Beyond nature versus culture: a response to comments

I am grateful to the three correspondents for thoughtful and supportive comments onmy paper.I detect considerable convergence in our views on both the promise and thedifculty of an adequate integration of Darwinian ideas into social science. I will notrespond here point by point, since the commentaries raise deep, open questions thatwouldrequireatleastanotherfullarticletoaddress.NordoIwishtoburdenthereaderwith repetition of points already made in the main article. Instead, I would like toconclude briey by pointing out some key ways in which the problems that evolution-ary social scientists face are actually very similar to the problems that evolutionarybiological scientists face.That is,the difculties which strike us in applying somethingas simple as the theory of evolution to something as complex as human social life arein fact the very same difculties which we encounter when applying that same theoryto something as complex as organic life more generally. This point may help to bringsocial and biological researchers together. It is not that the one faces complexities anddifcultiesof adifferentorderthantheotherfaces;rather,bothfacegreatcomplexities,and the challenges in the two cases are often parallel.