“In the theatre,” Giuseppe Verdi once explained, “long is synonymous with boring. And boring is the worst of all styles.” Those who read scholarly journals must be more patient than opera audiences, and this surely must be true of those who have just read my long article and the nine commentaries. I will not test the limits of that patience, however, by responding at length to all the comments. I am grateful to all the commentators for their instructive remarks, which I will be pondering for a long time. But now I can only answer briefly some of the most prominent objections.

Corning and Hines' assertions at the beginning of their article are correct. The political development literature is in “disarray.” There is dissensus on definitions and measures. The term ‘political evolution’ is seldom used in any technical or precise sense. Political scientists are mostly “unaware of the burgeoning literature… on the causal dynamics underlying the evolution of society in general and of politics and the state in particular,” and their “knowledge of pre-modern politics” does tend to be “sketchy.” The time is “ripe” (as always?) for “fresh approaches.” The introduction or reintroduction of “an evolutionary perspective” could be, depending on how it is defined, a “radical departure” from dominant frames of reference in political science.

I strongly agree with what I take to be Arnhart's basic claims: that Aristotle's teleological biology is plausible in the light of what we now think about good scientific practice, and that it provides a kind of basis or vocabulary for moral and practical deliberation that is lacking in nonteleological or reductionist biology. Arnhart's defense of these claims is important both because he suggests a more expansive notion of what counts as biological science and because he in effect challenges Macintyre's (1981) claim that Aristotle's biology is “metaphysical” and so cannot serve as a basis for theorizing about moral and political matters. Arnhart makes his case well, and I was especially instructed by his discussion of Sacks' work as an example of a teleological vocabulary applied to moral and psychiatric questions.

One of the gender differences reported here, women's commitment to particular political figures and men's sensitivity to competitive situations, has my particular interest inasmuch as it appears to match behavioral sex differences in chimpanzees. While the author is aware of this similarity, I intend to explore it further, in the meantime correcting point by point a misleading dichotomy underlying much of the author's discussion. Females are said to emphasize social bonding and positive emotions, seeking political solutions based on informal agreement, whereas males are considered to be more confrontational and dominance-oriented. Yet, aggressive and cohesive tendencies are not as antithetical as they appear, and less sex-linked than suggested. In fact, one could argue that human males owe their success in the political arena to their ability to combine both tendencies.

Curriculum change in colleges and universities depends in some situations on issues other than the substance or content of the proposed changes.

If introduction of courses such as those which incorporate the literature of biopolitics take the interdisciplinary form, the innovator must develop appropriate political strategies and tactics. The particular politics so developed must identify critical environmental constraints, including departmental jurisdiction, the prevailing reward structure within the institution, and relative importance of the formal and informal governance procedures.

Most critical in certain relatively small and not particularly “bureaucratized” institutions are the attitude of the institution's president toward academic innovation and the degree of threat posed by the new course to the traditional turf of relevant departments. If presidential and vice presidential support for academic innovation are widely perceived and if departmental concerns are satisfied, much latitude for the persistent academic politician exists.

It is entirely possible that a politics which understands and accepts the institution's formal and informal governance procedures is more critical than the content of proposed courses even when the course content is biopolitics.

Corning and Hines make a useful contribution to the study of politics by distinguishing sharply between “political development” and “political evolution.” Their emphasis on the multidisciplinary dimensions of real life changes as they occur (and have occurred) throughout the world is also needed. We must, assuredly, go beyond political science, both to the other social sciences (including economics) and also, notably, to the life sciences.

Robin and Markle's “Let No One Split Asunder: Controversy in Human Genetic Engineering” is a notable contribution to the sociology of science and a clarification of some important social and political issues in the current controversy around the new recombinant DNA technologies. Their four-fold taxonomy of levels of inquiry and analysis is a theoretical advance. It is also a device for illuminating, decoding, deciphering, and finally for bettering our understanding of what happened structurally in the Cline case. Much of the contemporary work in the sociology of science touches on a few, or even several of these dimensions, but because the analytic categories are frequently (if inadvertently) run together, one is often burdened with a confusing vault between levels. (Few authors make the analytic distinctions of different levels as do Robin and Markle, so it is hardly surprising that they would “run them together.”)

Investigational, conceptual, and interventional advances in the neurosciences strain consensus in research ethics, clinical ethics, legal ethics, and jurisprudence and demand innovative adaptation in public policy. I review these advances, ask how they might change a range of policies, and conclude that their implications — particularly relating to aggression — are likely to have been underestimated.

“Ethical and Value Choices in the Selection of National Agricultural Research Goals” is a research project funded under an NSFJNEH grant. It involves bringing together a team of twelve nationally known experts to try to build a broadened base from which to evaluate agriculture and agricultural research. The team will meet twice in Washington, D.C., the first time to work out the full range of problems and interrelationships to be addressed and the second time to hear the papers presented by each of the team members. The meetings in Washington will be hosted by the General Accounting Office and will include various agency representatives and analysts, Congressional staff members, and representatives of interested groups. After being reviewed, the papers will be revised by the authors and edited into a book. The editing will be done by Kenneth A. Dahlberg, Western Michigan University, who is the principal investigator for the project.