Blackwell Reference Online

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Evolutionary sociology is the name given originally by Alexandra Maryanski to encompass two kinds of evolutionary perspectives in the field of sociology: the application of such Darwinian approaches as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to understand the biological foundations of human society, and the description and explanation of long-term social evolution. Sociobiology can be said to have “officially” begun with Edward O. Wilson's great work, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). Wilson's book contained 27 chapters, the first 26 of which concerned only non-human animals. The famous twenty-seventh chapter extended sociobiological thinking to humans in what was largely an attempt to map out how the social sciences could incorporate sociobiological thinking. Sociobiology was later renamed evolutionary psychology by such evolutionary thinkers as Martin Daly, Margo Wilson, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, three psychologists and an anthropologist. The first sociologists to take up the challenge posed by Wilson were Pierre van den Berghe (1975) and Joseph Lopreato (1984) , who concentrated on the role of biological predispositions interacting with social constraints. Both scholars situated these predispositions within the principle of inclusive fitness maximization, or the notion that much behavior can be understood as an organism's attempt to maximize its reproductive ... log in or subscribe to read full text