Factoring genetic determinism: an analysis of sociogbiological discourse and debate and their presentations in biology textbooks
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis is about sociobiology, especially human sociobiological discourse, and its emergence as a paradigm especially through the formulations of E. O. Wilson. It asks two distinct and related questions. The first question asks why and how has the general project of Wilsonian or determinist human sociobiology has maintained its appeal and continued to garner popularity and support despite the many cogent and detailed critiques. The second question, covered in part two of this thesis, asks how the sociobiological controversy is presented in three biology textbooks. Part one of this work examines the development of human sociobiology and its related disciplines and the debates that have arisen around this paradigm. It chronicles how this Wilsonian human sociobiological discourse constructs its legitimacy, the major issues critics have raised and recent developments in human sociobiology and related fields. It also suggests modified epistemological positions and avenues of critique. As such, this work utilizes theory developed within utilizes theory developed within science studies, hegemony studies, discourse theory, textual analysis, and science education. Part Two examines three textbooks used in Ontario Academic Courses (OACs) in biology in high school in grade thirteen in Ontario. These texts are similar if not identical to textbooks used in introductory biology courses in universities in North America. This textual analysis, examines how the textbooks portray sociobiology and the related fields of genetics, evolutionary theory and the nature of science itself. This analysis provides a way both to gauge the influence of Wilsonian human and nonhuman sociobiological discourse and to gauge the ways in which this controversial issue is handled by the texts. This analysis finds that all three textbooks fail to use sociobiology as an example of a scientific controversy to engage students in a discussion of this topic. They also fail to engage students in any of the collateral controversial issues in genetics, evolutionary theory and the nature of science itself. This work also borrows from the constructivist, Science-Technology-Society-Environment (STS-E), and nature of science movements within science education and begins to make recommendations for teachers and textbook authors regarding the teaching and presentations of sociobiology and the nature of science debates.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.027 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".