On Sanderson's comments re: sociobiology.
I too have problems with those who attempt a
unified explanation of social phenomena based
on biological theories. When I said that evolutionary
theories of the non-teleogical sort were becoming
more popular among social scientists studying "big history",
I meant that they were employing ideas such as
path-dependency and contingency to illuminate social
processes, and in particular, as a means to rectify
the predominance of master or grand narratives,
such as progressive stages of development through which
all societies are assumed to pass, or "logics" of
successive modes of production.
In International Relations theory, for example, I think John Ruggie's
creative use of such metaphors in explaining the medieval-to-modern
world order transformation is a case in point.
But an interesting epistemological question is raised by the metaphoric
use of such concepts in the social sciences. Are Darwinist
metaphors (and here I mean to exclude Spencerian Social Darwinist
ideas) useful merely because there are an interesting
"way to look at" the world around us?
I realize this topic is sort of off the LTC, but perhaps
a second thread should be opened up?
Ron
Ronald J. Deibert
Institute of International Relations
University of British Columbia
(604) 822-5480