The sociobiologists.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: The Quadrant debate over sociobiology is becoming a bit like the Iraq War. I am reluctant to prolong the business, but feel that I ought to respond briefly to James Guest (October 2007). First, though, I need to thank him for giving my most recent book, A Loose Canon, a free plug--a very un-Darwinian act.

Our differences are, I think, due entirely to our respective backgrounds. Mr Guest is a legal man. In this capacity he is (quite properly) paid to give opinions. In my former capacity as a biologist, I was paid to collect data and report as to what I found from that data. My objection to the sociobiologists is that they publish opinions as though they were reporting scientific facts. They do not test their hypotheses by proper scientific means (as Mr Guest suggests in his last paragraph) because their hypotheses are non-testable. But Mr Guest prefers to attack me for being a Christian and therefore, by his definition, an obscurantist who probably believes that Noah got a pair of everything aboard the Ark (I have often wondered about the termites).

As I said in my essay, I have absolutely no problem with the scientific method and with evolutionary biology. It provides a very good explanation for most biological phenomena. Sociobiology does not, however, provide a very good scientific explanation for things like human free will and many aspects of human cultural activity. That was the main thrust of my argument in the Quadrant essay.

I want Mr Guest to imagine he is presiding over a case of assault. The defendant explains: "It wasn't my fault yer honner: it was me hormones that made me do it." Mr Guest would not be impressed because the concept of free will is crucial to the operation of the law. Now, I want him to explain to me how anyone can derive a testable theory of human free will from the known facts of biology/animal behaviour and the accepted tenets of evolutionary theory. And I will not accept the use of the term "cultural evolution" since this latter concept still requires a biological basis.

When he does that, he will have converted me to his views. If free will can be explained in this way, it ceases to be free will. Until then, I would advise him to stick to legal matters where opinions are adequate (and the pay is much better). I think if I were a legal man I would invoke that time-honoured legal injunction de minimis non curat lex, and steer clear of sociobiology. Huxley may have been Darwin's Bulldog but Mr Guest, I fear, is better characterised as Dawkins' Chihuahua.

Finally, if Mr Guest feels the need to finish me off with a final volley, can we agree on a new battlefield? I suggest Zeitschrift fur Parasitenkunde. I published there decades ago and can recommend it as a first-class scientific journal.

B.J. Coman,