than the scholar attempting to further diplomatic efforts to lessen the chance of global biological warfare. However, notwithstanding the diversity of topics and goals covered by studies of aggression, there are sufficient commonalities among all of these areas of research to consider them related to each other and to believe that the study of aggressive behaviors in one primate species has something to teach one about the aggressive behavior of other primates under differing sets of circumstances.
The major methodological perspectives that scholars have brought to the study of aggression û defined here with an attempt at both simplification and clarity û simply as intentional behavior causing injury in another individual û in primates are evolutionary, psychoanalytic, social learning (Barchas in Hamburg and Trudeau, 1981, pp. 17-21). These perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive: For example, one may logically (and with some empirical evidence on oneÆs side) argue that primates are evolutionarily programmed to have what Barchas refers to as ôemotostatsö û emotional pressure points that tell an individual when aggressive behavior is called for. Such emotional pressure points might be learned ones, or ones triggered by psychoanalytic cues or brought about as the result of certain socially programmed responses.
Running through all of these different methodological approaches to the issue of aggression in humans (and much more rarely in other primates) are discussions of the moral implications of such forms of behavior, for aggression amongst humans is irretrievably linked to violence among humans, a point of concern for ethicists and religious leaders long before nuclear weapon stockpiles made such concerns into the everyday worries of generations of people. The ethical aspects of aggression may seem to be separate from methodological concerns but they are in fact linked to each other, for the intentionality of ag...