Word: lewontin
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...worthless. The hereditarians have nevertheless continued and even stepped up their activities. In the recent Annual Review of Genetics (1976), a long article on "genetics of cognitive behavior" favorably reviews a segment of the large and growing literature on genetic bases of inequality, and repeatedly attacks Richard Lewontin for his sharp criticisms of the I.Q. studies...
...here's to Davis, Trivers, him and Lewontin...
...make peace between Lewontin and Davis...
...waves through the academic community. Sociobiology is the study of the biological basis for social behavior in every species; its practitioners believe that some-and perhaps much-of human behavior is genetically determined. It is not a message that many academics want to hear. Says Harvard's Richard Lewontin, an evolutionary biologist: "This is fundamentally a very conservative world view, which serves the very important function of saying that there is no sense in rocking the boat-we are what our genes make us-and I think that's bullshit." Lewontin is hardly alone. Marxist anthropologists criticize sociobiology...
Harvard's Lewontin dismisses theories like these as "barroom generalizations." Indeed, sociobiologists seem prone to concoct theories to explain a wide array of human problems. Harvard Biologist Robert L. Trivers presented the convention with his sociobiological view of parent-child relationships. Conflict is built in, he said, because parents divide their genetic investment-and their attention-among their children; while each child has a 100% investment in itself and struggles for 100% of the parents' time...