Sociobiology And Bioeconomics

The theory of evolution and Neo-Darwinian biological theory extend their analysis in sociobiology from the life sciences and the animal societies to human societies. Sociobiology as a unifying theory of the social interaction within and between species has led to an integration of economic analysis into biology. The economy of nature has become the subject of bioeconomics which in turn transferred biological analysis to the human economy. Evolution, competition, selection, and cooperation are phenomena common to the economy of nature and human economy. The inclusion of economic and cultural theory in evolution theory raises the question whether the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis with its exclusive concern with somatic heredity is able to incorporate developmental systems of the human economy and of cultural heredity. A new synthesis of the natural and the social sciences is in the making.

The book has two subjects, first the ethical theory of the economic order, and secondly the critique of sociobiology and its theory of evolution. The first part, the ethics of capitalism, analyzes the rise of capitalism and the business ethics and moral theory of a capitalist economic order in a perspective from philosophy and economics. The second part, a critique of sociobiology, gives a philosophical assessment of sociobiology's contribution to the theory of the economy and society and of its impact for metaphysics and a general world view. James M. Buchanan, Nobel prize winner in economics, discusses the first part of the book in his comment "The Morality of Capitalism".

In recent years, evolutionary theorists have come to recognize that the reductionist, individualist, gene-centered approach to evolution cannot sufficiently account for the emergence of complex biological systems over time. Peter A. Corning has been at the forefront of a new generation of complexity theorists who have been working to reshape the foundations of evolutionary theory. Well known for his Synergism Hypothesis—a theory of complexity in evolution that assigns a key causal role to various forms of functional synergy—Corning puts this theory into a much broader framework in Holistic Darwinism, addressing many of the issues and concepts associated with the evolution of complex systems. Corning's paradigm embraces and integrates many related theoretical developments of recent years, from multilevel selection theory to niche construction theory, gene-culture coevolution theory, and theories of self-organization. Offering new approaches to thermodynamics, information theory, and economic analysis, Corning suggests how all of these domains can be brought firmly within what he characterizes as a post–neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis.

The New Institutional Economics might have significant interactions with the economics of non-human societies. Some possibilities are considered in connection with the ideas of Yarbrough and Yarbrough on human soieties. First, the need for enforcement may be less when the organisms in question treat one another as resources. Second, theories of the division of labor that have been developed in biology are applicable to human societies. There may be some interesting alternatives to traditional sociobiology as well.

This book examines sociobiology's validity and significance, using the sociobiological theory of the evolution of mating and parenting as an example. It identifies and discusses the array of factors that determine sociobiology's effort to become a science, providing a rare, balanced account—more critical than that of its advocates and more constructive than that of its critics. It sees a role for sociobiology in changing the way we understand the goals of evolutionary biology, the proper way to evaluate emerging sciences, and the deep structure of scientific theories. The book's premise is that evolutionary biology would not be complete if it did not explain evolutionarily significant social facts about nonhumans and humans. It proposes that explanations should be evaluated in terms of their basis in underlying theories, research programs, and conceptual frameworks.

View a video on Professor Wilson entitled On the Relation of Science and the Humanities

This book explores the promissory discourses and practices associated with the bioeconomy, focusing especially on the transformation of institutions; the creation, appropriation, and distribution of value; the struggle over resources, power, and meaning; and the role of altruism, kinship, and care practices. Governments and science enthusiasts worldwide are embracing the bioeconomy, championing it as the key to health, wealth, and sustainability, while citing it as justification to transform research and regulatory institutions, health and agricultural practices, ethics of privacy and ownership, and conceptions of self and kin. Drawing together studies from Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe, this volume encompasses subjects as diverse as regenerative medicine, population health research, agricultural finance, biobanking, assisted reproduction, immigration, breastfeeding, self-help groups, GM fish, and mining sewage.

This book demonstrates the increasing interest of some social scientists in the theories, research and findings of life sciences in building a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of politics. It discusses the development of biopolitics as an academic perspective within political science, reviews the growing literature in the field and presents a coherent view of biopolitics as a framework for structuring inquiry across the current subfields of political science.

To most biologists, sociobiology represents the concept of strict Darwinian individual selection married to an analytical application of ecological principles and brought to bear on social behavior in an unusually exciting and productive way. Joining the biologists are a small number of social scientists. But there are radically divergent views as to how the field should be delimited, and sociobiology is one of the most widely discussed fields in biology and anthropology today. The symposium on which this book is based was arranged by a biologist and an anthropologist. The participants, leaders in their fields, ably present contrasting and responsible views on current issues. This is the first collection of essays on sociobiology in which opposing views are aired. It is an exciting, timely book and an important historical document.

In June 1975, the distinguished Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson published a truly huge book entitled, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. In this book, drawing on both fact and theory, Wilson tried to present a com prehensive overview of the rapidly growing subject of 'sociobiology', the study of the biological nature and foundations of animal behaviour, more precisely animal social behaviour. Although, as the title rather implies, Wilson was more surveying and synthesising than developing new material, he com pensated by giving the most thorough and inclusive treatment possible, beginning in the animal world with the most simple of forms, and progressing via insects, lower invertebrates, mammals and primates, right up to and in cluding our own species, Homo sapiens. Initial reaction to the book was very favourable, but before the year was out it came under withering attack from a group of radical scientists in the Boston area, who styled themselves 'The Science for the People Sociobiology Study Group'. Criticism, of course, is what every academic gets (and needs!); but, for two reasons, this attack was particularly unpleasant. First, not only were Wilson's ideas attacked, but he himself was smeared by being linked with the most reactionary of political thinkers, including the Nazis.