Sociobiology: the new synthesis
The application of sociobiology to humans was immediately controversial. Some people, such as Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin said that sociobiology was biologicially determinist. They argued that it would be used, as similar ideas had been in the past, to justify the status quo, entrench ruling elites, and legitimize authoritarian political programmes. They referred to social darwinism and eugenics of the early 20th century, and to other more recent ideas, such as the race and IQ controversy of the early 1970s as cautionary tales in the use of evolutionary principles as applied to human society.