Sociobiology Was a Flop, but Socially Constructed Biology Went Viral

Many years ago biologist E.O. Wilson came up with a theory he called sociobiology, a theory he presented in a 697-page 1975 book with the pretentious title Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Wilson defined sociobiology as "the study of the biological basis of all social behavior," making an incredibly dubious claim by using such a definition. Sociobiology was basically the idea that genes largely determine behavior.  Wilson came up with the idea after studying the complex social behavior of insects such as ants. We can imagine the thinking of a materialist ant biologist, maybe something along these lines:

"Ants have all these complex behaviors, and they don't seem to learn them at all. It can't be something they think of, because their brains are so tiny. So it must be their genes. Genes must control behavior!"

But the idea that genes control behavior should seem nonsensical to anyone familiar with what a gene is. A gene is a tiny part of a DNA molecule. A particular gene gives the sequence of amino acids that make up the polypeptide chain that is kind of the starting point of a protein molecule. Can we say that a particular gene specifies a protein molecule? That is not quite right, because genes seem to have no specification at all of the complex shape of a protein molecule.  

Here is a good analogy for the situation. Imagine I specify a sequence of characters such as "UYUEEIBUIBAWWIRBIAWUBW," Opening a box of Alpha Bits cereal, you find a matching set of letters. Using thread, you make these letters into a chain, rather like a chain of beads.  You then shape this chain-like structure into some very distinctive 3D shape, like some origami structure.  Did my original string of characters specify the final origami structure? No, my sequence of characters only specifies part of that final structure, which sequence of letters it used. Similarly, a gene seems to specify only the amino acid sequence of a protein molecule, not its 3D shape. The genetic code used by genes is something capable only of specifying amino acids, not complex shapes built from amino acids.  How the complex 3D shapes of protein molecules arise is an unsolved mystery in biology, called the protein folding problem. 

Now, if a gene is so limited that it does not even specify the 3D shape of a protein molecule, what can we say about claims that genes specify anatomical structures or that genes determine social behaviors? Simply that they are laughable falsehoods. 

A gene is part of a DNA molecule, and DNA molecules do not and cannot specify the anatomy of any organism.  The claim that DNA is a blueprint or recipe for making an organism is a falsehood that many biologists have stated, for ideological reasons (because such a claim is convenient for advancing Darwinist dogma).  At the post here you can read the statements of more than twenty biology experts who state that DNA is neither a blueprint nor a recipe nor a program for building organisms.  DNA not have anything like a specification for building organisms, and does not have any anatomical information. Even if DNA had such information, it would not explain morphogenesis (the progression from a speck-sized human egg to a full-grown adult body), simply because blueprints don't build things. Blueprints are things read by intelligent agents such as construction workers, who use the blueprints to build complex things. There is nothing in the human body below the neck capable of reading instructions for building a human body if they happened to exist in DNA (instructions that would be vastly more complex than construction blueprints for building a house or an office tower). 

As for the claim that genes specify social behavior, it is even more nonsensical than the claim that genes specify how to build organisms. Consisting only of a nucleotide sequence specifying a sequence of amino acids, a gene can no more specify social behavior than a mouse can specify a plan for interstellar travel.  To try to back up his claims, Wilson appealed to a controversial doctrine of group selection, which many other evolutionists such as Dawkins and Pinker denounced as rubbish.  The bitter feud over whether group selection exists is a civil war within Darwinism, one that is rarely mentioned to the general public so that the idea of a unified front can be presented. 

In a recent interview,  probably his last, Wilson (who recently died)  spoke very falsely about the success level of his theory of sociobiology. He states, "I think sociobiology is now well-accepted." We can do some preprint server queries to show how untrue this claim is. Searching on the main biology preprint server for biology paper titles using the word "sociobiology," I find zero matches. Conversely, a search for papers with "synaptic plasticity" in their title finds 131  matches. Searching on the main biology preprint server for biology paper titles using the word "sociobiology" in their abstracts, I find only 3 matches. Conversely, a search for papers with "synaptic plasticity" in their abstracts or titles finds 633 matches.

Doing the same searches on the main physics preprint server (which includes quantitative biology papers),  a search for papers using the term "sociobiology" gives zero matches, but a search for papers using the term "synaptic plasticity" finds 73 matches. A search on the same server for papers using "sociobiology" in their abstracts returns only 4 matches. Conversely, a search for papers with "synaptic plasticity" in their abstracts finds 251 matches.

So the sociobiology theory of Wilson was clearly a flop, and when Wilson claimed in the recent interview that his sociobiology theory is "well-accepted," he was making a bogus claim. But in a strange example of boot-licking fawning, the Vox page with the interview of Wilson hails him as a "legendary figure," one "who's considered a modern Darwin." Of course, the interview is all softball questions, like 99% of interviews of scientists these days.  Nowadays when science journalists interview scientists, they act like North Korean journalists interviewing government officials. 

Sociobiology as presented by Wilson was bunk, because there is no "biological basis of all social behavior" and there is not even a biological basis for half or a third of social behavior. But there is an intersection of the social and the biological that is all too real: the fact that some of the most important claims of today's biologists are socially constructed claims. 

We may distinguish between two general types of claims: empirically mandated claims and socially constructed claims. An empirically mandated claim is one that is forced on us by observations.  An example of an empirically mandated claim is the claim that sharks exist.  We are forced to believe that because so many have reported seeing sharks. 

A socially constructed claim, on the other hand, is one that people were never forced to make by observations, but a claim that people started to make largely because making the claim had benefits for one or more social groups, and a claim that people continued to make largely because of factors such as social contagion, the influence power of long-standing social organizations,  and group conformity pressure.  Modern biology is dominated by two socially constructed claims: the Darwinist claim that all species arose because of accidental biological effects,  and the claim that all of the main mental phenomena are produced by the brain. 

It is rather easy to make a crude sketch of the social construction of such ideas. There appeared an overconfident authority (Darwin) who did not even understand a hundredth of the incredibly complex organization  of human bodies (not yet discovered in his time);  and he taught a "this explains it all" theory so simple it can be written on the back of a postcard. Such a person was put on a pedestal, just as a hundred previous overconfident thinkers were put on pedestals by social communities that wanted a nice, simple explanation.  There was a group of people (atheists) yearning for some explanatory story that would allow them to avoid believing in anything higher than themselves, and these people jumped eagerly to embrace a modern day creation myth purporting to explain biological origins as accidental occurrences.  Claiming to understand origins mysteries a thousand miles over their little heads, professors yearning to portray themselves as  Grand Lords of Explanation jumped on this bandwagon of social contagion, starting to claim they understood the great mystery of biological origins, just as a thousand previous priests or preachers or visionaries or doctrinaires had portrayed  themselves as Grand Lords of Explanation with some glorious special insight. Millions started to believe the nice simple claims that humans arose merely because of random mutations, and that all mental phenomena come from the brain and that memories are stored in brains, largely because people like nice simple explanations, and people like to look up reverently to authorities (whether priests, presidents or professors) who have been put on pedestals and who claim to have simple answers to long-standing mysteries.  In an effect that is sometimes called "compliance," very many with no natural inclination to believe such ideas reluctantly started to endorse them,  to "fit in" and because they were afraid of being labeled as nonconformists.  Such people were like those in the 1950's who hated to dress up with neckties and put on hats before departing to go to their office jobs, but who did so anyway every weekday because of the power of social conformity effects.  Back in the 1950's almost all men would wear ties and hats when going to office jobs, so everyone thought, "I've got to dress like everyone else is dressing."  And nowadays people parrot very dubious and unproven dogmas of biology, thinking, "I've got to explain like the others are explaining."

If Wilson had been a wise man, after spending so much time studying very complex purposeful behavior in ants and honeybees, he would have concluded that such very complex purposeful behavior could not have come from their very tiny brains, and he might have counted this as a reason for thinking that minds do not come from brains (many such reasons exist).  Instead he unwisely  concluded that the behavior of such insects must be caused by genes, things that merely specify low-level chemical information, and cannot specify complex purposeful behavior.