ABSTRACT
This chapter provides description of the various types of relationships between animals, insects, etc. — “altruism,” mutual help, “territorial aggression,” conflicts between parents and their offspring, sexual conflicts— and draws the conclusion that all these relationships have obvious analogies in human conduct. Sociology is in effect being replaced by biology under the guise of convergence. In the 1860s the German philosopher and sociologist F. A. Lange advocated the biological interpretation of social phenomena. This basic type of interaction between the biological and the social has been defined by Karl Marx as follows: while changing external nature in the process of labour, man changes his own nature. The biological and the social, notwithstanding their interdependence, are in many ways different spheres of being, each having specific laws. The human organism is born, takes shape and develops in accordance with socially mediated laws of biology.
