Sociobiology and behavior

by David Philip Barash, Edward O. Wilson (foreword)

David P. Barash (b. 1946) is a Professor of Psychology at the Univ. of Washington, & is notable for books on human aggression, Peace Studies, & the sexual behavior of animals & people. He has written approximately 30 books in total. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from Harpur College, SUNY at Binghamton & a PhD in zoology from Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He taught at the SUNY at Oneonta, then accepted a permanent position at the Univ. of Washington.

Genres: Evolution, Nature, Biology

396 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1976

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 4 out of 5]

Sociobiology is the study of the evolutionary roots of social behavior. The first major work here was Edward O. Wilson's" Sociobiology: The New Synthesis." David Barash's work was designed to make the subject more accessible to wider audiences. In that, it does pretty well. The key logic for this body of work is encapsulated in the term "inclusive fitness" (Page 392): "The sum of an individual's fitness as measured by personal reproductive success and that of relatives, with those relatives devalued in proportion to their genetic distance, i.e., as they share fewer genes." In other words, if a behavior increases the odds of one's gene's and one's relatives' genes appearing in the next generation, that behavior will more likely be transmitted to one's offspring.

It must be noted that there is criticism of sociobiology. That said, this book does a nice job of outlining the application of the inclusive fitness concept to a variety of social behaviors. The first section of the book discusses the general nature of evolution as well its application to behavior. Part II focuses on theoretical issues, such as question like: How can altruism evolve, despite the individual risking its life to save another creature? Can sociobiology be applied to humans? What is the nature of the "Evolutionarily Stable Strategy" (ESS) and its applicability to behavior?

Part III takes the framework from the first two parts of the book and applies it to a variety of social behaviors, such as sociality itself, sexual and reproductive behavior, mate selection, ecology of social systems, parenting, social competition and dominance and aggression, and territoriality.

Overall, the book works well. For those who are not convinced about the validity of evolutionary theory, of course, the book will not work. For those, however, who accept evolution, this book is a very well done entree to the literature of sociobiology, written in an accessible manner.

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good book, but outdated information. Better to go read a new good book. Many of the things speculated upon now have concrete research. It would be an interesting historical perspective of what people were thinking at the time.