Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America

369 Pages·2021·5.223 MB·English

by  Nadine Weidman

KILLER INSTINCT

killer instinct
THE
POPU LAR SCIENCE
OF H UMAN NATURE
IN TWENTIETH-
CENTURY AMER I CA
Nadine Weidman
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts & London, England 2021
Copyright © 2021 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Cover texture: phongphans59222 / Getty Images
Cover design: Lisa Roberts
9780674269668 (EPUB)
9780674269651 (PDF)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Weidman, Nadine M., 1966– author.
Title: Killer instinct : the popu lar science of h uman nature in twentieth- century
Amer i ca / Nadine Weidman.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sac hus etts : Harvard University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010914 | ISBN 9780674983472 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Science in popu lar culture— United States— History—20th  century. |
Nature and nurture— United States— History—20th  century. | Aggressiveness. |
Sociobiology— United States— History—20th  century. | Human be hav ior.
Classification: LCC Q172.5.P65 W45 2021 | DDC 306.4 / 5— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov/ 2021010914
To the memory of my beloved husband
Joseph Andrew Ferrari, Jr.
September 25, 1965– December 15, 2020
d
and to our children
Leora and Andrew
this book is lovingly dedicated

CONTENTS
Introduction The Beast Within 1
1 How Ethology Became Popu lar 17
2 The Alchemy of Aggression 48
3 Weapons Created Man 75
4 The Biology of Love 106
5 The Aggression Debate 142
6 Sociobiology and Pop Ethology:
Contextualizing E. O. Wilson 186
7 Genes and Gender:
The Sociobiology Debate 223
Conclusion On the Shores of Lake Turkana 260
Notes 269
Acknowl edgments 341
Illustration Credits 345
Index 347
vii

INTRODUCTION
The Beast Within
An unprejudiced observer from another planet, looking upon man
as he is today, in his hand the atom bomb, the product of his
intelligence, in his heart the aggression drive inherited from his
anthropoid ancestors, which this same intelligence cannot
control, would not prophesy long life for the species.
— Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression
Inside every human being, beneath a thin veneer of civilization,
dwells a beast. If we want to understand ourselves, we must un-
derstand that beast. Millions of years ago, as our hominid ancestors
evolved into fully human physical form, our minds and be hav ior evolved
as well. But rather than becoming infinitely flexible, potentially adaptable
to any culture or circumstance, a tabula rasa or blank slate, human nature
took on a fixed form. A suite of psychological mechanisms and behav-
ioral tendencies became just as characteristic of our species as our upright
stature and expansive braincase. And just as our physical form resembles
those of our closest animal relations, we must look to animal be havi or to
understand our own.
This is the message of the popul ar sciences of h uman nature, a genre
that over the past several dec ades has become a familiar and ubiquitous
part of American culture. From sociobiology in the 1970s and 1980s to
evolutionary psy chol ogy since the 1990s, this genre has purported to ex-
plain why h umans are the way they are by referring to the hard core of
human nature, genet ically encoded and largely unchangeable.1 Socio-
biology emphasizes the gen et ic basis of social be havi ors shared among
animals and humans, while evolutionary psy chol ogy speaks of mental or
emotional traits or propensities. But both sciences lean on the claim that
1