Strong Planks, Weak Platform

Extract

Mary Maxwell set out to accomplish three things with this book: to “demonstrate the wide influence sociobiology has had on other academic disciplines,” “to show that the majority of developments in human sociobiology have in fact taken place in various disciplines outside of biology,” and “to introduce the major principles of sociobiology” (pp. 1-2, reiterated p. 9). To do this, she enlisted a set of expert sociobiologists who work in a variety of academic areas and asked each of them to contribute a chapter demonstrating the impact ofsociobiology in their field. Despite the expert help and the fact that the overall quality of each contribution is excellent, Maxwell has failed to achieve any of her three goals.