Comment by acenes

I was vaguely aware of the 'feud', was more curious about your judgment that "Wilson has proved to be correct in every particular" (because I don't think this is true). Is there a reason to believe that the objections by Lewontin and Gould were 'ideological'? Personally I care more about whether the criticisms were valid than what motivated them. Seems to me that Wilson's idea about the genetic origin of social behavior is quite speculative, and naive about the enormous complexity of both genetics and behavior. Wilson also remains a widely celebrated scientist, perhaps more so than Lewontin, so clearly the persecutions didn't amount to much (though I admit that I know little about how L and G treated W in private).