Many of you know that there have been some dramatic theoretical changes in evolutionary biology during the past decade, and that sharp controversies have generated over whether or not, and how, they might be useful in our efforts to understand human behavior. It seems appropriate that these questions should be addressed at a meeting of philosophers of science.

Those of you who are aware of the controversies may agree that they have not always clarified the issues — at least not to a degree commensurate with the intensity of the feelings aroused. The word socioblology, for example, could have become simply a label for a new and broad interest in evolutionary approaches to social behavior. Instead, almost exactly like a predecessor, ethology, it has become associated with a concept of naive and intolerable determinism, and sometimes with only a few statements by one man about the genetic background of behavior.