"Our Natural Place", p. 243
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)
“Sociobiology is not just any statement that biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory have something to do with human behavior. Sociobiology is a specific theory about the nature of genetic and evolutionary input into human behavior. It rests upon the view that natural selection is a virtually omnipotent architect, constructing organisms part by part as best solutions to problems of life in local environments. It fragments organisms into “traits,” explains their existence as a set of best solutions, and argues that each trait is a product of natural selection operating “for” the form or behavior in question. Applied to humans, it must view specific behaviors (not just general potentials) as adaptations built by natural selection and rooted in genetic determinants, for natural selection is a theory of genetic change. Thus, we are presented with unproved and unprovable speculations about the adaptive and genetic basis of specific human behaviors: why some (or all) people are aggressive, xenophobic, religious, acquisitive, or homosexual.”
"Our Natural Place", p. 243
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002Related quotes
The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (2003)

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 183)
Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 141

Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (6th ed., 2019), Chap. 1: The Scientific Movements Leading to Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology, 2005

Part 1 “Four Classical Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Design (and Some Creationist Calculations)” (p. 19)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)
Price, G.R. (1995). "The nature of selection." Journal of Theoretical Biology 175:389-396 (written circa 1971)
Source: 1980s-1990s, "Theory construction as disciplined imagination," 1989, p. 516