CONSILIENCE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINS
Abstract
In the 20th century, the term 'consilience' was popularized by Edward Wilson, who believed that it was possible to reconcile three major branches of knowledge: the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. The consilient explanation is based on the assumption of the possibility of unification of scientific knowledge and epistemological continuity. In the sciences, the problem of epistemological continuity is far less controversial than in the social sciences, and most scientists believe that there is a continuity between physics, chemistry, and biology. There are social and epistemological reasons why that problem is most often neglected in the social sciences. Today's popularity of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and similar relativistic orientations testifies to the lack of desire of social scientists to search for connections between sciences, and only a small number of scientists want to make an analogous connection between the fields. On the other hand, there are ideas and fears that it is not even desirable to establish this intellectual continuity because it reminds us of the reductionism that is most often criticized in the field of social sciences. And, finally, there is a significant number of authors who believe that it is not possible to achieve it due to the nature of knowledge of the social sciences. The thesis of this paper is that, at least, moderate consilience is possible in the social sciences as well. It requires the synthesis of knowledge from different scientific disciplines that explore the same problem to form coherent conclusions about the given phenomenon. This paper aims to point out the importance of cooperation between sociology and other scientific disciplines that study different levels of analysis of phenomena, especially when it comes to the question of where these levels overlap. In this sense, a possible perspective is an evolutionary approach, which has great potential for unification with other sciences.
References
Alexander, R. (1974). The evolution of social behavior. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 5: 325–383.
Andrews, S. (1872). The Basic Outline of Universology. New York: Dion Thomas.
Apostel, L. et al. (eds) (1972). Interdisciplinarity Teaching and Research Problems in the Universities. Paris: Centre for Educational Research and Innovation.
Aristotle. (2016). Metaphysics. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Bacon, F. (1620/1898). Novum organum. London: George Bell and Sons.
Bateson, P. & K. Laland (2013). Tinbergen's four questions: an appreciation and an update. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 28 (12): 712‒718.
Bechtel, W. & Hamilton, A. (2007). Reduction, integration, and the unity of science: Natural, behavioral, and social sciences and the humanities. In T. Kuipers (ed.). General Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues, pp. 477‒430. North Holland: Elsevier.
Boas, F. (1928). Anthropology and modern life. New York: Norton & Company.
Brown G. et al. (2011). Evolutionary accounts of human behavioural diversity. Philosophical Transactions od the Royal Society B 366 (1563): 313–324.
Brown, G. & P. Richerson (2014). Applying evolutionary theory to human behaviour: past differences and current debates. Journal of Bioeconomics 16: 105–128.
Carnap, R. (1934/1995). The Unity of Science. Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
Comte, A. (1830–42/1974). The Positive Philosophy. New York: AMS Press.
Crippen, T. (2006). Principles of ethology and sociological analysis. Evolution and Sociology 3 (2): 3‒6.
Dafermos, M. (2014) Reductionism. In: T. Teo (ed.). Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, pp. 1651‒1653. New York: Springer.
De Man, P. (1982). The resistance to theory. Yale French Studies 63: 3–20.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dokins, R. (1976/2008). Sebični gen. Smederevo: Heliks.
Douglas, G. & Torrey, N. (1947). The Censoring of Diderot’s Encyclopédie and the Reestablished Text. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dupre, J. (1983). The Disunity of Science. Mind 92 (367): 321–346.
Dupre, J. (1996). The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Durkheim, E. (1987/2005). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. London: Routledge.
Elder-Vass, D. (2012). Top-down causation and social structures. Interface focus 2 (1): 82–90.
Ellis, L. (1977). The decline and fall of sociology, 1975‒2000. The American Sociologist 12 (2) 56‒66.
Ellis, L. (1996). A discipline in peril: Sociology's future hinges on curing its biophobia. The American Sociologist 27 (2): 21‒41.
Ellis, L. & A. Hoskin (2015). Criminality and the 2D:4D Ratio: Testing the prenatal androgen hypothesis. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 59 (3): 295‒312.
Emmeche, C., S. Koppe & F. Stjernfelt (2000). Levels, emergence, and three versions of downward causation. In: P. Andersen et al. (eds.), Downward Causation. Minds, Bodies and Matter, pp. 13‒34. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Falkenburg, B. (2020). On method: The fact of science and the distinction between natural science and the humanities. Kant Yearbook 12 (1): 1–31.
Fodor, J. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The sisunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese 28 (2): 97‒115.
Franks, D. (2010). Neurosociology: The nexus Between Neuroscience and Social Psychology. New York: Springer.
Friedman, M. (ed.) (2004). Kant: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Galison, P. (1996). Introduction: The context of disunity. In: P. Galison & D. Stump (eds.), The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gambarotto, A. (2017). Lorenz Oken (1779–1851): Naturphilosophie and the reform of natural history. British Society for the History of Science 50 (2): 329‒340.
Gould, S. (2003). The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap between Science and the Humanities. New York: Random House-Harmony Books.
Hage, J. (2013). Three kinds of coherentism. In: M. Araszkiewicz and J. Šavelka (eds.), Coherence: Insights from Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Artificial Intelligence. Law and Philosophy Library, pp 1‒32. Dordrecht: Springer.
Hamilton, W. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1): 1–16.
Hartmann, E. (2017). Violence: Constructing an emerging field of sociology. International Journal of Conflict and Violence 11: 1‒9.
Hopcroft, R. (2019). Sociology: A Biosocial Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Iggers, G. (1959). Further remarks about early uses of the term "Social Science". Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (3): 433.
Jung, H. (2007) Edward O. Wilson's theory of consilience: A hermeneutical critique, International Journal of Public Administration 25 (9‒10): 1171‒1197.
Kauffman, S. (1993). The Origins of Order. Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Keller, S., H. Longino & K. Waters (eds.) (2006). Scientific Pluralism. London: University of Minnesota Press.
King, M. (2013). Against consilience: Outsider scholarship and the Isthmus theory of knowledge domains. Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal for New Thought, Research, and Praxis 9 (2): 123‒145.
Klein, J. (1990). Interdisciplinarity: History, theory, and practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Lejewski, C. (1965). The concept of matter in presocratic philosophy. In: E. McMullin (ed.), The Concept of Matter in Greek and Medieval Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Lenski, G. (2005). Ecological-Evolutionary Theory. Bolulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Lopreato, J. & T. Crippen (1999). Crisis in Sociology. The Need for Darwin. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Maryanski, A., Machalek, R. & Turner, J. (2015). Handbook on Evolution and Society: Toward an Evolutionary Social Science. New York: Routledge.
Mazur, A. (1978). Biological explanation in sociology. The Sociological Quarterly 19 (4): 604–613.
Mazur, A. (2004). Biosociology of Dominance and Deference. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
McRae, R. (1957). The Unity of the sciences: Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz. Journal of the History of Ideas 18 (1): 27‒48.
Mead, M. (1951). The School in American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Milošević, Z. (2006). Od socijalne fizike do sociologije. Zbornik Matice srpske 122: 221‒228.
Mitchell, S. (2003). Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nagel, E. (1961). The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace
Nesse, R. (2019). Tinbergen’s four questions: Two proximate, two evolutionary. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health 1 (2): 1‒2.
Neurath, O. (1944). Foundations of the social sciences. In: O. Neurath, R. Carnap & C. Morris (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Unified Science Vol II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Neurath, O., R. Carnap & C. Morris (eds.) (1938/1955). International Encyclopedia of Unified Science Vol. I. Part 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Oppenheim, P. & H. Putnam (1958). Unity of science as a working hypothesis. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2: 3‒36.
Pascal, B. (1660/1982). Pensees. Paris: Editions du Cerf.
Roche, W. (2010). Coherentism, truth, and witness agreement. Acta Analytica 25: 243–257.
Sanderson, S. (1990). Social Evolutionism: A Critical History. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Santos, G. (2015). Upward and downward causation from a relational-horizontal ontological perspective. Axiomathes 25: 23–40.
Sarkar, S. (2015). Nagel on reduction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 53: 43‒56.
Sayer, A (2010). Reductionism in social science. In: R. Lee (ed.). Questioning Nineteenth Century Assumptions About Knowledge, II: Reductionism, pp. 5‒39. New York: State University of New York Press.
Scheff, T. (2013). Getting unstuck: Interdisciplinarity as a new discipline. Sociological Forum 28 (1): 179‒185.
Sesardić, N. (1985). Filozofija nauke. Beograd: Nolit.
Shermer, M. (2005). The fossil fallacy. Scientific American. Preuzeto 17. 9. 2021. sa https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-fossil-fallacy/>
Simmel, G. (1908/1950). The triad. In: K. Wolf (ed.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 145‒169. New York: The Free Press.
Škorić, M. (2009). Evolucioni program u sociologiji. Sociološki Pregled 43 (4): 413‒443
Škorić, M. & A. Kišjuhas (2015). Magic social numbers: On the social geometry of human groups. Anthropos 110 (2): 489‒501.
Slingerland, E. & Collard, M. (2012). Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and Humanities. New York: Oxford University Press.
Takacs, K. (2018). Discounting of evolutionary explanations in sociology textbooks and curricula. Frontiers in Sociology 3 (24): 1‒4.
Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie 20: 410–433
Tooby, J. & L. Cosmides (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In: J. Barkow, L. Cosmides & J. Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind. Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, pp. 137–159. New York: Oxford University Press.
Trivers, R. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1): 35–57.
Turner, J. (2007). Human Emotions: A Sociological Theory. New York: Routledge.
Turner, J. & Machalek, R. (2018). The New Evolutionary Sociology. Recent and Revitalized Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. New York: Routledge.
Van Bouwel, J. (2014). Pluralists about pluralism? Different versions of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry. In: M. Galavotti et al. (eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Science, pp. 105–119. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Van den Berghe, P. (1975). Man in Society: A Biosocial View. North Holland: Elsevier.
Varella, M. et al. (2013). Misunderstandings in applying evolution to human mind and behavior and its causes: a systematic review. The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies 5 (1): 81–107.
Von Bertalanaffy, L. (1951) General system theory; a new approach to unity of science. Human Biology 23 (4): 302‒312.
Walsh, A. (2014). Biosociology: Bridging the Biology-Sociology Divide. New York: Routledge.
Wessel, A. (2009). What is epigenesis? Or gene’s place in development. Human Ontogenetics 3 (2): 35‒37.
Whewell, W. (1840/2014). In The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences: Founded upon their History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal Machine. New York: Wiley.
Wilson, E. (1975/2000). Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, E. (1978). On Human Nature. New York: Bantam Books.
Wilson, E. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage.
Wilson, M. (2000). Aristotle's theory of the unity of science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Autori zadržavaju autorska prava i pružaju časopisu pravo prvog objavljivanja rada i licenciraju ga "Creative Commons Attribution licencom" koja omogućava drugima da dijele rad, uz uslov navođenja autorstva i izvornog objavljivanja u ovom časopisu.
- Autori mogu izraditi zasebne, ugovorne aranžmane za neekskluzivnu distribuciju članka objavljenog u časopisu (npr. postavljanje u institucionalni repozitorijum ili objavljivanje u knjizi), uz navođenje da je članak izvorno objavljen u ovom časopisu.
- Autorima je dozvoljeno i podstiču se da postave objavljeni članak onlajn (npr. u institucionalni repozitorijum ili na svoju internet stranicu) prije ili tokom postupka prijave rukopisa, s obzirom da takav postupak može voditi produktivnoj razmjeni ideja i ranijoj i većoj citiranosti objavljenog članka (Vidi Efekti otvorenog pristupa).