Volume 22, Number 13 · August 7, 1975
Mindless Societies
By C.H. Waddington
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
by Edward O. Wilson
Harvard University Press, 697 pp., $20.00
Biogenetic Structuralism
by Charles D. Laughlin Jr., by Eugene G. d'Aquili
Columbia University Press, 211 pp., $10.00
Since the discovery of the nature and mode of operation of the basic units of heredity, biologists in search of major new fields to conquer have increasingly turned their attention to what has conventionally been referred to as behavior, mentality, and society. Three of the most important students of animal behavior, Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Niko Tinbergen, who recently shared a Nobel Prize, have all recently published books about their work; but the most sustained attempt to synthesize the whole of our present-day knowledge is undoubtedly that of Professor Edward O. Wilson of Harvard. His book is a formidable work. If I had to find a single word to describe my feelings when I found on my desk this offering from the NYR—no fewer than 392 broad-columned galley proofs, with a promise of more to come, containing glossary, bibliography, and index, plus, as a small side dish, a work of a mere 200 pages of sophisticated neurobiology—I think the best I could do would be 'dudgeon'—not high dudgeon, but certainly low dudgeon.
Review, 3743 words
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