Although we may be pessimistic (with good reason) about contemporary politics, especially as it effects the prospects for the survival of the human species in the long run, we can be more optimistic about the study of politics from a life science perspective. Certainly the two are related. Becoming optimistic about the former may depend in part upon the further development of biopolitics and of the biobehaviorial and life sciences generally.

There is nothing unique in a call for increased attention to the policy dimensions of biological developments. Almost two decades ago, Caldwell (1964:2) urged a “policy synthesis of scientific knowledge and ethical values” in response to the public policy questions raised 1JY the “explosion of biomedical knowledge and technology.” Despite similar exhortations intermittently since that time, Somit and Peterson (1979) conclude that political scientists have yet to give adequate attention to the public policy implications of biological issues. Wiegele, too, (1979: 151) sees the need for “some students of biopolitics to become interested in the political policy relevance of certain aspects of the life sciences” but sees only a few scholars interested in pursuing such an endeavor at this time.

This article updates the Somit et al. (1980) survey of literature in biology and politics. The flow of work continues at a growing rate. In the period from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 1981, at least 125 items have appeared: six books; forty-four articles, chapters in books, or monographs; sixty-four conference papers; three unpublished, undelivered manuscripts; eight Ph.D. dissertations or master's theses. Over this twenty-four month span, there have been twenty-nine “new entrants,” persons who have not previously authored a work in biology and politics.

Political behavior, like all human behavior, can be studied using the S–O–R paradigm, where S is a particular stimulus, 0 is the human organism, and R is a response or behavior (cf. Tursky, Lodge, and Cross, 1976). Here at the Laboratory for Behavioral Research at Stony Brook we are currently conducting research projects that investigate each of these components of the paradigm and the interactions among them. Before reviewing these projects, however, I will briefly describe our laboratory facilities.

With the support of a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, research is currently underway on a major effort to rethink the basic theoretical issue that inspired the emergence of sociobiology. That issue, in a nutshell, concerns the explanation for the origins and evolution of social life (human societies being only one example among many others).

Human nutrition provides a subject area in which biology and politics interact in two respects. First, nutrition is a factor in human political behavior that may affect both individual decision-making performance and mass participation. Specific conditions, such as hypoglycemia, may affect individual performance, while inadequate energy intakes and qualitative deficiencies may influence mass behavior. Second, public policy affects the nutritional status of individuals and populations. Agricultural policy, food trade policy, nutritional intervention programs, foreign and domestic food aid, and social welfare policies are among the categories of governmental outputs that help determine nutritional conditions in populations and their component groups. Nutritional status, in turn, has feedback effects through mass behavior on political inputs. Thus, human nutrition presents a problem of biopolitical interactions that involves a mutually interdependent relationship with cybernetic properties.