What is the impact of a philosophically based criticism of socio-biology on the scientific community?

Aloys Hüttermann

pp. 183-196

in: Peter Koslowski (ed), Sociobiology and bioeconomics, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

The topic of my lecture deals basically with the question: How to treat scientific results? As you know, there are different ways to do this.One is the example given by Copernicus when he found that the geocentric model of universe was wrong and had to be exchanged by the heliocentric one. He decided, for whatever reason, not to get his results published during his lifetime. One can speculate about the reasons he had for this, the one given by him is: "If the great and mighty God allows such a long time to pass until a human being finds out the great design of his universe he was so great to give us, so a few years more or less will mot make a big difference."