Nature and Nation: Sociobiology and the Emergence of Feminist Science Critique in the Postwar United States

Abstract

This dissertation expands and explores the archive of the 1970s-1980s “sociobiology debate” to redefine its political stakes, that far exceed academic impropriety and the emotions of two tenured Harvard professors, namely Edward O. Wilson and Richard C. Lewontin. It is a mistake to assume, this dissertation contends, that the sociobiology debate was merely an egomaniacal contest between two Ivy League personalities when in fact Wilson’s theories of human nature, that attracted opposition among political activists in the U.S. and abroad, were of consequence to the marginalization of women in the American workforce, the backlash against civil rights in the U.S. North, and the cultural power of the Left in Western higher education. An expanded archive reveals that this infamous scientific controversy was not only a significant iteration of the nature-nurture debate after the Second World War but also a conflict between Wilson and the radical science movement in the U.S. and elsewhere, whose Cold War valence cannot be ignored. We should, this dissertation suggests, understand the sociobiology debate as the story of the anticommunist repression – and subsequent deradicalization – of the radical science movement, that aimed to redirect science in the service of social benefit, during the Cold War. My study focuses on the American radical science movement in particular, and among sociobiology’s broad coalition of critics, I examine Science for the People (SftP), science feminists, and the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR). My work intervenes not only in the history of biology but also in the history of radical science. This dissertation makes the case that the archive of U.S. biology should include its suppression of science critique, and that the archive of radical science should, similarly, include its history of anticommunist repression. Ultimately, I pose the provocation that the real casualty of the sociobiology debate was not E.O. Wilson’s scientific reputation but the second wave of the radical science movement in the United States. Reckoning with this recent history, I conclude, is imperative to today’s efforts to correct the past wrongs of science, and reorient its course towards democracy and justice.