On Human Nature: Revised Edition with New Preface. By E.O. Wilson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004 (First Edition, 1978). ISBN 978-0674016385. 288 pp., Paperback, $24.18.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of E.O. Wilson’s book On Human Nature. The book remains, even for modern readers of a skeptical or humanist mindset, a touchstone in the debate about whether human nature is innate, and therefore universal, or imprinted, and therefore cultural and necessarily local in space and time. Spoiler alert! On Human Nature argues that it’s both. But along the way the book assembles compelling scientific evidence demonstrating the impact of evolutionary biology in at least constraining the many forms, often bizarre and sometimes not particularly beautiful, that human cultures take on.