Re: sociobiology thread, reply to Boris, II

>
>I think he is saying that because we are animals, there is no reason to
>expect that our societies and culture are caused by any forces other than
>those that are responsible for evolution.

        I would add that because of evolution, there is little rationale to
assume that we are 'only animals.' We are getting into a philosophical
argument that is removing itself from the empirical context of evolution, in
which biology, environment, society, interplay.  'Evolution' unfortunately
has become a rather empty code word for defending a 'biology only'
philosophical argument, when 'evolution' has yeilded simpy the empirial
world. It takes particular viewpoints and theoretical models to craft
'biology as evolution' arguments. 

>I also do not think he would accept the idea of "situations", biological
>or otherwise, because, as he argues in _Consilience_, he thinks there is
>only physics (in the Greek sense - the study of Nature).   

        What do you mean 'only physics?' Well as long as he 'thinks' there
is only physics, then certainly that fails to explain where his thoughts on
the subject come from, unless he feels that humans intuit the world directly
without their models of the world interfering with their observations. THAT
makes him in my view naive on how, particularly, the process of science is a
give and take between theoretical propostiions and emprirical feedback.
Wilson reminds me of Durkheim, the generalizer, the organicist, the
empiricist. As such he is unable to explain human social variation, unless
of course he pull the trump card it is all biological and that these groups
have diverged biologically as well. That is obviously why he is framed so
readily as underpining a racist agenda.  Yet if that model was so, then why
does there exist evidence to show that there is more variation WITHIN ethnic
groups than between them, as his 'biological divergence' model would
require. Certainly, we are dealing with a poor model of human society, if it
is unable to incorporate empirical evidence and modify itself. 

>
>> And there is only one person I know interested in
>> theorizing the interpenetrations of social science and physcial
>> sciences--Stephen Bunker
>
>Is he the one going to Binghamton next year?
>

        Going, in what sense?


>
>I think _Consilience_ is probably milder on the issue because it is not as
>in-depth and intended for a mass audience.  Ultimately, I think talking
>about interactions makes little difference if you believe, as Wilson does,
>that an exact science of politics and economics are possible.

        Well, I feel that through comparative social study that is
historically informed, the relationships between actors and the general
drive of societies can be explored, as well as the relationshps between
societies.  So yes, I do believe that an objective social science is
possible in this sense, and only in this (models) sense. I simply find it
very shallow to insist on biological models and cause/effect structures as
the point, when the social world is very complex. Simply because phenomena
exist that are seemed external to biology, fails to mean in the direct
observable sense (as Wilson feels is possible) that they 'timelessly derive'
from biology, though I am of the opinion that of course we are biological
creatures. Only that once societies began to 'operate' other
extra-biological factors became nested into 'evolutionary' feedback loops.
Colin Tudge has some nice succint work on this. Wilson's attempt at (1)
causal modeling (when as I suggested causal modelling is rather difficult to
see without an interpretive framework, though 'natural experiments' is one
method to reduce the empirical variation using still theoretical models);
and (2) at generalizing (when there is more human genetic variation within
groups than across that fails to phase with a biological argument) - (3) his
empiricism, as a philosophical stance; all fit very well in explaining why
it is so easy for him to propose biological bases in a 'consilience' of the
sciences: he has to drop a great deal of the empirical world's data to make
his model work. Plus, that model is unable to explain that biological
(biochemical) changes in human bodies comes from social structural
positionalities, instead of the other way around (serotonin, testosterone). 
        Only if 'natural selection' and 'evolution' are considered 'results'
of a various host of changing contexts and feedback loops, do they make
sense historically and empirically, instead of thinking that 'it was once
biology, it always has to be only biology.'  Moving into the physcial
sciences, a contextualizing of the process of evolution has been made as
regards the material pieces/elements that life on the planet has had as a
pool to work with. The proposition is that biological evolution proceeded
along lines dependent upon the changing organic and inorganic physcial
elements that were available as well. [ Wilson seems simply to be able to
explain the empircal evidence, however much that he admires physics for its
presumed sense of 'objectivity.' If physics is so objective, what explains
the mistakes in modelling the physcial world, and changes in modelling it?
Wilson's is a philosophical position, that comes from very limiting models
of the social (and the biological) world to philosophical categorizations,
instead of an attempt to model THE social and physcial context-based
situations under which evolution would have innately have occured AFTER
social formation and ideological groups, etc., societies, began to expand.
That was my point earler when I said that sociology has the potential of
objectivity if it is able to discuss and model on the terms of relationships
betwen biology, phsycial, and social phenomena, instead of desiring causal
models that explain one as a subset of the other in a timeless static sense.
The relationships can be modelled more effectively because the 'nodes' can
keep changing without disrupting the skematic of the model--based on
relationships. This allows both a sense of discussing generalities and
variations at the same moment. Since even the physcial and the biological
sciences are outgrowths of sociological processes of theoretical/empirical
exploration by social groups, we should consider dubious any  philosophical
position that seems to deliver timeless models of human society, when human
societies are highly variable and part of an historical process.  


Regards,

Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison