Start the Evolution without Us

Abstract

In his provocative article Bringing in Darwin: Evolutionary Theory, Realism, and International Politics, Bradley Thayer appropriates arguments from sociobiology to provide a basis for realist international relations theory, and in so doing he follows a recent trend in the social sciences.1 Thayer's argument is straightforward. First, traditional realist microfoundations are dependent on unacceptably metaphysical or theological assumptions about human nature (pp. 126-130). Second, findings in sociobiology about human nature provide transhistorical, universal, and sufficiently robust foundations for realist claims about international politics (pp. 131-138). We welcome Thayer's contribution to this debate, but we dispute both his specific formulation of sociobiology and the general project of explaining political phenomenon through biological theories. First, we disagree that evolutionary theory offers a widely accepted explanation of human behavior (p. 138). Instead, we argue that sociobiology remains the object of considerable and ethical controversy, and that sociobiological approaches contain numerous methodological flaws. Second, we contend that even if sociobiology could overcome its inherent limitations, the microfoundations that a sociobiologically informed theory of international politics produces are indeterminate and contradictory. For this reason, sociobiological microfoundations provide no additional analytical leverage in explaining and understanding international politics. Finally, we contend that current microfoundations in the social sciences, including structural realist and rational actor approaches, can be just as scientific from the perspective of philosophy of science without importing sociobio-