Evolution and culture - Essay Example

Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that explains behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviors. It is considered a branch of biology & sociology, and it draws from ethology, evolution, zoology, population genetics, archeology, and other disciplines. Sociobiology is closely related to the fields of Human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology, within the study of human societies. Sociobiology gave rise to many new and advanced theories, in the process of studying the behaviors, psychology and evolution changes in animals and other perspectives in human beings.

Some of the important theories and principles used and developed in sociobiology are Evolutionary psychology, Behavioral ecology, and Gene- culture co evolutionary theory. Sociobiological theory states that animal or human behavior cannot be satisfactorily explained entirely by cultural, environmental, ethnic, or individualistic factors alone. It states that in order to understand the behavior; it must be analyzed with some focus on its evolutionary origins, and with deep consideration for modern paradigms of sociology, psychology, anthropology and other human sciences.

To understand and study the different behaviors of different species of animal and human being, sociobiology applied the methods of different theories, which are particularly used for understanding human and animal behavior (Behavioral ecology animals and Humans). For understanding the psychology mental and psychological traits, such as language as adaptation, memory, and other senses, it gave rise to new theory Evolutionary psychology. Sociobiology applied the methods of behavioral ecology to the human species.

Human behavior were been treated as optimal solutions to adaptive problems, or as evolutionary stable strategies in game theoretic models of competition between organisms. Sociobiology has provided the strong Darwinian foundations, which have contributed to the development of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology did not seek to replace sociobiology; instead, it strengthened and expanded upon the strongest sociobiological theses, incorporating theses new and improved ideas into its infrastructure.

At the same time, it has also incorporated biological, physiological, and biochemical hypotheses, thus encompassing the hard-core sciences into the field of psychology. Sociobiology has given birth to a new and improved theory Evolutionary Psychology into the world of science. An example of sociobiology was the theory, which became known as kin selection, was to revolutionize our understanding of animal social behavior. In sociobiology, how kin selection could be used to explain altruism in primates, social carnivores, and birds, as well as in insects.

Another important sociobiological development was Evolutionary game theory. Sociobiology was first challenged on the basic of Gene-culture co evolutionary theory. Gene-culture co evolutionary theory is clearly an advance on sociobiology because it can explain more data, but it still faces two problems. First, it regards the modification of natural selection pressures in environment as an exclusively human ability. Second, gene culture co evolutionary theory did not initially refer ecological inheritance.

Gene culture co evolutionary theory is developed by the sociobiologist and evolutionary psychologist Edward O. Wilson, which states that to genetic evolution the human lineage, has added the parallel track of cultural evolution. Due the problems in Gene-culture co evolutionary theory implied in sociobiology for the research purpose, new theories, and advance changes in gene culture theory were made. For the study of the animal behavior, behavioral ecology was implied by the sociobiology, as it is the study of ecological and evolutionary basic for animal behavior.

The social behavior of animal is been studied by behavioral ecology, as behavioral ecology is related to evolution, it is the study of animal behavior with change to time. The study of behavior through sociobiology, gives rise to some other important theories.