On Human Nature (1978; second edition 2004) is a book by Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, in which the author attempts to explain human nature and society through sociobiology. Wilson argues that evolution has left its traces on characteristics such as generosity, self-sacrifice, worship and the use of sex for pleasure, and proposes a sociobiological explanation of homosexuality. He attempts to complete the Darwinian revolution by bringing biological thought into social sciences and humanities. Wilson describes On Human Nature as a sequel to his earlier books The Insect Societies (1971) and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975).
The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979.
Summary
Wilson writes that On Human Nature is the third of a trilogy, the previous volumes of which were The Insect Societies (1971) and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), and that its thesis is that general sociobiology, "the extension of population biology and evolutionary theory to social organization", is the appropriate means of closing "the famous gap between the two cultures". He proposes that homosexuality may be "a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important element of early human social organization", describing it as "above all a form of bonding", possibly based on a genetic predisposition.
Reception
On Human Nature won a 1979 Pulitzer Prize. The anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote that a reading of the book refutes the accusation that Wilson aims to use sociobiology to reinforce traditional sex roles. The philosopher Roger Scruton, writing in Sexual Desire (1986), criticized Wilson's sociobiological explanations of human social behavior, arguing that because of Wilson's "polemical purpose" he was forced to engage in "immense simplification" of the facts. However, he granted that sociobiological explanations of the sort favored by Wilson might possibly be correct. The anthropologist Donald E. Brown, writing in Human Universals (1991), commented that he at first failed to read Wilson's book because his views were still conditioned by the "sociocultural perspectives" in which he had been trained. However, Brown concluded that "sociobiologists might be more convincing if they confined their explanations to universals rather than attempting to show that virtually everything that humans do somehow maximizes their reproductive success."
Science writers John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin described On Human Nature as an "accessible account of the application of sociobiology to people". The sociologist Ullica Segerstråle considered the book essentially a development of Wilson's earlier ideas. Segerstråle commented that, unlike opponents of sociobiology, Wilson saw it as having liberal political implications, and tried to develop these suggestions in On Human Nature. The psychologist David P. Barash, writing with Ilona A. Barash, called On Human Nature, "A wide-ranging, thoughtful, and controversial classic of human sociobiology".
In 2011, On Human Nature was named by Time magazine as one of the "100 best and most influential" books written in English since 1923.
See also
- Biology and sexual orientation
- On Aggression
- The Two Cultures
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
- Books
- Online articles
External links
- Description of the book at Harvard University Press
- On Human Nature on Open Library at the Internet Archive
