TREADING SOFTLY

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Readers of your correspondence columns of Tuesday, February 3, curious about my reactions to E.O. Wilson's new Sociobiology, may find the following comments of interest.

My July 7, 1975 Newsweek column was intended to be a generally laudatory review--but with the warning that the subject is such a delicate one that writers and readers must take care in phrasing lest they be misunderstood or their findings be misused. Those who read the column realize that I contrasted the new doctrines of Social Darwinism with its emphasis on evolutionary altruism to the old version of the post-Spencer reactionaries, and posed questions about the new version.

Subsequent events seem to have vindicated both my praises and my final warning: "To survive in the jungle of intellectuals, the sociobiologist had best tread softly in the zones of race and sex." I should also have stressed that critics--myself and others less laudatory--are under a special obligation in this sensitive area to strive for objectivity and civility. Natural scientists are learning the hard way what social scientists have never been allowed to forget, that interests and ideologies have a force of their own, not necessarily conducive to the determination of scientific truth. Paul A. Samuelson   Institute Professor