How to Major in Sociobiology At University

Reading list I would use if I could create a sociobiology department at a university

Sociobiology deserves departments at universities, much more than pseudosciences like political science, sociology, and anthropology. At least half of both psychology and economics are pseudoscientific as well.

Sociobiology is the scientific study of human behavior. As the scientific approach, it roots itself in the basic fact that humans are animals. Thus, it begins from the laws of biology. On the more theoretical side, sociobiology borrows from physics, incorporating verifiable mathematical theories into its body of knowledge.

None of the pseudosciences do these simultaneously. Economics has mathematical theories, but they aren’t verifiable or rooted in human animal biology. Political science is wholly unmathematical except where it borrows from unverifiable economics (game theory, public choice). Sociology is and anthropology are totally unmathematical, existing at this point to give Marxists and wordcels a place in studying human behavior. Psychology is more or less math free except where the seeds of sociobiology lie dormant (behavior genetics, psychometrics, these being descended from Galton).

But say you want to study human behavior. Where do you go? Universities have psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, and political science departments, but not sociobiology departments. Luckily, although you can’t get a degree in sociobiology, you can self study. And I now have a reading list featuring what I would teach if one of these “right wing” start up universities made me the head of the new sociobiology department. Here we go.

Mathematics

Any good science starts with its mathematical theory.

1. Calc I, II, III (I learned this in university and high school but try MIT opencourse if you have to learn it yourself)

2. Linear Algebra https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/

3. Introductory Probability & Math Stat https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-05-introduction-to-probability-and-statistics-spring-2022/pages/syllabus/

4. Intermediate math stat https://egrcc.github.io/docs/math/all-of-statistics.pdf (until the machine learning stuff)

5. Linear Regression https://z-library.sk/book/27449643/41b311/introduction-to-linear-regression-analysis-wiley-series-in-probability-and-statistics.html (through ch 4) https://www.dsecoaching.com/pdf/2008%20Angrist%20Pischke%20MostlyHarmlessEconometrics.pdf (whole book, with this as a companion if it's confusing https://z-library.sk/book/17376080/237167/mastering-metrics-the-path-from-cause-to-effect.html)

6. Various important models: PCA (Ch 1-7), Factor analysis (Ch7, 10-12), Generalized linear models (Ch1-4)

7. Quantitative Genetics https://z-library.sk/book/18842924/761721/introduction-to-quantitative-genetics.html

8. Classical Test Theory: https://z-library.sk/book/963785/56d0b9/statistical-test-theory-for-the-behavioral-sciences-statistics-in-the-social-and-behavioral-science.html

The reading lists here and in the following sections are exactly what I used to learn the topics — they’re tried and true. At American universities, a major is usually 60 “credit hours”, where one class is usually 3 and a semester is 15. This list is already about 30. Some are 4 or even 5 depending on the university. So the math theory is about half of the “sociobiology major”.

Empirical

Now we have the findings and models of sociobiology:

1. Basic HBD: You probably already know this stuff but there's Jensen’s books, Lynn’s books, many articles, and all that, you could fill a standard course with this stuff.

2. Behavior genetics: https://libgen.gs/edition.php?id=138099947 (esp. ch 6, 7, and appendix), read twin studies, meta-analyses, understand CTD and its assumptions as well as extensions (no good books on this so has to be articles -- I am thinking of writing a book called Heritability covering this and genomic methods, which there is no book on)

3. Modernity and Cultural Decline, mutational load theory & evospych (also read Woodley's papers on mutational load) : https://libgen.gs/edition.php?id=138223179

4. Cliodynamics: https://z-library.sk/book/11030100/c66f9e/historical-dynamics-why-states-rise-and-fall.html & https://z-library.sk/book/3667932/85c15c/ages-of-discord-a-structuraldemographic-analysis-of-american-history.html

5. Social mobility: https://z-library.sk/book/2329821/8ebf53/the-son-also-rises-surnames-and-the-history-of-social-mobility.html (~first 100 pages, also just read Clark's articles, they're better, his books are kind of prole)

6. Quantitative Sociobiology — memetic evolution, quantitative polygenic evolutionary pressures, elite theory

This takes it to about 50 credit hours, so almost done. Now we have miscellaneous stuff. Less central, but still useful.

Miscellaneous

1. Historical sociobiology: read Galton's works, EO Wilson's book, books about the reaction to Wilson's book like Defenders of Truth.

2. Epistemology: Read the beginning of Pareto's Mind and Society which is an epistemological treatise. Language, Truth, and Logic by AJ Ayer is also good.

3. Bias against sociobiology: read and critique people like Adam Rutherford, Gould, Lewontin, Sasha Gusev, Curtis Yarvin, etc. Lewontin’s fallacy, sociology fallacy, Gould’s lies, etc.

4. The failures of non-sociobiology: understand and critique neoclassical economics, political science, psychology and the replication crisis, ridiculous and stupid papers in sociology and anthropology that are more or less totally unscientific. My blog is good for this.

5. Genomics: no books on this. I might write one called Heritability covering classical designs as well as new genomics designs. Some good papers are IBD regression, RDR regression, Solving missing heritability problem, FGWAS, Height and WGS, Understanding GWAS Confidence Intervals.

This comes out to about 65 credit hours, so sociobiology is easily deserving of its own academic department. There’s a lot here! There’s even topics remaining for PhD level study like regression for genomics (ridge regression, REML), asymptotic statistics (need to be able to make confidence intervals for new statistical models), advanced probability like measure theoretic etc (for producing new probabilistic models). I’m currently studying these topics broadly.

How to major in sociobiology

If you are a current university student, you will notice there is no sociobiology department at your university. There are no classes at all on anything in miscellaneous or the empirical section. There are however a lot of classes in the mathematical section, especially if you have a statistics department at your university.

I therefore suggest majoring in statistics if you can, with a focus on linear regression and mathematical statistics. It’s possible to study 1-6 in the mathematics section at most universities. This is, luckily, the hardest part, so even though it’s a third of the list, it’s probably half of the work, and the hardest to self teach. You may also have access to to more advanced topics, such as real analysis and measure theory. At some universties, the statistics programs are small and ask you to choose a second major or a minor, so applied mathematics is good way to not completely waste time.

Majoring in statistics, you may also learn how to use R and Python to do analyses and make models, which is useful although isn’t central to scientific understanding. Still, if you have no previous exposure, you can learn to code in class and you could read books in the free time that would be spent learning to use a programming language under my ideal sociobiology program.