ABSTRACT
Most of the agitation over and resentment against sociobiology is triggered by the conviction that the biological explanation of human behavior, and thus of cultural facts, is, at best, a category mistake and, at worst, represents the ideological sin of “biologizing.” In fact, the emotional intensity of the debate can only be explained by strong value commitments apparently underlying the positions taken. The debate over sociobiology and, more generally, the legitimate or illegitimate use of biological categories in social science discourse is evidently as much a political as a scientific one.
