Das Flüstern in uns. Menschliches Verhalten im Lichte der Soziologie

by David Philip Barash

The whisperings within [Hardcover]

Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

David P. Barash is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, and is notable for books on Human aggression, Peace Studies, and the sexual behavior of animals and people. He has written approximately 30 books in total. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from Harpur College, Binghamton University, and a Ph.D. in zoology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He taught at the State University of New York at Oneonta, and then accepted a permanent position at the University of Washington.

His book Natural Selections: selfish altruists, honest liars and other realities of evolution is based on articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and published in 2007 by Bellevue Literary Press. Immediately before that was Madame Bovary's Ovaries: a Darwinian look at literature, a popular but serious presentation of Darwinian literary criticism, jointly written with his daughter, Nanelle Rose Barash. He has also written over 230 scholarly articles and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with many other honors.

In 2008, a second edition of the textbook Peace and Conflict Studies co-authored with Charles P. Webel was published by Sage. In 2009, Columbia University Press published How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories, a book on sex differentiation co-authored with Judith Eve Lipton. This was followed in 2010 by Strange Bedfellows: the surprising connection between sex, evolution and monogamy published by Bellevue Literary Press, and, in 2011, Payback: why we retaliate, redirect aggression and seek revenge, coauthored with Judith Eve Lipton and published by Oxford University Press. His book Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary puzzles of human nature appeared in 2012, also published by Oxford University Press, and in 2013, Sage published the 3rd edition of his text, Peace and Conflict Studies.

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An introduction to the application of sociobiology to various animals--including humans. This is written in a style to reach a larger noncpecialist audience. Barash wrote a more academically oriented text entitled "Sociobiology and Behavior."

This volume covers some of the material from that text--but, again, aimed at a more general readership. The book examines the application of sociobiological principles (exploring how a partiocular behavior affects survival possibilities of animals). Among the social behaviors considered are: reproductive behavior, parenting, altruism, competition, and the biology of mind and culture.

If one is interested in how sociobiology can be employed to explain animals' behavior, then this might be worth a read.

[Anni Murray · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book in a box of my dad's old books in the attic. At first I was totally sold. Of course biology and culture intersect! Obviously. It makes all the sense in the world that we should try to understand culture through a biological lens, but then I realized there wasn't any vice versa! Soon Barash started telling me how our "nature" dictates that women should be faithful while men screw around. According to him, there is a imperative at work that explains away so much chauvinism, subjugation of women and down-right bad behavior in the name of biology. No sir! Picking and choosing examples from nature to defend an indefensible and misguided agenda of a thesis is the opposite of critical thinking. I could take your thesis, make it opposite, and find just as many illustrative examples from nature to defend MY bad science. Mr. Barash, I recommend Ruth Bleier's Science and Gender. Not only is it a million times better written, researched and argued than The Whisperings Within, it calls you out for the short-sighted, reductionist, crappy scientist you are.

All beware the socio biologists. It's such a shame since, done right, we could learn so much by casting a wide and unbiased net over biology and culture.