ANT331H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Human Sexual Activity, E. O. Wilson, Social Darwinism
Document Summary
Many unanswered questions about evolution of human sexual interest and behaviour. Variety of different scholarly approaches helpful in addressing why behaviours may be adaptive. Term coined in 1975 by eo wilson. Earlier behaviour researchers focused on instinct and physiological causes of behaviour. Asked how a behaviour is the way it is. Asks why a behaviour is the way it is. What about the behavior may allow it to be favored in terms of natural selection? (i. e. functional significance of a behaviour) Wilson saw humans as just another animal species to which sociobiology could be applied. It is one thing to say that guppy mating behaviour can be predicted based on sexual selection theory, but another to say that human behaviour is. Application to humans made sociobiology seem sexist, social darwinist, and dangerous. Evolutionary theory had been put to evil uses in the past (eugenics, social darwinism) and sociobiology seemed similar.
