Abstract
The molecular revolution, triggered by the elucidation of the chemical structure of DNA and RNA a half century ago, has permeated virtually all of biology and made significant inroads in disciplines far beyond biology’s traditional borders. Indeed, E.O. Wilson (1998) has called for “consilience” between all avenues of systematic and rational contemplation of the organic world and all phenomena associated with human beings. In that work, Wilson quickly reveals his belief that a unified scholarly approach to the study of all aspects of human behavior involves not so much an innocent and unweighted “jumping together” of disciplines as disparate as biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history and economics (to say nothing of the rest of the “humanities”), as it does describing the traditional subject matter of these latter disciplines in the peculiar (and narrowly construed) terms of the first: a gene-centered version of evolutionary biology. Wilson, it seems fair to say, sees it as an eminently plausible and realistic goal that complexities of human behavior can for the most part be reduced to the relatively much simpler terms of (his version of) evolutionary biology. In other words, evolutionary biology wants to eat everyone else’s lunch — and claims it has the power to do so.
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Eldredge, N. (2003). Human Triangles. In: Scher, S.J., Rauscher, F. (eds) Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0267-8_5
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