Sociobiology and World Hypothesis

Hi Tom, I think it is problematic to speak of sociobiology as a single undifferentiated field. The following are my thoughts on the topic.
Sociobiology was in part born out of ethology. One of the founding fathers of modern ethology, Konrad Lorenz, was a physician and had especially been trained in comparative anatomy. He attempted to apply the principles of comparative anatomy to behavior. So this was quite a formistic stance. To this he added mechanistic principles, seemingly borrowed from Freud in my view. Most famous is his hydraulic model of instinct.
Step by step this comparative and formistic approach to behaviour and its evolution was superseded by an ecological approach that tried to investigate the functions of behavior experimentally. Context and specific purposes – rather the globally formulated function “for the good of the species”, which turned out to be untenable group selectionist – came into play.
Perhaps one might say that “classic” sociobiology is quite mechanistic and cognitivistic when you look at evolutionary psychology, an important descendant of sociobiology. In his masterpiece "Sociobiology" (which I very much admire) E.O. Wilson writes “Real theory is postulational-deductive” (p. 27) and he advocates model-building and testing seemingly in order to recognize how things really are.
However, there are other descendants as well. As far as I have read, human behavioural ecology and gene-culture theory taste more functional-contextualistic for me. See for example: MacDonald, K. B. (1989). The plasticity of human social organization and behavior: Contextual variables and proximal mechanisms. Ethology and Sociobiology, 10, 171-194.
John A. Johnson et al. investigated which worldviews are preferred by sociobiologists, behavior analysts, personologists, and developmentalists. Using a “world hypotheses scale” they found that sociobiologists and behavior analysts scored highest on mechanism, personologists on formism, and developmentalists on organicism and contextualism. (see “Personality as the Basis for Theoretical Predilections“, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1988, Vol. 55,824-835). However, there are to be expected wide differences between sociobiologists as they are among behavior analysts. (As a balanced account on different evolutionary perspectives on human behavior I can recommend Kevin N. Laland & Gillian R. Brown “Sense and nonsense” Oxford UP, 2002.)
Most interesting with regard to your question might be an article by the famous sociobiologist David P. Barash entitled “Evolutionary Existentialism, Sociobiology, and the Meaning of Life” (BioScience, 50, 2000, 1012-1017). He ends his essay with the following words:
“The prospect remains, however, that human beings - despite their biological baggage - retain enough freedom to fashion their own lives and their own future. "The greatest mystery," according to André Malraux, "is not that we have been flung at random among the profusion of the earth and the galaxy of the stars, but that in this prison we can fashion images of ourselves sufficiently powerful to deny our nothingness." Should anyone doubt the capacity of human beings to deny their nothingness and define themselves - if necessary, counter to their evolution-given tendencies - I would like to conclude with a thought experiment that is homey, homely, even scatalogical, but that should reassure everyone that Homo sapiens possesses abundant room for existential freedom.
Begin with this question: Why are human beings so difficult to toilet train, whereas dogs and cats - demonstrably less intelligent than people by virtually all other criteria - are housebroken so easily? Take evolution into account and the answer becomes obvious. Dogs and cats evolved in a two-dimensional world, in which it was highly adaptive for them to avoid fouling their dens. Human beings, as primates, evolved in trees such that the outcome of urination and defecation was not their concern (rather, it was potentially a problem for those poor unfortunates down below!). In fact, modern primates, to this day, are virtually impossible to house-break.
But does this mean that things are hopeless, that we are the helpless victims of this particular aspect of our human nature? Not at all. I would venture that everyone reading this manuscript is toilet-trained. So, despite the fact that it requires going against eons of evolutionary history and a deep-seated primate inclination (or disinclination), human beings are able - given enough training and patience - to act in accord with their enlightened self-interest.
For all its mammalian, evolutionary underpinnings, a primate that can be toilet-trained reveals a dramatic capacity for freedom, maybe even enough to satisfy the most ardent existentialist.”