Notes
- 1. Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 3.
- . Ibid., p. 192 and chap. 8 passim.
- . Donald T.Campbell, “On the Conflicts between Biological and Social Evolution and between Psychology and Moral Tradition,” Zygon 11 (September 1976): 167–208.
- . In my review essay on Wilson's book, Religious Studies Review 6 (April 1980): 99–104.
- . Wilson, p. 176.
- . The situation is trickier if the independent grounds consist simply in good evidence for the belief in question. When someone holds a belief on the basis of adequate evidence, is his believing subject to sociobiological explanation? Could there be a sociobiological explanation of why the accepted canons of evidence and inference are what they are? If so, would the explanation discredit them? Why not, if the corresponding explanation of religious beliefs discredits them? These notoriously thorny questions cannot be pursued here. In practice it seems that when someone's belief or behavior is seen to be rational in either of the senses distinguished above (next paragraph), we usually regard it as thereby explained and seek causal explanations only for irrational or nonrational behavior and beliefs. Intuitively this procedure seems reasonable enough; but I know of no well‐worked‐out rationale for it.
- . This bare outline of Wilson's theory is based mainly on chap. 8 of On Human Nature, though it draws also on other parts of the book. It is taken, with minor modifications, from my review (n. 4 above), as is much of the discussion of proselytization.
- . However, see Michael J. Wade, “A Critical Review of the Models of Group Selection,” Quarterly Review of Biology 53 (1978): 101–14. Wade argues that the mathematical models which have led most theorists to conclude that true group selection could occur only in very unusual circumstances are based on simplifying assumptions which are inherently likely to lead to an underestimate of the role of group selection and which should be modified in view of some experimental results of Wade's. See also John Cassidy, “Philosophical Aspects of the Group Selection Controversy,” Philosophy if Science 45 (1978): 575–94 (and literature there cited).
- . Wilson, pp. 153, 158–59. Very roughly the idea behind the kin selection theory is that since I share half my genes with my sister, risking my life for her is a good bet for my genes if her reproductive prospects are enhanced by more than double the degree of my risk.
- . John B. Noss, Man's Religions (New York: Macmillan Co., 1969), p. 196.
- . Lectures by Prof. Norvin Hein of Yale University. It is also worth noting of course that in many traditions there are no restrictions as to when one should undertake the quest for enlightenment.
- . Jerald C. Brauer, Protestantism in America (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), pp. 51–53.