Book Review: The Triumph Of Sociobiology By John Alcock

Sociobiology is the branch of biology that tries to explain social behaviour, including sexual behaviour, in evolutionary terms.  This book provides a great  introduction. But it also does two other things.

First, the book provides a robust defence of sociobiology from its main detractors, notably the political left and feminism. (Useful arguments to having your toolkit if you should run into Germaine Greer.)

Second, it provides a great rationale for why sociobiological ideas are relevant to human beings.

Unfortunately this is where the book falls down. Having set the reader up to understand human sociobiology (fascinating stuff as it involves human sexuality from strategies concerning infidelity through to rape), the book is painfully thin on these topic’s for my liking. However, it certainly whet my appetite for reading something more specifically human.

Sociobiology is something every thinking man should know something about, but it is controversial stuff.  My view is that any insight into male and female sexual strategies, and how they differ, is useful.  This does not abdicate morality to science, but it does help us to understand what our bodies were created to do, and what it is we need to come to terms with, if only to overcome.