a theory with these statistics, I’d be much more interested in the numbers for hunter-gatherer tribes. In particular, I expect the invention of birth control has driven these numbers well away from what sociobiology would predict.
I guess these are a test of whether sociobiology can be applied willy-nilly to make predictions about every facet of our own society, but I hope people don’t think it’s that easy.
Agreed. You can’t say “Sociobiology predicts X for every human society”.
It’s even a bit nonsensical to talk about evidence “against sociobiology”. You can talk about evidence against particular sociobiological theories. But the idea that sociobiology itself is bankrupt, and should not be a field of study—that genetics and evolutionary psychology have no influence on human society—is absurd.