Tag - biological determinism

Textbook Sexism: Sexism in College Biology

Among almost 207,500 science and engineering Ph.D.s in this country, 93.4 percent are white and 92.1 percent are male. In the biological sciences, women hold approximately 11 percent of the doctorates. This has a profound effect on science and on what we perceive as the truth about ourselves as male or female human...

Is there a Gay Gene? Does it Matter?

As most readers of Science for the People are aware, speculations about the evolutionary and genetic bases of human behavior have stirred controversy since the publication of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975.

A Reading List on Biological Determinism

1. The Rise of Social Darwinism

Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. 

Zmarzlik, "Social Darwinism in Germany, Seen as an Historical Problem," Chap. 10 in Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution, (ed.) H. Holborn, Vintage Books; 1973, pp. 435-474.

The XYY Controversy (Continued)

In late 1973, people in the Boston area who heard about our group began to give us some details about a study being conducted at the Boston Hospital for Women. In this study the researchers were screening all newborn males for the XYY karyotype and then following the XYY children to detect any “psychopathology” =...

Biological Determinism as an Ideological Weapon

The struggle between those who possess social power and those who do not, between "freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed" is a war fought with many and varied weapons. Of highest importance are ideas, weapons in an ideological warfare by...

Teaching Science for Humane Survival: Basic Skills and More

Science for Humane Survival is in its eighth consecutive year at the University of Massachusetts' Boston Campus. Controversial from the start, it continues to trigger allergic reactions from various sensitized faculty members whenever it comes up for consideration at one or another college governance meetings...

Sociobiology: The Controversy Continues

After over almost a year's reflection and review and after analyzing the reaction to the new wave of books this fall on sociobiology, particularly E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature, the Sociobiology Study group of the Boston Chapter of Science for the People has decided on a new course of action. We find there is a...

AAAS: Sociobiology on the Run

The very fact of the AAAS sponsoring this symposium on the "controversy" is an indication of the success we have had in making the claims of the sociobiologists controversial. What caught many of us in Science for the People by surprise at the AAAS meetings was the extent of the spreading negative reaction to...

Recombinant DNA: Does the Fault Lie Within Our Genes?

I have been doing research in bacterial genetics for the last 12 years at Harvard Medical School and I am a member of Science for the People. Over the last couple of years, we have been discussing in our laboratory how the recombinant DNA technique could make certain of our experiments much easier to do. However, as a...