Ron Diebert wrote.
> Take, for example, individualism as a moral idea and symbolic form.
> Elements of this idea can be traced back into the late Middle Ages
> and beyond. It certainly has its roots in the Christian religion.
> But it is only in early modern Europe that individualism is exalted
> as a predominant moral idea -- an idea that resonated throughout
> various social spheres, and was reflected in the atomism of the age.
> But why did it resonate at this particular historical juncture
> as opposed to another prior period? My guess is that it flourished
> because of a multiplicity of mutually-reinforcing material and ideal
> factors that happened to converge at a specific time and which together
> provided a propitious environment where such an idea could find
> a "niche". There was nothing inevitable or teleological about the
> rise of individualism.....
> I see nothing wrong with the use of evolutionary metaphors in
> the social sciences if they help free us from our current conceptual
> and theoretical blinders that are holding us captive and getting in
> the way.
>
> The question for me is what will be gained from borrowing words from the
life sciences, changing their meanings here and there and then trying to apply
them to society? The example offered on individualism here is a traditional
historicist analysis with the word "niche" tacked on at the end. 1) I don't see
that the niche concept adds anything concrete. 2) The logic of evolutionary
thinking is closely related to historicism and hence is open to the same sorts
of criticism. The reason it ends up looking like historicism is because on
the way from biology to sociology it has to drop the concrete mechansim - i.e.
natural selection through reproduction - than gives it its power in biology. 3)
I would question how much it would be able to free us from our current blinders
in light of the fact that evolution, adaptation, and selection is among the
oldest and most frequently used set of concepts in sociology.
Doug Wilson