Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The study of the biological determinants of social behavior, based on the theory that such behavior is often genetically transmitted and subject to evolutionary processes.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
science that applies the principles ofevolutionary biology to the study ofsocial behaviour in bothhumans andanimals
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the branch of biology that conducts comparative studies of the social organization of animals (including human beings) with regard to its evolutionary history
Etymologies
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Examples
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He even coined the term sociobiology to describe the field that he was opening up—namely the study of the social behavior of animals and humans and how this is related to genetics, early experience, and the survival of species.
Born to Bark Stanley Coren 2010
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With my evident interest in sociobiology, this was too good a parallel to pass up, so I figured I'd try to mash together the cyberpunks with the PUAs and see what came out the other end, while addressing some interesting things I noted in Strauss's text.
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Because of the universals I see, I'm much more interested in sociobiology, though -- the sense that evolution has formed our minds and thereby, in deep and powerful ways, constrained the types and shapes possible in human societies.
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* Yes, I know that John Paul Scott was likely the first to use the term sociobiology, but it was Wilson who brought the field into its own (and took so much flack early on).
Howard Hughes and the Hole in the Ceiling greygirlbeast 2010
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* Yes, I know that John Paul Scott was likely the first to use the term sociobiology, but it was Wilson who brought the field into its own (and took so much flack early on).
Howard Hughes and the Hole in the Ceiling greygirlbeast 2010
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Driven by what he called the “amphetamine of ambition,” he resolved to write a book on a discipline that he decided to dub sociobiology.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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The latest deadweight dragging us closer to phrenology is "evolutionary psychology," or the science formerly known as sociobiology, which studies the evolutionary roots of human behavior.
Just-so stories from evolutionary psychology: Why kids don’t eat their vegetables Denyse O 2005
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To SOME people, few but vocal, Edward O. Wilson is a bugbear, infamous as the leading enunciator of a branch of science called sociobiology.
The Song of The Dodo David Quammen 2004
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To SOME people, few but vocal, Edward O. Wilson is a bugbear, infamous as the leading enunciator of a branch of science called sociobiology.
The Song of The Dodo David Quammen 2004
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The latest technologies like fMRI get misused in the service of biological reductionism and neo-eugenics (euphemistically called sociobiology and evolutionary psychology).
Boing Boing 2010
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