Alexander Alland, Jr.
Columbia University

Allow me to make it clear at the beginning how I intend to use the concept of
integrative levels in this paper. In what follows I shall suggest, following the
model for linguistic evolution developed by Noam Chomsky ( 1975), that differ-
ent evolutionary changes in cerebral evolution, occurring uniquely in the human
species, provided the neurological basis for true language and aesthetic behavior.
I depart specifically from Chomsky in my thinking, however, because I believe
that any evolutionary model constructed to account for these species specific
traits must include the social system as the dynamic context in which both
language and art evolved. What I am saying is that neurological mechanisms of
the complexity, specificity, and cultural quality of language and art could only
have evolved as part of a social process within the species Homo sapiens. To put
it another way, language and art are both creative systems that could only have
originated, and can only be manifested, in the context of cultural life. In this they
differ from the traits typically discussed by sociobiologists and that are assumed
by them to have arisen on the level of individual organisms. The long criticism of
sociobiology, that follows as well as my attempt to locate its theories in Euro-
pean folk-lore rather than in science, is meant to highlight the differences be-
tween two distinct kinds of thinking about the role of biology in human behavior.
I submit that one is reductive, and that the other involves taking into account
human sociality as a major level of integration in our species.

In 1976, I debated a young sociobiologist who was convinced that behavioral
genetic models developed for lower animals could be applied without change to
humans. Because, like the sociobiologists, I am wedded to a Darwinian view of
evolution I did not attack the basic assumptions of behavioral biology. I did
attempt to show that my opponent's application of Darwinian principles was

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