Books in the Perspectives in Ethology series

Sociobiology is the play of the season. Their dire warnings may also have real impact on policy, alter ing, for example, a research program intended to examine longitudinally the relation between a supernumerary chromosome and certain behavioral disorders.

Richerson and Boyd analyze the possible relations between climatic change in the Pleistocene and the evo lution of social learning, evaluating the boundary conditions under which social learning could increase fitness and contribute to culture.

This volume is devoted principally to the theme of behavioral develop ment. Although the ex cluded middle is familiar enough in academic argument, the dynamic tensions actually present in developing systems may be particularly prone to polarize debate about what is actually happening.

Richerson and Boyd analyze the possible relations between climatic change in the Pleistocene and the evo lution of social learning, evaluating the boundary conditions under which social learning could increase fitness and contribute to culture.

In the main, this process is admirable and necessary, but somewhere along the line perspective is lost and a body of knowledge, with all the preconceptions and intellectual baggage that comes with it, becomes formally established.