Table of Contents

* Part I. Social Evolution *1. The Morality of the Gene *2. Elementary Concepts of Sociobiology *3. The Prime Movers of Social Evolution *4. The Relevant Principles of Population Biology *5. Group Selection and Altruism *6. Group Size, Reproduction, and Time-Energy Budgets * Part II. Social Mechanisms *7. The Development and Modification of Social Behavior *8. Communication: Basic Principles *9. Communication: Functions and Complex Systems *10. Communication: Origins and Evolution *11. Aggression *12. Social Spacing, Including Territory *13. Dominance Systems *14. Roles and Castes *15. Sex and Society *16. Paternal Care *17. Social Symbioses * Part III. The Social Species *18. The Four Pinnacles of Social Evolution *19. The Colonial Microorganisms and Invertebrates *20. The Social Insects *21. The Cold-Blooded Vertebrates *22. The Birds *23. Evolutionary Trends within the Mammals *24. The Ungulates and Elephants *25. The Carnivores *26. The Nonhuman Primates *27. Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology * Glossary * Bibliography * Index

About the Author

Edward O. Wilson was Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In addition to two Pulitzer Prizes (one of which he shares with Bert Hölldobler), Wilson has won many scientific awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Reviews

It is impossible to leave Wilson’s book without having one’s sense of life permanently and dramatically widened.
*The Atlantic*

Rarely has the world been provided with such a splendid stepping stone for an exciting future of a new science.
*Scientific American*

This book enthralls and enchants… If you have this book… you can begin getting your mind ready for the illuminations about human society.
*Harper’s*

Sociobiology is an excellent book, full of extraordinary insights, and replete with the beauty and poetry of the animal kingdom.
*Times Literary Supplement*

Its contents do indeed provide a new synthesis, of wide perspective and great authority… Wilson’s plain uncluttered prose is a treat to read, his logic is rigorous, his arguments are lucid.
*Nature*

Sociobiology explores the possibility that animal social behaviour—group living, kinship, attraction and mating, reciprocity and sharing, cooperation, conflict, and cheating, to name just the most familiar—has a genetic basis and can be shaped by natural selection: genes can be shaped by natural selection: genes can code for social behaviours in the same way that they code for body parts such as hands, hooves, eyes, antlers and ears. But, in an audacious final chapter, Wilson extended the analysis to humans: biology had grabbed our kinship, cooperation, mate preferences and the rest. Some branded Wilson and his ideas fascist, others as racist or guilty of genetic determinism. They are none of these things and, two Pulitzer Prizes later, Wilson has been vindicated… Wilson’s Sociobiology laid the foundations for a lifetime of meditations.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*

A towering theoretical achievement of exceptional elegance… Like most great books, Sociobiology is unpedantic, lucid, and eminently accessible.
*Contemporary Sociology*

Sociobiology, a new concept, is one with extraordinary potential value for understanding and explaining human behavior.
*Practical Psychology*

This book will stand as a landmark in the comparative study of social behavior.
*Quarterly Review of Biology*

It’s been 25 years since E. O. Wilson wrote Sociobiology, naming a new science and starting it off with a bang—and a firestorm of protest. ‘Nurture!’ and ‘Nature!’ came the cries from every corner of the academic world, as the book became a causus belli for sociologists, feminists, human geneticists, and psychologists.
*Amazon.com*