社会生物学在日本.pdfVIP

Biology and Philosophy 13: 341–357, 1998. c 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Similarities and Varieties: A Brief Sketch on the Reception of Darwinism and Sociobiology in Japan OSAMU SAKURA Institute of Human Behavioral Sciences Faculty of Business Administration Yokohama National University Tokiwadai 79-4, Hodogaya-ku Yokohama 240 8501 Japan Abstract. This paper discusses the reception of Darwinian evolutionary theory and socio- biology in Japan. Darwinism was introduced into Japan in the late 19th century and Japanese people readily accepted the concept of evolution because, lacking Christianity, there was no religious opposition. However, the theory of evolution was treated as a kind of social scientific tool, i.e., social Spencerism and eugenics. Although evolutionary biology was developed during the late 19th and the early 20th century, orthodox Darwinian theory was neglected for a long time. In the mid 1980s, sociobiology was introduced but it was ignored and criticized by a large part of the ecologist-evolutionist community in Japan. This hostile attitude was due to the absence of Darwinism among these scientists. Compared with the reception of sociobiology in English-speaking countries, there were both similarities and differences in Japan. Key words: theory reception, Darwinism, sociobiology, cultural studies, evolutionary biology in Japan Introduction No one doubts that Darwinian evolutionary theory is one of the most important contributions to the history of biology, or even to human thought in general. Several studies have been carried out about how this idea that originated in England came to be accepted in other cultural areas (see Glick (1974) for a review). These studies have revealed considerable differences in the process of acceptance of Darwinism, as well as similarities. Such comparative studies are important and necessary to reveal the dynamics of scie