The debate about determinism and capacity in human behaviour is extremely ancient, and we have looked briefly at some examples of different ways around the world in which the debate was conducted. Genetic determinism introduces its own arguments, but Wilson was well aware that the debate is not a new one. Introducing Caplan’s The Sociobiology Debate, Wilson wrote (p.xi):

But in that case it would be both wise and illuminating to understand what that debate was, and why and how the mechanistic ambition derived from Newton’s laws failed. For it is the failure of ‘the mechanistic ambition’ that has opened the way to a new understanding of the balance that has to be found between causes and constraints.

There is obviously no space to review the whole, or even a small part, of that debate. But we can at least glimpse what was fundamentally at issue by taking a particular metaphor that once gave focus to the debate.

That may seem at first sight a rather strange way to proceed, but there is a reason for it.