Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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SOCIOBIOLOGY

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See also EVOLUTION; GENETIC DETERMINISM

Bibliography

Dennett, Daniel C. “The Tools for R and D: Skyhooks or

Cranes?” In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and

the Meanings of Life. New York: Touchstone, 1995.

HOLMES ROLSTON, III

SOCIOBIOLOGY

In the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin ar-

gued that the main mechanism of evolutionary

change is a process he called natural selection.

More organisms are born than can survive and re-

produce, bringing on a struggle for existence.

Given naturally occurring variation, there will be a

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differential reproduction—some reproduce, some

do not—akin to the artificial selection practiced by

animal and plant breeders, with the end result of

permanent change. In a drought, animals able to do

with less water are “fitter” than those that need to

drink more. Moreover, organisms will be adapted:

they will show the organic contrivances highlighted

by those natural theologians intent on showing that

there is a designing God. Examples include the

hand and the eye and such like. Darwin applied

this mechanism to many different fields of biology,

including paleontology, embryology, systematics,

and biogeography. Behavior was included in Dar-

win’s theory, for he saw that what an organism does

is as crucial in the struggle for existence as what an

organism is. There is little point in having the

physique of Tarzan if you have the mind of a monk.

The evolution of sociobiology

Darwin was particularly fascinated by certain social

behavior, especially that of ants, bees, and wasps

(hymenoptera), where an organism sacrifices itself

for the good of the group. It seems prima facie that

such behavior is at odds with the kinds of self-

centered acts that would lead to individual success

in the struggle for existence. Darwin understood

how the sterility of a worker ant, for example,

might be transmitted through fertile nest mem-

bers—the domestic world had shown how one can

select vicariously, as it were, for characteristics in

animals that will not themselves breed—but he

could not see how sterility itself would come into

being. Darwin was convinced that all selection

must be for the individual, not the group; social-

ity—worker sterility, in particular—was a major

challenge. Although Darwin concluded that one

can regard the colony (of ants and so forth) as a

kind of superorganism on which selection can op-

erate as a whole, he never really resolved the prob-

lem of sociality.

For a number of reasons, the study of the evo-

lution of social behavior lagged after Darwin. First,

the rise of the social sciences with their interests in

behavior discouraged biologists from addressing

the subject. Social scientists tended to experiment

on rats and mice, to generalize, and then to con-

clude that transpecific differences were irrelevant.

Social scientists also tended to work in artificial sit-

uations and so were generally not interested in nat-

ural behavior, and unable to recognize it when it

appeared. Second, in the first half of the twentieth

century, the racial doctrines of the Third Reich con-

vinced many that the study of social behavior from

a biological perspective would lead to claims

about the innate behaviors of humans, with conse-

quent belittling of the worth of those not in one’s

own group. Although some protested that such

fears should not tar all biological studies on be-

havior, the damage was done and remained for

many years after the Second World War. Most im-

portantly, no one really knew how to move theo-

retically beyond Darwin so that social scientists

could study social behavior while staying true to

the principles of natural selection. The social sci-

ences needed new approaches that eschewed

group selection, allowing evolutionists to dissect

nature and drag forth its secrets.

Kin selection. Breakthroughs came in the

1960s. A number of models were devised that al-

lowed scientists to study social behavior in ani-

mals, while staying true to the individualist or “self-

ish” nature of selection. Notable was the theory of

kin selection, devised by the English biologist

William Hamilton, who showed that close relatives

have a biological interest in helping each other be-

cause by doing so they indirectly support the suc-

cess of their own units of heredity, their own

genes. Hamilton applied this thinking to the ants,

bees, and wasps, pointing out that these animals

have a peculiar breeding system, where only fe-

males have fathers (males being born from unfer-

tilized eggs). This means that sisters are more

closely related to each other than normal. In the

usual case (e.g., humans), mothers and daughters

are 50 percent related, as are sisters. In the hy-

menopteran case, a female gets the same genetic

input as her sister from their shared father and then

50 percent input from their shared mother. Thus

sisters are 50 percent and one-half 50 percent

(75%) related, whereas mothers and daughters are

just 50 percent related. It is in a worker’s repro-

ductive interests to raise fertile sisters rather than

fertile daughters—an activity that is aided rather

than hindered by the worker’s own sterility. There

is no need to treat the colony as but one unit for

one can see individual interests being played out

in this, the most integrated and harmonious of so-

cial situation.

Reciprocal altruism. Other models were de-

vised, including one that Darwin himself sensed,

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even if he did not fully articulate it. Reciprocal al-

truism works on the principle that when an organ-

ism gives help, it is entitled to receive help when

needed. Reciprocal altruism can work even among

non-relatives, or—at the extreme—across species.

Certain fish are major predators, but they tolerate

other types of fish that swim directly into their

mouths and pick out harmful bacteria and fungi on

their gums. The predators practice dental hygiene

and the cleaners get a good meal because the

larger fish does not swallow the smaller fish in its

mouth. Everyone benefits.

Evolutionary equilibrium. Evolutionists turned

to game theory in cases where participants adopt

various strategies to succeed in the light of the fact

that other players (in biological terms, other mem-

bers of the species) are also trying to succeed. In

The Selfish Gene (1976), a provocative populariza-

tion of this theory, British biologist Richard

Dawkins showed how certain evolutionary situa-

tions achieve equilibrium, or reveal what he called

“Evolutionary Stable Strategies,” when no one

member of the group can achieve more than lim-

ited benefits, given the conflicting interests of the

group. To take one of Dawkins’s examples, con-

sider a group with two kinds of members. Some

members of the group are “hawks,” who in any

potential conflict situation are aggressive and will

fight if need be. Others in the group are “doves,”

who always run if a fight looms. One might as-

sume that the hawks would dominate and that se-

lection would produce a population without any

doves. But this is not so. A hawk’s encounter with

another hawk always leads to a fight, which may

end with one hawk injured or dead. Doves, how-

ever, never get beaten up because they run. So, on

average, there is a cost to being a hawk. But doves

cannot dominate either, because, on average, there

is a cost to being a dove. Hawks always win con-

frontations between a hawk and a dove. The birds

of the group therefore end up in a balanced if un-

comfortable midpoint, with neither hawks nor

doves able to increase their representation at the

expense of the other.

Armed with these theories, naturalists and ex-

perimentalists turned to the larger world to deter-

mine if they could understand the social behavior

not just of insects and fish, but of more complex

animals like birds and mammals. The widest range

of topics was covered. Notable was a study (led by

Cambridge biologist Tim Clutton Brock) of red

deer on an island off the coast of Scotland that

showed how male deers strive to capture harems

and will compete (or not) as it proves to be in

their interest, and how female deers, which seem

to be controlled by males, will in turn employ

tricks and strategies to improve their reproductive

options and results. A female wants her offspring,

particularly her sons, sired by a male who will pas

on his superior breeding qualities. Another study

(conducted by Cambridge biologist Nicholas

Davies) looked at the dunnocks (hedge sparrows),

a bird that has the widest of breeding patterns—

monogamy, polygyny (one male, several females),

polyandry (one female, several males), and some-

thing primly referred to as polyandryny (group

sex, with several males and several females). By

doing DNA fingerprinting on the birds and their

offspring, researchers could trace relationships,

demonstrating just how much behavior was con-

trolled by reproductive interests. This study re-

vealed that dunnocks do not raise chicks with

whom they have little reason to think they have

real blood ties. Moreover, a dominant male (an

“alpha”) will tend to spend more time chick rearing

and to have more offspring than a lesser male (a

“beta”). Another study in Holland (reported by

ethologist Franz de Waal) looked at relationships

within a troop of chimpanzees—how males

needed female help to dominate a situation, and

how different alliances would be formed according

to different interests. Two weaker males might pre-

fer to gang up to defeat a stronger male, rather

than simply acting individually.

Edward O. Wilson. Research went ahead with

speed and enthusiasm, and before long, the sci-

ence of the evolution of social behavior—now

called sociobiology—was ready to take its proper

place in the Darwinian family, along with paleon-

tology and the other subjects. But controversy

loomed. Darwin had wanted to apply his ideas to

humans, and in the The Descent of Man (1874) he

did just that, as did Darwinian scientists who came

later, in particular, Harvard entomologist Edward

O. Wilson. In a major overview of the field, Socio-

biology: The New Synthesis (1975), and later in a

work addressing the human species, On Human

Nature (1978 ),Wilson argued that nearly every as-

pect of human life and nature is a function of bi-

ology, or, more accurately, the genes as fashioned

by natural selection. Sexual differences, family

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structures, religion, warfare, language, and much

more, are the end result of natural selection work-

ing on the units of heredity. Even homosexuality

could be biologically caused, as gay and lesbian

members of the family aid close relatives, like ster-

ile mammalian workers at the nest. Moreover, ar-

gued Wilson, while humans may be able to

change some things, biology will be resistant and,

in many respects, people are locked into being

what they are. Utopian plans for change would be

counterproductive.

Early objections to sociobiology

As expected, there were many objections to the

new field of sociobiology. Social scientists became

tense because they felt that biologists were poach-

ing on their domain. Rather than accepting biology

as a complement or an aid to social science, they

saw it as a threat and feared sociology would van-

ish and sociobiology (social-group division) would

take its place. Feminists abhorred what they con-

sidered a direct attack on their ideology, which

held sexual differences and family structures to be

purely cultural rather than biological constructions.

Darwin was painted as the archetypical Victorian

male chauvinist, and sociobiology was seen as an

excuse for the status quo that oppresses women

and children. Marxists, and this included some em-

inent biologists, felt that a biological approach was

a travesty of the truth, because it pretended that

evolution and natural selection had accomplished

what was truly a function and result of economic

deprivation. Their ideological ancestor, Friedrich

Engels, had inveighed against a reductionist ap-

proach to understanding, and human sociobiology

was the worst of all possible offenders.

Interestingly, the one group that might have

been expected to explode—those members of the

Christian community interested seriously in sci-

ence—was far more receptive. Creationists, of

course, would have nothing to do with any evolu-

tionary science, and they fully enjoyed the contro-

versy that pitted evolutionist against evolutionist.

More moderate Christian thinkers reacted in a dif-

ferent way. Although they hardly welcomed

human sociobiology with unalloyed joy, they

could see that the new science was a serious ap-

proach to serious problems, and responded in this

spirit. Even Christians drawn to feminism and

Marxism realized that there was more to life than

simple matters of culture, tradition, and economics.

God, they argued, is not a social constructivist.

Later interpretations

By the dawn of the twenty-first century, much of

the dust had settled. There is certainly no question

that some of the early enthusiasts for sociobiology

let their imaginations outstrip the evidence, filling

in gaps with creative intelligence. But some of the

most interesting work has come from evolutionists

who have actually turned biology on its head.

Sarah Hardy, for instance, has argued that female

humans conceal ovulation, thereby ensuring that

males have to stay around and participate in child

rearing—if they do not, they cannot be sure of pa-

ternity. In other words, in good feminist fashion,

she argues that the evolutionary scales are bal-

anced, and may, if anything, be tipped in favor of

women. Others have argued that sociobiology un-

derlies the unity of the human community, thus

belying fears of racism. People can, of course, in-

terpret biology and form prejudices as they will,

but there is no reason for thinking that biology

supports or contains such prejudices.

In many other ways, human sociobiology tran-

scends the parody portrayed by the critics. Typical

of modern sociobiological research (often now

hidden under less flamboyant and provocative

names like human behavioral ecology or evolu-

tionary psychology) is a careful study of homicide

by the Canadian researchers Martin Daly and

Margo Wilson. They have shown that murder falls

into stable patterns, which lend themselves to a so-

ciobiological interpretation. For example, the

killing of children by parents (other than infanti-

cide, which follows its own rules) is almost always

perpetrated by step-fathers rather than biological

fathers. This is a pattern very much in line with

the rest of the animal world, where it is well-

documented that males moving in on a new fe-

male will attack her already-existing young, so that

their own new offspring get more attention. Para-

doxically, when Daly and Wilson began their

study, they could find no firm evidence against

which to test their hypotheses. Authorities thought

it prejudicial to reconstituted families to collect sta-

tistics on whether or not family violence involved

step-parents or biological parents. It was only

when Daly and Wilson insisted on the collection of

the data, that the patterns emerged.

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Implications for religion and philosophy

Sociobiology suggests much to the philosopher or

the theologian interested in the deeper questions

about human nature. Traditional approaches to

evolution and ethics—so-called social Darwin-

ism—argue that moral codes follow from the need

to cherish and promote the evolutionary process.

Thus, British philosopher Herbert Spencer en-

dorsed laissez-faire economics in the name of evo-

lution, seeing it as part of the struggle for exis-

tence in the human world. Just as in nature the

weak fall because they are inadequate, so in soci-

ety the weak fall because they are inadequate; this,

argued Spencer and his fellows, is nature’s way

and to try to prevent it is to lead to decay and de-

generation. Most sociobiologists avoid arguments

of this type. Following more sensitive thinkers, like

Darwin’s “bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley, socio-

biologists refuse to identify the “evolved” with the

“good.” They see that although evolution can pro-

duce the worthwhile, evolution can also produce

the absolutely horrible. Although Daly and Wilson

think that child killing may be biologically moti-

vated, they stress that it is not moral in any sense.

Their work indeed is intended to throw light on

the problem, so that people might change or con-

trol such behavior. Male lions and lemmings may

kill the young of other males, but this is no reason

for humans to do likewise.

There are, however, other ways to tackle issues

of morality, while still bringing sociobiology to

bear. First, one might argue, as many do, that hu-

mans are social animals in the extreme, and as such

need mechanisms to get on with other humans. If

humans did not have adaptations to protect against

disease—as native Tasmanians did not—the human

species would soon die out. The same is true of be-

havioral and motivational adaptations. By nature

people are selfish—that is a direct consequence of

the struggle for existence— but this selfishness, un-

tamed and unmodified, would lead to disaster in

social situations. People would quarrel and fight

nonstop and be unable to work together. So they

need special adaptations to overcome this counter-

productive consequence of natural selection. But

what could these adaptations be? Humans are too

complex simply to have social sentiments hard-

wired in, like ants. Apart from anything else, simple

hardwiring gives no room for reflection and re-

grouping when things go wrong or when facing

new or unexpected situtations. Humans need

something more subtle than the simple rules of so-

cial behavior followed by the hymenoptera. Here,

argue sociobiologists, is the place for a moral sense,

something that humans have innately (that is, put in

place by selection and backed by the genes) that al-

lows them to meet social demands and to work to-

gether with other humans. People have a sense of

moral obligation that they ought to help others (and

equally a sense of moral obligation that when they

are in need, others ought to help them). It is some-

thing that aids people in social situations, and at the

same time is obviously an instrument with suffi-

cient subtlety and flexibility to allow people to

adapt as situations and environments change. In

other words, biologists of human social behavior

argue that ethics has been put in place by human

biology to make people good cooperators. Ethics is

an adaptation.

The atheistic interpretation. What implications

does this discussion have for the foundations of

ethics (what philosophers call metaethics)? If ethics,

the human sense of right and wrong, is an adapta-

tion, is it thereby no more than a subjective senti-

ment, on a par with a liking for certain foods? The

answer depends on one’s theological commitments.

Atheists and skeptics will probably conclude that

there are no foundations, that ethics is simply an

epiphenomenon of the genes, with no more ulti-

mate meaning than any other adaptation like eyes

or teeth. However, the tendency toward ethical be-

havior is not simply a subjective sentiment like a

fondness for ice-cream. For a start, it has to be uni-

versally shared by other humans (except perhaps

psychopaths), otherwise it would not function.

Moreover, subjective emotion or not, it has to have

an illusion of objectivity—of a foundation—other-

wise it would simply collapse, as people decided to

cheat and look after themselves alone. A con-

science is essentially a part of the moral sense, even

if (especially if) it is just an adaptation like every-

thing else. But ultimately, the nonbeliever thinks

that there is nothing to ethics but a naturalistic ex-

planation of where it came from and why it has the

hold on people that it does.

The Christian interpretation. What if one is a

Christian or a member of any other theistic religion,

however? Can this rather bleak philosophy take on

a different, more hopeful and fulfilling hue? If one

is a believer, one can (and must) surely interpret

the situation as God’s way of instilling an ethical

sense in humankind. After all, the believer has to

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agree that God has instilled an ethical sense, and if

one is an evolutionist then surely the sociobiologi-

cal scenario is as plausible a scenario as any other.

In fact, the Christian—certainly the Christian who

takes seriously the teaching of Thomas Aquinas—

knows this already. Natural law is something im-

posed upon us by the way that God has created

humans. Human sexuality is intimately bound up

with the fact that (in the first place) there are two

sexes, and that to fulfill this sexuality people have

the various emotions and organs that they do.

Moral dictates follow from the nature of this cre-

ation. Promiscuity, for instance, is immoral because

it is a violation of the natural—that is, God-made

and God-ordained—bonds of erotic love that can

and should exist between two people exclusively.

For the theist who accepts sociobiology, ethics is

part of creation, and the emotions and reasons that

constitute it are very much part of the God-made

natural order. Hence, inasmuch as one’s moral

sense (and the awareness to which it leads) is

something natural, it is something to be cherished

and obeyed and respected by God’s creatures.

Sociobiology and original sin. But what about

original sin? No one who has lived through even

part of the past century can be insensitive to this

issue, and those who were wont to downplay its

significance in theology are now surely in the mi-

nority. How else does one—how else does the

Christian—explain the evils of national socialism

and all of the other vile movements of the past

hundred years? The idea that humans are in some

sense tainted—not wholly bad but with a dark

side to their natures—is pressing on the nonbe-

liever and obligatory for those who think that

Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God who died on

the Cross for the sins of humans. The traditional

position, that of Augustine of Hippo, is that the

sins of Adam and Eve are transmitted to us all

through sexual intercourse—people inherit their

faults. No evolutionist can take this literally—in-

deed, it is unlikely that Augustine, who was sensi-

tive to the development of knowledge and who

had full awareness of the need to interpret the

Bible allegorically, would now interpret the Adam

and Eve story literally. He too would feel a need

for revision.

A sociobiological approach shows a way of

updating the belief in original sin—a way that

takes modern science seriously and yet in no sense

denies or belittles the significance of such sin. So-

ciobiology starts with the fact that humans are des-

tined to be selfish animals—that is the way of nat-

ural selection. Group selection is no longer a

viable mechanism, and all must be interpreted in

the light of advantage to the individual. If people

were not selfish—if they did not take for our-

selves—then they would have become extinct long

ago. But at the same time, sociobiology stresses

that humans are social animals that need to get on

together. So humans evolved ethics. But humans

are not locked in blindly, like ants. They have

moral sentiments, and though they may not have

much choice about the moral sentiments—a fact

that no one, other than existentialists at their most

extreme, has ever denied—they can decide

whether or not to obey the sentiments, as it pleases

them. And sometimes it does please people, and

sometimes it does not. Sometimes people continue

in their selfish ways even though others would suf-

fer, and sometimes they listen to conscience and

do the right thing—sometimes indeed they do not

even have to listen to conscience before doing the

right thing. In other words, humans are an am-

bivalent mixture of good and ill—sometimes doing

the kind and charitable thing, and sometimes fail-

ing in their obligations and duties. And humans

are this way in their deepest nature, something

they inherit rather than create anew. And that

surely is precisely the Christian position on original

sin. People are tainted. They cannot escape this. It

is inherited as part of human nature. But humans

have the abilities to do the right thing, to act

against this side to their nature. Sometimes they

do, and sometimes—all too often—they do not.

Freedom and determinism. Finally, one must

address the question of freedom and determinism.

It is an absolutely crucial part of Christian, as well

as Jewish and Muslim, belief that people are made

in the image of God, and therefore have the free-

dom to choose between good and ill. God may

know what people will do, but God does not con-

strain them in what they will do. Each person’s

faults are his or her own responsibility. Can such a

conception of freedom be reconciled with human

sociobiology, a discipline that some critics com-

plain is committed to genetic determinism? Those

who dislike human sociobiology argue that socio-

biologists portray humans as marionettes on the

strings of the genes, with no more power of choos-

ing right or wrong than the puppets Punch and

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Judy have of living in domestic harmony. People

are as clockwork, set up and simply set to run. The

wife beater resorts to violence because he is male

and that is the way of men. The child whines be-

cause it is a child and that is the way of children.

The racist has genes for xenophobia and is no

more at fault that the person with Down syndrome

who cannot pass an intelligence test. Biology is

destiny, and that is the end to freedom.

A more thoughtful approach, however, shows

that Christian conceptions of freedom and sociobi-

ological conceptions of determinism are not nec-

essarily contradictory and can indeed be comple-

mentary. On the one hand, the Christian

recognizes that freedom does not mean stepping

outside of the laws of nature, for in that direction

lies randomness or madness. Augustine, again, saw

that true freedom means working according to

human nature. God is free and yet cannot do ill. It

is against God’s nature to do ill. Likewise, people

are free, but what they do is part of their nature.

That is why God knows what will happen even

though God does not control or will it. People are

free to kill their children and yet most could no

more do so than they could jump over the Atlantic

Ocean. They are free to refrain from boasting, and

yet could no more do so than they could climb

Mount Everest. Conversely, for all the talk about

determinism, the sociobiologist recognizes, in fact

insists on, a dimension of human freedom. Ants

are hardwired to do what they do. They have no

choice. But humans are not hardwired to do what

they do. They do have a choice; they must have a

choice if they are to function as the complex social

animals they have evolved into. Humans may be

part of the causal nexus, but they have a dimen-

sion of freedom denied to rocks or lower animals

and plants. If ants are like cheap rockets shot off

and then, once fired, beyond further control, hu-

mans are like expensive rockets with feed-back

mechanisms enabling them to respond to changes

in the target. In short, the Christian recognizes that

human freedom takes place within rules and re-

straints, and the sociobiologist recognizes that

human determinism is open to dimensions of

choice and alternative action. Why then should not

the Christian and the sociobiologist work together

to find a meeting point on these issues, harmony

rather than conflict? Far greater gaps exist between

Christians and their critics than between sociobiol-

ogists and their critics.

Conclusion

Other issues could be raised, and some are still far

from resolution. If evolutionary theory is true, then

presumably human minds—in line with everything

else biological—are part of gradual development

in time. Yet Christians have tended to see minds

(and souls) as a sharply demarcated phenome-

non—either humans have them or they do not.

Animals do not have souls; humans, all humans,

do. There is a brittle break in nature at this point.

This is certainly a place where some compromise

is necessary if consistency is to be achieved. There

is surely much work and serious rethinking still

needed on the connection (if there is one) be-

tween the human mind, either the Christian human

mind or the sociobiological human mind, and the

teachings about the nature and existence of the

immortal soul. But these and other problems are

challenges, not road blocks. Certainly the larger

Christian community was correct in its intuitions

when, on the arrival of human sociobiology, it

took a position of welcome, albeit guarded wel-

come, rather than of hostility and rejection. All

human understanding is grist for the theological

mill, and sociobiology is no exception.

See also BEHAVIORAL GENETICS; DARWIN, CHARLES;

ETERMINISM; DNA; EUGENICS; EVOLUTION,

IOCULTURAL; EVOLUTION, BIOLOGICAL; FREEDOM;

ENETIC DETERMINISM; GENETICS; MEMES;

UTATION; NATURE VERSUS NURTURE; SELFISH

GENE; SIN

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Prometheus, 1988.

Ruse, Michael. Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Rela-

tionship between Science and Religion. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Ruse, Michael. The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Contro-

versies. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2001.

Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1978.

Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975.

MICHAEL RUSE

SOCIOLOGY

Although it may be argued that all the sciences can

trace their roots in some measure or other to reli-

gion inasmuch as religion dominated institutional

scholarship well into the nineteenth century, soci-

ology is unique in that its formal origin was actually

cast in the context of a new putatively religious

movement. The term sociology was coined by Au-

guste Comte in his Cours de philosophie positive

(1830–1842); for Comte la sociologie was nothing

less than the capstone of the new religion of posi-

tivism, replacing older theological or philosophical

principles for social organization with those of sci-

ence. Sociologists were to be nothing less than the

“high priests” of this new moral order. The coining

of a term does not a science make, however, and

the fact that “sociology” received relatively quick

and widespread acceptance among diverse con-

stituencies suggests that Comte created an accept-

able label for an intellectual movement that was

already in process in the nineteenth century—

namely, the two-fold premise that human social be-

havior could be studied with the same investigative

canons that are applied to other “natural” phenom-

ena and that human social behavior was irreducible

to psychological or biophysical explanations.

Although the explicitly religious expression

given to sociology went with Comte to his grave,

virtually all of the leading lights of early sociology

devoted considerable attention to aspects of reli-

gious life—what religion is, how it works, how it

came into being, why it persists or recedes. These

questions were among the most burning that early

sociologists confronted. Karl Marx, Émile Durk-

heim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Herbert Spencer,

and others whose work spanned the transition

from the nineteenth to the early twentieth cen-

turies tried to comprehend the role of religion

within the larger sociocultural setting that makes

human existence possible. Each realized that reli-

gion was a uniquely human experience, without

any analog in the animal world, that, in the past at

least, seemed to have had a controlling effect on

the way people lived.

These early sociologists provided different im-

ages of religion, raising different kinds of ques-

tions. Through these images, however, runs a sin-

gle theme—religion and social change. Marx

throughout his work saw religion as a significant

part of structural systems of oppression. Durkheim

in his crucial work The Elementary Forms of the Re-

ligious Life, published in 1912 at the culmination of

his career, saw religion maintaining social order or

equilibrium. Weber, in a brilliant series of essays

known as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of

Capitalism (originally published serially in German

from 1904 to 1905, and issued in English as a sin-

gle volume in 1930), saw religion as a vehicle for

enabling social change.

Sociology in America: the early years

Although the roots of sociology are certainly Euro-

pean, the discipline came to fullest flower in the

United States. Its course was by no means singular.

The first book to use the word in its title was the

Treatise on Sociology (1854) by the apologist for

slavery Henry Hughes, who with George Fitzhugh

and Stephen Pearl Andrews attempted to formulate

an American sociology according to a peculiar

reading of Comte that would hardly be recogniza-

ble by anyone in the field today. The Confederate

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loss of the American Civil War and Hughes’s death

in it largely ended this line of development. Of

much more sustained influence were the writings

of Herbert Spencer, and it was William Graham

Sumner, a Spencerian, who taught the first course

in sociology ever offered in the United States at

Yale in 1876. Sumner, who was ordained within

the Episcopal Church (though he apparently did

not officiate once at Yale), was an enormously

popular professor: “no one was supposed to have

‘done’ Yale as a gentleman should,” Albion Small

recorded in 1916, “without having taken at least

one course with ‘Billy’ Sumner” (p. 732).

A further influence was that of Christian sociol-

ogy, an American variant of British Christian social-

ism. Explicitly introduced by J. H. W. Stuckenberg’s

Christian Sociology (1880), the Christian sociology

movement experienced a groundswell of interest in

the last two decades of the nineteenth century, par-

ticularly through the Chautauqua movement and

“summer schools” at Oberlin College in Ohio and

Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. Christian sociol-

ogy might well have become the dominant mode

in America society had it not been for a series of

circumstances, ironically arising out of this very

movement, that led to Albion Small establishing the

first free-standing department of sociology in the

United States at the University of Chicago in 1893.

Brought to Chicago by Chautauqua-inspired,

Rockefeller-funded William Rainey Harper, Small

walked a series of tightropes to shape a distinctive

American sociology. First, he courted Lester Frank

Ward, termed by Samuel Chugerman in his 1939

biography “the American Aristotle,” in many ways

the first American sociologist in his own right, who

only late in his life received a university connec-

tion (at Brown University in Rhode Island). Ward

was important to Small because Ward offered a

Comtean alternative to the proslavery apologists

that at the same time moved away from Sumner’s

exposition of Spencer’s evolutionism—although

there were, in fact, connections between Ward and

Spencer through the Unitarian theologian M. J. Sav-

age. Second, in what may well have been his most

important single institutional step, Small founded

the American Journal of Sociology in 1895, which

became his personal implement for the operational

definition of sociology in America and the inven-

tion of its history. Third, Small simultaneously

courted and distanced himself from Christian soci-

ology by enlisting the liberal University of Chicago

theologian Shailer Matthews to write a series of ar-

ticles in the first issues of this new journal, which

effectively redefined Christian sociology to exclude

the positions of the most ardent advocates of Chris-

tian sociology. Fourth, he built an empirical socio-

logical style that came to define American sociol-

ogy for the first half of the twentieth century:

sociology of the Chicago School.

In addition to a large collection of volumes

dealing with a variety of issues generated by the

burgeoning urban life of Chicago, the Chicago

School also initiated a distinct American theoretical

approach, most generally known as symbolic in-

teractionism, through the work particularly of

George Herbert Mead, William Isaac Thomas, and

Charles Horton Cooley. Although symbolic interac-

tionism has become a diversified cluster of ap-

proaches, associated with universities where its dif-

ferent proponents have settled, the perspective

continues to find its roots in the work of these

scholars and has been revivified in social construc-

tionist or situationalist theories among contempo-

rary sociologists.

American sociology: tradition and transitions

By the end of World War II, American sociology

dominated the profession throughout the world. In

many respects, American sociology was sociology.

World War I wreaked havoc among European so-

ciologists. A number of the most promising young

French sociologists were killed in the war, and

Durkheim, Simmel, and Weber died of natural

causes within three years of each other at the end

of the war. The Great Depression, followed by the

next war and the Nazi pogroms of the Jews, largely

devastated the European intellectual currents most

sympathetic to sociological scholarship. Some of

those scholars managed to escape to the United

States from the ravages of fascism and became part

of the movement toward American dominance of

the field.

During this period, American sociology sought

to distance itself further not merely from religion,

but from applied concerns in general. The social

conditions of the depression followed by the exi-

gencies of war made glib social pronouncements

vacuous, while increasing the demand for “hard

data” upon which to devise and implement pro-

grams for change. The depression and World War

II served to underwrite empiricism, as various

funding agencies poured money into research.

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Though not necessarily in agreement themselves,

figures such as Harry Elmer Barnes, Luther L.

Bernard, F. Stuart Chapin, William Fielding Og-

burn, and especially George Lundberg, who an-

swered his rhetorical soteriological query Can Sci-

ence Save Us? (1947) with unfettered assurance,

nevertheless produced a more rigorously empirical

discipline, with little use for higher-order analyses.

Under Samuel Stouffer, a multivolume American

Soldier series beginning in 1949 was produced, in-

novations were made in content analysis through

captured enemy documents, and Paul Lazarsfeld

led studies at Columbia, a historic center of socio-

logical empiricism, on the effects on public opin-

ion of radio propaganda.

Small died in 1926, and his mantle at Chicago

fell to Robert E. Park. Although Park is arguably

more distinguished than Small in his lasting intel-

lectual contributions, times had changed suffi-

ciently—in part a testimony to the success of

Small’s enterprise—so that a single institution

could not expect to exercise the kind of discipli-

nary hegemony that Small had managed to effect

at the turn of the century. The final sign of the de-

hegemonization of the Chicago School was the es-

tablishment of the American Sociological Review as

the “official journal” of the American Sociological

Society (now the American Sociological Associa-

tion, hence ASA) in 1935. The American Journal of

Sociology continues to be published, and vies with

the American Sociological Review in various rank-

ing systems for the “most important” in the profes-

sion.

The Chicago School was by no means out of

touch with the profession, however, and in the

1930s brought a young, European-educated Har-

vard professor named Talcott Parsons to discuss

the role of theory in research. Later, Chicago would

bring Parsons’s sometime coauthor Edward Shils to

its faculty. Revisioning the field and in so doing

founding Harvard’s Department of Social Relations,

Parsons’s functionalism, a unique attempt to merge

Durkheim and Weber, came to dominate American

sociology for the larger part of two decades, reach-

ing its quintessence in Kingsley Davis’s triumphal-

ist presidential address to the ASA in 1959: “The

Myth of Functional Analysis as a Special Method in

Sociology and Anthropology.” Moreover, a friend-

ship that grew between Parsons’s former student

Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld as they both

served on the Columbia faculty (1954) did much to

heal the rift between empirical and theoretical so-

ciological styles.

In that process, Talcott Parsons—particularly,

but certainly not only, as the translator of the

Protestant ethic essays—also “brought religion

back in” as a field for sociological inquiry. But be-

cause he did it in the context of an attempt to syn-

thesize Durkheim and Weber, who had far more

differences than commonalities, he created an odd

construction of religion that focused on a particu-

lar historical mode of religious organization that

delegitimated religion as an independent variable.

The outcome came to be articulated under the

rubric of secularization theory, though as this ide-

ology was recrafted it turned from something

largely positive in Parsons’s specific use to some-

thing negative, particularly at the hands of popular

essayist Will Herberg.

Contemporary theory

Although Parsonian functionalism remained the

primary mode of sociological analysis into the

early 1960s, it was increasingly challenged by neo-

Marxist sociologies. Columbia sociologist C. Wright

Mills—who, ironically, was the other major Ameri-

can importer of Weber—and German sociologist

Ralf Dahrendorf became two exemplars of the new

styles of analysis. Mills was strident and politically

active; Dahrendorf was a more dispassionate ex-

emplar of leftist theory. The succeeding decades

brought diverse elaborations of alternative themes

in the work of such figures as Pierre Bourdieu, An-

thony Giddens, and Immanuel Wallerstein. Be-

cause the reaction against Parsons’s functionalism

had Marxist leanings, sociology again distanced it-

self from religion. This breach was to some extent

restored by the emergence of Latin American liber-

ation theologies, which used Marxist categories for

Christian ends.

Far more significant to the field as a whole,

however, was the collapse of the Soviet system be-

ginning in 1989 and the role of religious actors on

the global sociopolitical scene as early as 1979. It

could be argued that sociology at the beginning of

the twenty-first century is in a state of theoretical

fragmentation and fermentation, as no single para-

digm exercises disciplinary hegemony, and cri-

tiques of “grand narratives” based on postmod-

ernist understandings make disciplinary consensus

difficult to achieve. As an alternative to postmod-

ernist nihilism, however, globalization theory, as

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