Social biology

Social biology is a term coined by Professor Edward O. Wilson at Harvard in 1975. Advocates of this approach think that genetic makeup transmitted through biology explains aspects of human society and culture. We can study the social behavior of bees, ants, or primates and learn important things about human culture.

There is no doubt that much about each of us is determined by the chromosomes we inherited at birth from each of our parents. From this union we became male or female and inherited a range of physical traits, including our mental aptitude. However, two major errors occur in ascribing primary importance to our biological inheritance.

First, our biological inheritance does not determine how a particular behavior is expressed and understood culturally. In different cultures, an individual with a high energy level might be considered a shaman, or a rambunctious person “too full of himself”, or a child requiring Ritalin to control hyperactivity (ADHD – Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder). Expressions of our biology always appear in a cultural context and this cultural context is continually evolving.

Second, individual biological differences do not explain group differences. Pure gene pools no longer exist as a possible way of explaining group differences. Group differences that we observe come from humans with genetically diverse backgrounds in distinct cultural situations. Cultures attach significance to phenotypes. A phenotype is an observable or detectable physical characteristic of a person. Cultures make distinctions between subtle gradations of skin pigment (e.g., between the extremely light skin pigment of Scandinavians and the more “olive” skin pigment of some Spanish, Italian, and Greek people). In the European community these differences may appear quite obvious and important, though a dark-skinned person of the Dravidian language group of Southern India might view them all as “white” people. No biological differences cause particular social or cultural arrangements or behaviors. As in the above example, some reactions are explainable only by the cultural differences between the two observers, not the underlying biological differences