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An Evolutionary Social Science? a Skeptic's Brief, Theoretical And 10.1177/0048393104269196PHILOSOPHYBryantARTICLE / AN EVOLUTIONARY OF THE SOCIAL SOCIAL SCIENCES SCIENCE? / December 2004 An Evolutionary Social Science? A Skeptic’s Brief, Theoretical and Substantive JOSEPH M. BRYANT University of Toronto So-called grand or paradigmatic theories—structural functionalism, psycho- analysis, Marxism, rational-choice theory—provide their proponents with a conceptual vocabulary and syntax that allows for the classification and config- uring of wide ranges of phenomena. Advocates for any particular “analytical grammar” are accordingly prone to conflating the internal coherence of their paradigm—its integrated complex of definitions, axioms, and inferences—with a corresponding capacity for representational verisimilitude. The distinction between Theory-as-heuristic and Theory-as-imposition is of course difficult to negotiate in practice, given that empirical observation and measurement are not entirely “theory neutral” or independent of prior analytical conceptualization. Nonetheless, the scientific cogency of any theory is ultimately evaluated by the substantive realism of its foundational assumptions and categorical designa- tions; that is, the accuracy with which it identifies and tracks the determinant properties and processes of the phenomena to be explicated. The paradigm of sociocultural evolutionism—despite extensive revamping by contemporary proponents—does not carry warrant in this regard, as its recourse to an analyti- cal grammar fashioned and derived from another discipline raises doubts about its empirical veridicality.This article revisits the contentious issue of remodeling social phenomena in accordance with biological categories and offers both a the- oretical and a substantive critique of the “selectionist” paradigm. The transdisciplinary program of historical social science is affirmed by wayof counterpoint. Keywords: sociocultural evolutionism; historical social science; explanatory logic; mimesis; warfare; ancient Greece; early Christianity Received 20 August 2001 I would like to thank Rod Nelson, Irving Zeitlin, Jack Veugelers, Robin Griller, John Hall, Jim DiCenso, Bernd Baldus, Rosaire Langlois, Russ McCutcheon, Michael Schiffer, Raymond Martin, Paul Cartledge, and the three readers for this journal for their helpful commentary on draft versions of this article. I also gratefully acknowledge fellowship support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 34 No. 4, December 2004 451-492 DOI: 10.1177/0048393104269196 © 2004 Sage Publications 451 452 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / December 2004 All metaphorical expression is unclear (asaphes). Aristotle, Topics, 139b34-35 Not everything that is conceived of also partakes of reality. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists, I.49 Do the categories and theorems of evolutionary biology hold the key to resolving the fractious Methodenstreite that have for so long polarized inquiry within the social sciences? Can the “thick descrip- tive” accounts favored by the historically and ethnographically ori- ented be integrated with the “grand theorizing” projects of the deduc- tively and mathematically inclined, through the mediating links afforded by biological analytics? Such is the view of a significant and growing number of social scientists, whose ambitious claims receive a concise summary in Marion Blute’s (1997) “History versus Science: The Evolutionary Solution.” Offering a commentary on recent contro- versies regarding the status of historical sociology and a compen- dium on developments in sociocultural evolutionary theory, Blute’s diagnosis and prescriptive raises several interesting questions that require consideration. As a torrent of similar programmatic state- ments regarding the alleged merits of a neo-Darwinian “selectionist paradigm” have found prominent expression in recent years—partic- ularly in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, developmental psy- chology,and sociology—it is clear there are important issues at stake.1 In the partial assessment that follows, I endeavor to establish two points. First, any “history versus science” antinomy is predicated on a log- ically untenable and methodologically impracticable idiographic- 1. The internal diversity that characterizes the evolutionary program in the social sciences—ranging from hardcore sociobiological efforts to more accommodative gene- culture interdependency modeling—presents some difficulty of “targeting” for critics. I address here what I take to be a syndrome of assumptions and principles that guide the current “selectionist” or “neo-Darwinian” project. For representative statements from sociological advocates, see Runciman (1998b), and more polemically, Lopreato and Crippen (1999). On evolutionary archaeology, see the debate between Boone and Smith (1998) and Lyman and O’Brien (1998). A representative package of substantive and speculative applications is offered in Betzig (1997), and one can turn to the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems for other examples of evolution-inspired research. For the gene-culture coevolutionary program, consult Laland, Kumm, and Feldman (1995). A recent special issue in History and Theory is devoted to assessing the relevance of evo- lutionary modeling for practicing historians, the critical contribution by Fracchia and Lewontin (1999) being most relevant to the concerns of this article. Bryant / AN EVOLUTIONARY SOCIAL SCIENCE? 453 nomothetic distinction. Prejudicially slanted to privilege nomothetic notions of explanation, such a bipolar orientation misleadingly implies that historical social science is confined to an atheoretical detailing of particular cases and their idiosyncratic developments. Descriptive narrational accounts, on this view,must find their explan- atory formulation and integration within the universal or lawlike parameters specified by a general deductivist theory or algorithm. The scientifically central and primary epistemic issue—which con- cerns the appropriate scope or level of abstraction to be adopted for any particular set of explananda—is thereby fundamentally misrepresented. Second, the claim that sociocultural evolutionism can or does pro- vide a nomological ordering for the “idiographic yields” of historical social science remains unproven and unconvincing, as proponents of the systematic transfer of categories from biology have, to date, failed to establish any genuine homologies or isomorphisms between bio- logical and social phenomena. To the extent that sociocultural evolutionism anchors its accounts in ecological or “contextual” analy- sis and in the tracing of genealogical or “path-dependent” relations, it follows an explanatory logic similar to that used within historical sociology. To the extent that sociocultural evolutionism invokes the nomothetic axioms of natural selection to account for what transpires in social contexts and processes, it engages in a metaphorical deductivism that risks occluding, or distorting, the determinant causal relations that can be identified through a sociologically informed ecological-genealogical analytics. I. TRANSCENDING THE IDIOGRAPHIC-NOMOTHETIC POLARITY: THE PROMISE AND PRACTICE OF HISTORICAL SOCIAL SCIENCE Blute’s article opens with a restatement of opposing positions that derive their credence from the old epistemological orthodoxy. Two styles of research are seen to have contended in the study of human affairs: an inductive mode, which provides descriptive accounts of constellations of phenomena examined in their full or intensive sin- gularity; and a deductive mode, which provides generalizing expla- nations of recurring patterns among extensive ranges of related and homogeneous phenomena. The former yields idiographic insight, an understanding of concrete events and processes, as situated in their 454 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / December 2004 particular spatiotemporal contexts; the latter yields nomothetic knowl- edge, an explanatory specification of the laws that govern phenom- ena in necessary and so invariant fashion, as subject to ceteris paribus qualifications. Whence the “history versus science” divide of which Blute speaks, and the division within the social sciences between those who ground their analyses in close attention to origins, con- texts, and trajectories, and those who seek to identify processes and relations that are alleged to be determinant regardless of time, irre- spective of place.2 The epistemic landscape thus mapped, Blute turns to the ongoing debate within the social sciences over the proper balance between “history” and “theory” in the explication of social life. Arrayed on one side of the schism are the historical sociologists, who insist that because “time and place matter,” and because social processes are path dependent, “only idiographic (or particular) and not nomothetic (or law-like) statements are possible about human affairs” (1997, 347). Ranged against them are the more conventional scientifically ori- ented sociologists, who assail their rivals with charges of having “for- saken theory,”and thus of having “abandoned science.” With this tra- ditional bisection of the field of contention reaffirmed, Blute proceeds to herald “evolutionary theory” as the via media that does full justice to, and so integrates, the focus on specific contexts and trajectories that is the hallmark of historical-sociological analysis, and the gener- alizing or deductive logic commonly employed in positivistic social science. In “understanding
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