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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
The publication in 1975 of Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology provoked a great controversy, for in that work Wilson claimed that ethics was rooted in human biology. On the first page of the book, he asserted that our deepest intuitions of right and wrong are guided by the emotional control centers of the brain, which evolved via natural selection to help the human animal exploit opportunities and avoid threats in the natural environment. In 1998, the publication of Wilson's Consilience renewed the controversy, as he continued to argue for explaining ethics through the biology of the moral sentiments.
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6 In my translations of Aquinas's Latin, I have tried to be as literal as possible.
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106 Ibid., I–II, q. 100, a. 1.
107 Ibid., III, q. 60, a. 2; Suppl., q. 42.
