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Planning and preparing for pandemics has happened in countries and international organizations. The World Health Organization writes recommendations and guidelines, though there is no sustained mechanism to review countries' preparedness for epidemics and their rapid response abilities. National action depends on natio... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
A June 2018 review said that pandemic plans everywhere were inadequate, since natural viruses can emerge with over 50% case fatality rates, but health professionals and policy makers planned as if pandemics would never exceed the 2.5% case fatality rate of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. In the years leading up to th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Several reports underlined the inability of national governments to learn from the previous disease outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, described the "global response to SARS-CoV-2 the greatest science policy failure in a generation".Early outbreaks in Hubei, Italy and Sp... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank warned about the risk of pandemics throughout the 2000s and the 2010s, especially after the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board released its first report in late 2019. Private initiatives also raised awareness about pandemic threats an... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In 2018, the WHO coined the term, Disease X, which "represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease" in order to focus research and development on likely candidates for the next, at-the-time unknown, pandemic.International divisions a... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Among those is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, co-founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and the European Commission. Since 2017 the Coalition has tried to produce a platform approach for dealing with emerging epidemic disease such as COVID-19, which would enable rapid vacc... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Following warnings and increased preparedness in the 2000s, the 2009 swine flu pandemic led to rapid anti-pandemic reactions among the Western countries. The H1N1/09 virus strain with mild symptoms and low lethality eventually led to a backlash over public sector over-reactiveness, spending and the high cost of the 200... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Simulations of influenza-like pandemics have been carried out by United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) trusts since the 2007 H5N1 influenza outbreak ("bird flu"). Russell King, a resilience manager in the NHS at the time, said "the Cabinet Office had identified the availability and distribution of PPE as a pi... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
More than 950 workers from those organisations, prisons and local or central government were involved during the three-day simulation, and their ability to cope under situations of high medical stress was tested. Participants were placed in the seventh week of the pandemic – the peak of the crisis, when there is the gr... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
The hypothetical situation was that the vaccine had been made and purchased but not yet delivered to the UK. Hospital and social care officials were to come up with emergency plans managing resource strain, while government officials were exposed to situations requiring quick decision-making. To make the situation more... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Simulated news outlets and social media were employed to give fictitious updates. A government disclaimer on the UK pandemic preparedness website stated that the exercise was not intended to manage future pandemics of different nature, nor to pinpoint what measures to adopt to avoid widespread transmission.Results from... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In November 2020, the UK government stated that all identified lessons had been discussed accordingly and appropriately taken into account for its pandemic preparedness plans.The Daily Telegraph reported one government source as saying that the results of the simulation were "too terrifying" to be revealed. According t... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In May 2020, when interviewed by The Guardian, Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, one of the UK's biggest private care home company, said that the government had not previously alerted private health sectors to the lack of capacity should a pandemic arise.Exercise Alice was a British MERS coronavirus pandem... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
According to the Global Health Security Index, an American-British assessment which ranks the health security capabilities in 195 countries, the U.S. in 2020 was the "most prepared" nation these assessments are based on six categories. The main categories linking to the COVID-19 pandemic are: Rapid response, Health sys... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
The United States has been subjected to pandemics and epidemics throughout its history, including the 1918 Spanish flu which had an estimated death toll of 550,000, the 1957 Asian flu which had an estimated death toll of 70,000 deaths, and the 1968 Hong Kong flu which had an estimated death toll of 100,000. In the most... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
The US government updated its pandemic plan and public guidelines in April 2017. In January 2017 it had updated its estimate of resource gaps and a list of issues for the US government to consider (called a playbook). The plan and guidelines were public. The estimate of resources and list of issues were not public, tho... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Staff availability may also be limited as medical personnel become infected." In the final year of the administration of George W. Bush, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (a division of the Department of Health and Human Services) "estimated that an additional 70,000 machines would be required... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
"The list of issues, or playbook, covered normal conditions as well as pandemic conditions. During normal conditions, there was no discussion of estimating and building up stockpiles for use in emergencies. In the United States; the Strategic National Stockpile's stock of masks used against the 2009 flu pandemic was no... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
A vaccine for the 2003 SARS virus took 13 years to develop, and was ready for human trials in 2016, which have not yet happened. A vaccine for the 2009 MERS virus took ten years to develop, and began human trials in 2019. Nevertheless, the guidelines said only six months would be needed to develop and distribute a vacc... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
However the guidelines told businesses to expect only up to two weeks of school closures, saying employees might need to stay home two weeks with their children.The guidelines did not expect any business closures, although studies had long predicted 80% drops in arts, entertainment, and recreation, and 5% to 10% drops ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
There was no discussion or planning for closing businesses or ordering people to stay home, which may explain officials' delays in deciding on stay-at-home orders in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and lack of preparation to distinguish non-essential from essential workers, and to protect essential workers. In the 1918 flu ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In May 2018, National Security Advisor John Bolton reorganized the executive branch's United States National Security Council (NSC), largely merging the group responsible for global health security and biodefense—established by the Obama administration following the 2014 ebola epidemic—into a bigger group responsible f... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
On March 13, when PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked if the reorganization had hampered the government response to the coronavirus outbreak, Trump berated her for asking a "nasty question", and he added: "I didn't do it ... Disbanding, no, I don't know anything about it ... It's the administr... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Bossert had helped to create the Trump administration's biodefense plans, and it was his responsibility to coordinate the government's response in the event of a biological crisis. Bossert's successor, Doug Fears, and Fears' successor Peter J. Brown, took over the biodefense responsibilities of the DHS. Bloomberg News ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In another departure, Luciana Borio, the National Security Council director for medical and biodefense preparedness, left her post in March 2019. The Washington Post reported in March 2020 that the White House would not confirm the identity of Borio's replacement.Reuters reported in March 2020 that the Trump administra... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
According to Reuters, one of the staff eliminated in July 2019 was training Chinese field epidemiologists to respond to disease outbreaks at their hotbeds. Trump claimed the report of the trainer's being cut was "100% wrong", but the U.S. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
CDC acknowledged that the report was true. The Trump administration also confirmed that it had closed the Beijing offices of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); these offices had been each staffed by a single U.S. official. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In addition, the Trump administration acknowledged it had eliminated one managerial position from the Beijing office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Reuters reported that the position oversaw an animal disease monitoring program.The Trump Administration also ended funding for the PREDICT pandemic early-warning p... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Since 2015, the federal government has spent $9.8 million on two projects to prevent a mask shortage but abandoned both projects before completion. A second BARDA contract was signed with Applied Research Associates of Albuquerque, to design an N95-rated mask that could be reused in emergencies without reduced effectiv... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
A contract for the production of up to 40,000 ventilators was awarded to Newport Medical Instruments, a small ventilator manufacturer, with a target price of $3,000, much lower than more complicated machines costing more than $10,000, and it produced prototypes with target FDA approval in 2013. Covidien purchased NMI a... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
The design for the Trilogy Evo Universal gained FDA approval in July 2019. The government ordered 10,000 ventilators in September 2019, with a mid-2020 deadline for the first deliveries and a deadline of 2022 to complete all 10,000. Despite the start of the epidemic in December, the capacity of the company to have prod... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
In 2016, the NSC laid out pandemic strategies and recommendations including moving swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, securing supplemental funding, considering invoking the Defense Production Act, and ensuring sufficient protective equipment available for healthcare workers. The Trump administration was brie... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_predictions_and_preparations_prior_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic |
Bamboo bicycles are pedal-and-chain-driven, human-powered, single-track vehicles that have two wheels attached to a bamboo frame. Because of its light weight, vibration damping, and sustainability, bamboo is slowly starting to be used in bicycle frame production, though the industry is still dominated by aluminium fram... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
Bamboo bikes were first patented in England by the Bamboo Cycle Company and introduced to the general public on 26 April 1894. A US patent was applied for in 1895, by August Oberg and Andrew Gustafson, and granted in 1896. However, with the development of tougher industrial metals, such as steel and aluminium, large-sc... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
Several aspects of bamboo are extremely valuable to both cyclists and bicycle manufacturers: high strength-to-weight ratio, vibration control, and sustainable growth. Because of bamboo's tendency to grow straight, it does not exhibit "knots" and "turns" in its wood, unlike other types of wood. As a result, bamboo has a... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
This tendency also allows for excellent vibration control, which, in turn, provides for a smoother ride and increased stability on rough terrain. The bamboo poles can be joined in a number of different ways. The earliest models used metal joints which were then tightened around the bamboo. Another approach is to wrap t... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
Bamboo could be used as an alternative to traditional steel and aluminium bikes in many rural areas because of its potential sustainability. A Bamboo Bike Project started by engineers at Columbia University created a small number of bamboo bikes from 2007 to 2011. This was done with the intention of providing low cost ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
This business markets itself as addressing climate change, poverty, youth unemployment, rural-urban migration and by creating jobs for women. As of 2015 over 1000 of these bikes had been sold in Ghana, Europe and the United States.As of 2016 few bicycles have also been made in Bangladesh. In 2014 a Dutch company starte... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
In 2015 the company expanded to Thailand and in 2018 also to Myanmar. The bikes the tourists ride are all created in Thailand by the Dutch entrepreneur Axel Lukassen. In 2013 two women rode self built bamboo touring bikes from London in the UK, to Sydney, Australia. They showcased the strength of bamboo bicycles and th... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
The most expensive bamboo bikes cost thousands of dollars. Conversely, the bikes sold in Ghana for the Ghana Bamboo Bike Initiative have been said to cost about $120, which is significantly more expensive than conventional bicycles. The cheapest for adults retail at $350 as of 2018, thus the bikes are retailed specific... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
In the United States, all parts incorporated into the bike are high-end, similar to the parts used in expensive carbon fibre bikes. Modern machines are used to laminate, waterproof, and join the individual bamboo pieces. The Ghanaian bikes, on the other hand, source most parts (e.g. bamboo, chains, bolts, etc.) from lo... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle |
TIME-ITEM is an ontology of Topics that describes the content of undergraduate medical education. TIME is an acronym for "Topics for Indexing Medical Education"; ITEM is an acronym for "Index de thèmes pour l’éducation médicale." Version 1.0 of the taxonomy has been released and the web application that allows users to... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME-ITEM |
The development of TIME-ITEM began at the University of Ottawa in 2006. It was initially developed to act as a content index for a curriculum map being constructed there. After its initial presentation at the 2006 conference of the Canadian Association for Medical Education, early collaborators included the University ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME-ITEM |
The TIME-ITEM ontology is unique in that it is designed specifically for undergraduate medical education. As such, it includes fewer strictly biomedical entries than other common medical vocabularies (such as MeSH or SNOMED CT) but more entries relating to the medico-social concepts of communication, collaboration, pro... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME-ITEM |
All Outcomes, whether private Outcomes entered by single institutions or publicly available medical education Outcomes (such as CanMeds 2005) are hierarchically linked to one or more Topics in the ontology. In this way, the contribution of each Topic to multiple Outcomes is made explicit.The structure of the XML docume... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME-ITEM |
TIME-ITEM is intended to be a general-use ontology for medical education informatics. It has two primary potential applications: Inclusion in curriculum maps. By mapping learning objects or sessions to TIME-ITEM Topics in a curriculum map, the map becomes searchable for both granular and broad concepts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME-ITEM |
If one or more Outcome frameworks are included with the Topic ontology, then the contribution of each curricular element to one or more Outcomes is made explicit. This also facilitates curriculum evaluation in terms of one or more outcome frameworks. Indexing learning, assessment and portfolio objects. Metatagging lear... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME-ITEM |
HAL (short for Hyper Articles en Ligne) is an open archive where authors can deposit scholarly documents from all academic fields. Documents in HAL are uploaded either by one of the authors with the consent of the others or by an authorized person on their behalf. An uploaded document does not need to have been publish... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(open_archive) |
As an open access repository, HAL complies with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI-PMH) as well as with the European OpenAIRE project. HAL was started in 2001 by Franck Laloë, initially at École normale supérieure (ENS), and was later transferred to the Centre pour la communication scientifique directe (CCSD); other Fre... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(open_archive) |
Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC) is a research institute for library and information science and allied disciplines at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. The Centre was established in April 1962, under the auspices of Prof. S. R. Ranganathan (considered to be the father of modern library and ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_Research_and_Training_Centre |
Research at DRTC generally focuses on the application of information technology to library and information science. DRTC has a Ph.D. collaboration with the University of Trento, Italy. 2012 marked the Golden Jubilee of DRTC, which was celebrated with the 'International Conference on Trends in Knowledge and Information ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_Research_and_Training_Centre |
The DRTC offers a Master of Science in Library & Information Science (MS-LIS). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_Research_and_Training_Centre |
The DRTC offers a Junior Research Fellowship program in Library & Information Science. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_Research_and_Training_Centre |
Devika P Madalli, Professor M Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor and Head Biswanath Dutta, Associate Professor | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_Research_and_Training_Centre |
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975; 25th anniversary edition 2000) is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson. It helped start the sociobiology debate, one of the great scientific controversies in biology of the 20th century and part of the wider debate about evolutionary psychology and the modern synthesis of evolutio... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The fundamental principle guiding sociobiology is that an organism's evolutionary success is measured by the extent to which its genes are represented in the next generation.The book was generally well-reviewed in biological journals. It received a much more mixed reaction among sociologists, mainly triggered by the br... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The sociologist Gerhard Lenski, admitting that sociologists needed to look further into non-human societies, agreed that human society was founded on biology but denied both biological reductionism and determinism. Lenski observed that since the nature-nurture dichotomy was false, there was no reason for sociologists a... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
E. O. Wilson was an American biologist, specialising in the study of ants, social insects on which he was the world's leading expert. He is known also for his pioneering work on island biogeography, which relates species richness to island size, an important consideration in nature conservation. Wilson however favoured... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The book was first published in 1975. It has been reprinted at least 14 times up to 2014. It has been translated into languages including Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish. An abridged edition was published in 1980. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The book is illustrated with 31 halftone figures, 209 line drawings by Sarah Landry, and 43 tables. The drawings of animal societies were considered "informing and attractive". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The section summarizes the concepts of population genetics, a branch of evolutionary theory combining Mendelian genetics and natural selection in mathematical form to explain the pressures on animal societies. In particular, altruism, self-sacrificing behaviour, would die out unless something such as kin or group selec... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The Morality of the Gene 2. Elementary Concepts of Sociobiology 3. The Prime Movers of Social Evolution 4. The Relevant Principles of Population Biology 5. Group Selection and Altruism | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
This section describes the types of social behaviour in animals, including the principles of animal communication, aggression, dominance systems, and insect castes. 6. Group Size, Reproduction, and Time-Energy Budgets 7. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The Development and Modification of Social Behavior 8. Communication: Basic Principles 9. Communication: Functions and Complex Systems 10. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Communication: Origins and Evolution 11. Aggression 12. Social Spacing, Including Territory 13. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Dominance Systems 14. Roles and Castes 15. Sex and Society 16. Parental Care 17. Social Symbioses | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The section describes the distribution of social behaviour in different taxa. The theme is that evolution is progressive, with four pinnacles of social evolution, namely the colonial invertebrates such as corals, the social insects, mammals other than humans, and finally humans. The last chapter argues that natural sel... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The Four Pinnacles of Social Evolution 19. The Colonial Microorganisms and Invertebrates 20. The Social Insects 21. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The Cold-Blooded Vertebrates 22. The Birds 23. Evolutionary Trends within the Mammals 24. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The Ungulates and Elephants 25. The Carnivores 26. The Nonhuman Primates 27. Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Sociobiology attracted a large number of critical reviews, not only by biologists, but by social scientists who objected especially to Wilson's application of Darwinian thinking to humans, asserting that Wilson was implying a form of biological determinism. It was, unusually, reviewed on the front page of the New York ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The theoretical biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard reviewed the book in detail for The Quarterly Review of Biology as a work "of special significance". She began it with a fable of a "small community of modest scholars called natural historians" who all practised their own sciences, until one day a man who "had been cal... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
"In this book sociobiology is a patchwork neatly stitched from relevant pieces of other fields, without a bold new theoretical pattern of its own". She objected strongly to what she considered Wilson's "confused and misleading" discussion of altruism and group selection, arguing that kin selection provided an alternati... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
He found the review of population biology (Part I) excellent. He noted Wilson's statement that altruism is the central problem of sociobiology, and remarks that Wilson's account in fact indicates the solution, kin selection. He describes the chapter on Man as being "from the viewpoint of a very knowledgeable extraterre... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
It would be a convenient summary of any of the groups it covers for the student, and the question of bio-ethics of interest to every "intelligent biologist". Friedmann noted that Wilson has "the courage of his convictions" to suggest in the chapter on Man that "human ethics and morality should be expressed biologically... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The sociologist Eileen Barker reviewed the book for The British Journal of Sociology. She called it an "impressive tome (it weighs 5 lb)" and "a comprehensive, beautifully laid out and illustrated reference book covering the amazing variety of animal social behaviour". She noted that the final section on "Man" containe... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
She found that "the clarity, breadth and richness of accurately rendered detail in this monograph is really quite breath-taking." However, she objected to the claim that the book covered the biological basis of all social behaviour, as it did not cover what she called the "epigenetic disciplines", the effects of the en... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
She observed, citing Dobzhansky, that "an evolutionary minded sociology which really appreciated the significance of sociocultural transmission along nongenetic lines would likely see society and culture in a very different way". Despite Wilson's neglect of "epigenetic" and social sciences, she urged sociologists to re... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Gerhard Lenski, in Social Forces, admitted that sociologists had too often ignored non-human societies, and thought the book should be required reading. Human societies were plainly founded on biology, but this did not imply either biological reductionism or determinism. Comparison with other species would be productiv... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Issues of conflict and cooperation were similarly illuminated. But in his view the book raised "uncomfortable issues". The first chapter could sound, he argued, like "intellectual imperialism" as Wilson called sociology "an essentially nontheoretical, descriptive science, not unlike taxonomy and ecology forty years ago... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Lenski however took Wilson more openly than that, noting Wilson's precursors, Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Dobzhansky and others of the modern synthesis. They had tried repeatedly to talk to sociologists, and in Lenski's view that remained necessary. Further, he suggested, the nature-nurture dichotomy was evi... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
In his view, continued rejection of biology by sociologists only invited "a reductionist response on the part of biologists." Lenski found the final chapter on Man "disappointing", as Wilson had been unable to penetrate the "barriers" put up by social science against the modern synthesis, and Wilson's overestimation of... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
He called it an excellent and comprehensive survey, and said he found very few errors, though for instance squirrel monkeys did have dominance hierarchies. But he found the chapter on Man disappointing: it was trite, value-loaded, or wrong; used data uncritically, and seemed to be based on "Gerhard and Jean Lenski's in... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
This was because Wilson's "theorizing" was sometimes tautologous, sometimes hopelessly vague, and sometimes based on unobservable past events. For instance, Mazur argued that Wilson's claim that altruism has evolved in most social species is untestable: Mazur denied that a mother's action to save her baby is altruistic... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
However, Mazur was glad that Wilson has "legitimate the biological approach to sociology", even if other books like Robert Hinde's 1974 Biological Bases of Human Social Behaviour were of more use to sociologists. Devra G. Kleiman reviewed the work for Signs. She called it "a remarkable attempt to explain the evolution ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
She observed that "it gives less attention to the environmental control of behavior" than to genetics. But "Wilson's ultimate sin" was to include the final chapter, "unfortunately titled 'Man'", attracting "the wrath of those who would deny the influence of biology on human behavior because of its political and social ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
She considered Wilson "nonrigorous and biased in his application of theory in certain areas". His biases included over-representation of insects, genetics, and the dominance of male mammals over females: Wilson had further exaggerated a bias from an ethology literature written mainly by males. Conversely, he had underv... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The philosopher of politics Roger D. Masters reviewed the book for the American Political Science Review, stating that it was impossible both to review the book and not to do so, given the "attention" it had received. In his view, the book "has the indisputable merit of showing that the existence of complex societies i... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
He concluded that the book was fascinating, provocative, and the start of a return to the tradition "as old as Aristotle" where man is seen as "a 'political animal'", since social behaviour had natural origins. Philip L. Wagner, a geographer reviewing the book in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, argue... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
However, he thought the last chapter, extending the ideas to humans, far too brief and premature, as it failed to cover technology or tradition in general, while Wilson's speculations about "tradition drift" elsewhere in the book reinvented the study of diffusion of innovations and appeared unaware of "the now classica... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Geller called the last chapter, relating biology to sociology, a "step from scientific study to speculation". In her view, the most controversial and disturbing thing was the call for scientist and humanists to "temporarily" remove ethics "from the hands of the philosophers and biologize" it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
She called it "dangerous to say that biologists should have a monopoly on truth and ethics. "The anthropologist Frances L. Stewart, writing in the Bulletin of the Canadian Archaeological Association, noted that "An anthropologist reading this book is confronted by statements which contradict anthropological theory. The... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
The application of sociobiology to humans (discussed only in the first and last chapters of the book) was immediately controversial. Some researchers, led by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, contended that sociobiology embodied biological determinism. They argued that it would be used, as similar ideas had been ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
They believed that Wilson was committing the naturalistic fallacy, attempting to define moral principles using natural concepts. Academics opposed to Wilson's sociobiology, including Gould, Lewontin, Jon Beckwith, Ruth Hubbard, and Anthony Leeds created the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People to counter ... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Many of Wilson's less well supported conclusions were attacked (for example, Wilson's mathematical treatment of inheritance as involving a single gene per trait, even though he admitted that traits could be polygenic). Sociobiologists were accused of being "super" adaptationists, or panadaptationist, believing that eve... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Philosophical debates about the nature of scientific truth and the applicability of any human reason to a subject so complex as human behaviour, considering past failures, raged. Describing the controversy, Eric Holtzmans noted that "Given the baleful history of misuse of biology in justifying or designing social polic... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
With the publication of the 25th anniversary edition in 2000, the historians of biology Michael Yudell and Rob Desalle reviewed the nature-nurture controversy around the book. "Once again", they wrote, "biological reductionism and genetic determinism became the focus of rancorous debates, discussions and diatribes with... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Wilson's choice of title echoed the modern synthesis (named by Huxley in 1942) and, the reviewers argued, meant to build upon and extend it. 25 years on, they noted, most of the discord had gone, and the discipline had been renamed as evolutionary psychology; they were surprised to find that Wilson was happy with that,... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
They pointed out that comparing human and "animal" social evolution "is tantamount to making homology" claims, but Wilson had said nothing about the need for a methodology to test behavioural homology. The reviewers were also troubled by Wilson's attitude to the debate, remaining "contemptuous of his anti-sociobiologic... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
Yudell and Desalle noted the irony that Wilson despised Marxism but advocated an "aggressive paradigm ... seeking to blaze an historical path towards the future" (as Marxism did). They argued that by demonising his opponents in this way, Wilson created support for Sociobiology "not necessarily sustainable by his data a... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology:_The_New_Synthesis |
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