ABSTRACT
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The “Born Criminal”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Physiological Psychology and Social Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Human Biology and the Social Sciences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
The debate between the biological and social sciences over the explanation of human behavior is at least two thousand years old. Its outlines can be discerned in the arguments between Aristotelians and Stoics over the nature of human nature and the extent to which this is preformed at birth or constructed through interactions between newborns and their social environments. While it is important not to retroject our current concepts into that debate in an anachronistic fashion, we should not underestimate the sophistication that both brought to the argument. The Aristotelians acknowledged the potential influences of inheritance and uterine experience, while the Stoics explored the notion of the innate capacity of infants to interact with and be influenced by their environment. Their model did
not presume a blank page so much as a page already prepared to be written upon. Taking a global sweep over the intellectual history of Western Europe and those parts of the planet where its models of knowledge have been imposed or otherwise come to dominate, we can see that neither viewpoint has been able to secure a conclusive victory in the argument. At various times and places, one or the other has secured a local dominance. Explanation of both the victories and their transience presents interesting challenges for the sociology of knowledge, which are not directly taken up here. This chapter simply aims to restate the social scientists’ intellectual case against those who argue that biology plays a large part in the direction of human behavior. We do not consider the ethical objections to biological determinism and its social implications. For these to come into play, we need first to be persuaded that the biologists’ case has any substantial intellectual legitimacy.
