ABSTRACT
Richard Alexander's argument in support of the liberating potential of a human sociobiology is hopelessly self-contradictory. Whereas the focus of Alexander's human sociobiology is on human society and culture as the product of conflicting individual reproductive interests, David Barash attempts to use human sociobiology to analyze virtually all contemporary social problems, from war and racism to alienation and coronary heart disease. The moral thrust of Barash's socio-biology is an attempt to reestablish harmony in Western psyches and Western societies by acknowledging human "animality" and the "ultimate goal" of inclusive fitness. Robert A. Wallace's The Genesis Factor is certainly the least scholarly and the most glibly written of the popularized accounts of sociobiology, and as such it demonstrates the shortcomings of this genre. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins attempts to elaborate the opening paragraphs of Wilson's Sociobiology into a compelling scientific myth of creation, evolutionary history, and human salvation—a myth that reverses that of Christianity.
