ABSTRACT
The science that fuelled Wilson's sociobiological speculations is only some fifty years old: just as Spencer, Comte, and other nineteenth-century social theorists were too quick off the mark in their adoption of nineteenth-century natural evolutionary theory, and unwisely dogmatic in their analyses and pronouncements, so too it may be that today's theorists should wait a while before trying once again to found social theory upon fast-changing contemporary genetic science. For more than 50 years scientists have operated under a set of seemingly incontrovertible assumptions about genes, gene expression, and the consequences thereof. Some genes encode more than one protein; others do not encode protein at all. These findings help refine evolutionary theory by explaining an explosion of diversity from relatively little starting material. Notwithstanding their other myriad disagreements and spats, all evolutionary theorists recognize the significance of the environment for the understanding of how organisms grow and behave.
