ABSTRACT
Can we imagine an intellectual relationship between the biological and social sciences, which is one of neither reduction nor isolation, but of sharing the scientific study of humans, simultaneously conceived as organisms and as social, enculturated beings? This chapter is about the philosophical and methodological reasons for posing the biological question to the social sciences, in light of a new understanding of what interdisciplinary scientific work means. A special concern in this chapter is to show that the ontological and methodological barriers thought to separate the biological and social sciences are often the products of a crude caricature of the interactions between scientific disciplines. Interdisciplinary human science without either reductionism or isolationism is possible.
