Emmerich Responds

As usual, the persons responding to my review--many of them students of sociobiology--react vehemently, but fail to grasp the most important questions I attempted to pose in my critique of DeVore's lecture. Although I have read extensively on the subject, I will not pretend to be competent enough to debate the sociobiologists on their own grounds, nor did I attempt to do so in my piece. I did attempt, however, to expose some of the philosophical assumptions and value-judgements implicit in the study of how genes affect human behavior and society. Not simply judgments about the ultimate value of science--which most scientists seem to accept a priori, forgetting that science arose merely as a means of satisfying basic human needs--but judgments about the necessity of a field of study that quite ostensibly sets out to study how behavior is restricted by our genes.

Those who accuse me of having gotten the major themes wrong obviously missed a fundamental point of my critique: that it is indeed the sociobiologists who have missed the major themes. They believe science and sociobiology is entirely divorced from social realities. They still believe in "objectivity" and "ethical neutrality." Unfortunately, what one chooses to look at is subjectively influenced by what one thinks is significant. And what one thinks is significant is a result of the society and the consciousness of that society in which one lives--and there are no exceptions, not even for sociobiologists. As far as "ethical neutrality," the issue goes a little but further than a simplistic notion that "science is good, therefore, anything promoting science is ethical."

It is only natural that sociobiologists cannot discuss the very crucial issues of the debate on the worth of such a field. Sociobiologists are not philosophers, or--contrary to their beleif-- sociologists or social theorists. They can search futily for human evidence of their theories, and I wish them luck, but they will never have the final word on the more philosophical questions that are inherent in the debate.