Sociobiology and the Wayward Critic

Abstract

The article begins by underscoring the widely noted “sociological crisis” and the message from the history of science that the crisis may be susceptible to resolution through an application of a general law pertaining to a neighboring science (sociobiology in our case). From here, the article proceeds to pinpoint the basic argument of Professor Crippen's article (this issue) and then critically examines the two articles that critically accompany it. We find some errors of interpretation in Professor Maryanski's article, but on the whole it is a constructive critique of Crippen's essay and a related invitation to a biologically informed evolutionary sociology. By contrast, Professor Freese's interminable article fails to confront Crippen's argument and in the process offers a tortuous, tendentious itinerary of politically correct interpretations of scientific inquiry in general and sociobiological science in particular.