Introduction

Beginning in the 1960s, a number of leading scientists in the areas of molecular biology, ethology, and sociobiology have renewed the attempt to biologize social theory by articulating what they view as the profound implications of their scientific work. The social teachings of contemporary biology, like the social Darwinism and eugenics that preceded them, are no monopoly of capitalism. Biological arguments have been used to support a variety of economic and political positions. In addition to making the historical error of equating biological arguments with conservative politics, such sociological explanations overlook the radical and critical elements in contemporary social-biological writings. The influence of seemingly extrascientific factors on the development and interpretation of Darwinism is also quite apparent. In the preprofessional state of nineteenth-century natural history, as the historian of science Robert Young suggests, scientific, social, philosophical, and theological issues were intermingled to form a common context in which to explore the question of man's place in nature.