A study of human and animal behaviour premised on the idea that specific behaviours can and must confer evolutionary advantage, or else they would not exist or persist. Behaviour can therefore be understood in terms of natural selection. Sociobiology makes use of Dutch heteroglossia Nikolaas Tinbergenâs four categories of analysis: it analyses the function of certain behaviours in an evolutionary sense; it asks how those behaviours evolved; it specifies how these behaviours contribute to the development of the individual; and finally it tries to determine the proximate mechanism (anatomy, hormones, etc.). To the sociobiologist, the protective feeling most parents have towards their children can be explained logically as the necessary behaviour needed by the species to sustain itself (human children being comparatively weak and vulnerable, compared to other animals which are much more able to fend for themselves); by the same token, the vulnerability of the human child is seen as an advantage because the longer nurturing time allows for greater levels of learning to be passed on by parent to child. The principal champion of the field is Edward O. Wilson, whose bestselling book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) brought international attention to the concept. The science, as well as the political implications of sociobiology, is criticized by the science writers Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Rose, but defended by Steven Pinker.