Discounting of Evolutionary Explanations in Sociology Textbooks and Curricula

Takács, Károly

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2018.00024

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…These speculations generally fall into two camps. One camp is trial-and-error , where, according to Thomas Dietz et al (1990:160), an individual “invents a rule, tries it out, assesses the results, and retains, modifies, or rejects that rule based on the outcome of one or several trials.” The other camp is social learning where, as Károly Takács (2018:n.p.) puts, “all human sociality is learnt during socialization.” Miller’s sexual selection thus offers a third way which preferred macro-sociocultural landscapes are transmitted across generations—which is the fourth lesson.…”

Section: Gene-culture Coevolution As a Key Biological-social Linkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…but by the capacity of a sociocultural formation to survive over time in an environment” (Turner and Abrutyn 2017:533; my emphasis). Stemming from this logic, evolutionary sociology is only interested in explaining those sociocultural formations which persist over time and are widely considered as “cultural universals that are present [even] in every small-scale human society” that “clearly supports the common roots of human culture and the need of evolutionary explanations” rather than “direct sociological causes” (Takács 2018:n.p.). As to how long a sociocultural formation has survived persistently in order to be qualified for an evolutionary explanation?…”

Section: Specifications Of the Causal Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some founders of sociology even published their evolutionary canons before Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1860 (e.g., Comte, Spencer, Marx, and Engels); some after (e.g., Durkheim). The incorporation of evolutionary explanations in sociology reached its peak in the mid-twentieth century under the aegis of dominant structural-functionalism of T. Parsons (1964; see also Degler 1991;Takács 2018). Since then, the acceptance of social Darwinian thoughts that underlay structural-functionalist explanations began to decline owing to its maladoption for fascist and Nazi ideologies and the fear of biological determinism (Ellis 1996;Hopcroft 2016;Horowitz, Yaworsky, and Kickham 2014;Pinker 2002;Udry 1995;Van den Berghe 1990).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Returning Biology to Evolutionary Sociology: Reflections on the Conceptual Hiatuses of “New Evolutionary Sociology” as a Vantage Point

2022

Sociological Perspectives

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Decades of scholarly efforts to reignite the theoretical integration between sociology and biology have come to partial fruition in the birth of evolutionary sociology at the turn of the twentieth-first century. This paper examines one of the most elaborated versions of the paradigm—“new evolutionary sociology” (NES)—proposed by Jonathan H. Turner and colleagues. NES emphasizes purposeful, multilevel selective pressure targeted at corporate units, groups, or societies—rather than the blind, Darwinian natural selection on individuals—from which institutional systems are developed. Despite its contribution, NES possesses conceptual lacunae that have fettered NES in specific and evolutionary sociology in general from becoming a novel and truly evolutionary-cum-sociological paradigm in explaining social phenomena. This paper identifies three conceptual hiatuses of NES, in that it lacks due deliberation of (1) the gene-culture interaction that bridges individual behaviors—via natural, sexual, group, and multilevel selections—with the emerging sociocultural formations; (2) the epistemic role of fitness as a post factum propensity in empirical analysis; and (3) the concept of causal mechanism utilized to explain the diverse paths leading to the emergent phenomena.

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Section: Gene-culture Coevolution As a Key Biological-social Linkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Specifications Of the Causal Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Returning Biology to Evolutionary Sociology: Reflections on the Conceptual Hiatuses of “New Evolutionary Sociology” as a Vantage Point

2022

Sociological Perspectives

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“…Dies gilt jedoch auch in umgekehrter Richtung. So ist es wenig überraschend, dass soziologische Arbeiten, die im Sinne von Wallerstein fachfremde Erkenntnisse in die eigenen Theoriemodelle einzuarbeiten und diese perspektivisch im Sinne einer evolutionären Soziologie zu erweitern suchen (Runciman 1989(Runciman , 2009Turner 2003Turner , 2007Turner und Maryanski 2008;Turner und Abrutyn 2017;Turner und Machalek 2018;Takács 2018), vergleichsweise wenig Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehen bzw. Folgen für die allgemeine Theorieentwicklung zeitigen.…”

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Normativität und Emotionalität. Eine anthropologisch-evolutionäre Perspektive auf die Soziogenese zweier miteinander verbundener Modi humaner Vergesellschaftung

Niedenzu

2022

Österreich Z Soziol

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ZusammenfassungIn diesem Beitrag geht es um die wechselseitige Verbindung von Normativität und Emotionalität in sozialen Prozessen. Einerseits wird die Wirksamkeit von Normen durch deren emotionale Inkorporierung mit abgesichert, andererseits werden affektiv-emotionale Befindlichkeiten normativ bearbeitet und sozial strukturiert. Im Beitrag wird diesem Wirkungszusammenhangs aus einer soziogenetischen Perspektive nachgegangen, d. h. die Frage nach dessen anthropologisch-evolutionstheoretischen Begründbarkeit gestellt. Im Anschluss an die Disziplinen übergreifende Programmatik der Philosophischen Anthropologie sowie der rekonstruktiv verfahrenden Erkenntnisstrategie der historisch-genetischen Theorie wird auf einer konzeptuellen Ebene diskutiert, wie sich Normativität und Emotionalität als zwei strukturell miteinander verbundene Modi der Weltzuwendung aus der Gattungsgeschichte heraus einsichtig machen lassen. Als Schlüsselmoment erweist sich dabei das evolutionär entstandene konstruktive Vermögen, welches es Menschen ermöglicht, ihre naturale Indeterminiertheit bzw. Weltoffenheit kulturell zu bewältigen. Im anlaufenden Vergesellschaftungsprozess wird die sich in Gang setzende Ausbildung von sinnbasierter Normativität von vorneherein mit der Umstrukturierung der organischen Affektbasis in Emotionalität verbunden.

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“… 2 For reasons of sociology's neglect of evolutionary science see also Takács ( 2018 ) and Chattoe-Brown ( 2019 ). …”

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confidence: 99%

Toward a sociology of evolution in the Anthropocene–Shared intentionality and cooperation through understanding minds

Pries

2022

Front. Sociol.

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Sociology has a long tradition of diagnosing contemporary societies, but little theoretical and empirical instruments for analyzing the long-term evolution of human coexistence. This goes hand in hand with a bias to disregard insights of evolutionary theory and research. The main argument here to develop is that a sociology of evolution should enter at the core of our discipline. This becomes even more important in the era of the Anthropocene as a new geo-chronological period of the planet's evolution that is characterized by substantial human influencing of planetary ecological mechanisms and could be found in earth sediments. If human intervention in the planet has reached such a scale that its future fate is no longer shaped mainly by natural cosmological laws, but by human intervention, then sociology has to broaden its temporal and substantive perspective; it should reflect more explicitly on the relationship between nature, culture, and technology. In what follows, we plead for giving evolutionary sociology, especially the long-term evolution of human coexistence between nature and culture, a greater place in sociology. To this end, we address three points. First, we ask why sociology is not concerned with the co-evolution of other creatures, but almost exclusively focused on the development and social change of humans over the short period of the last few centuries. Second, we argue that, with respect to the nature-culture relationship, sociology has essentially followed a questionable scientific division of labor, according to which the natural sciences deal with natural phenomena and sociology with sociocultural phenomena. Finally, we address the debate on the Anthropocene and distinguish between two ways of responding to the challenges it poses, namely with more technology or with more culture.

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Discounting of Evolutionary Explanations in Sociology Textbooks and Curricula

Cited by 10 publications

References 98 publications

Returning Biology to Evolutionary Sociology: Reflections on the Conceptual Hiatuses of “New Evolutionary Sociology” as a Vantage Point

Returning Biology to Evolutionary Sociology: Reflections on the Conceptual Hiatuses of “New Evolutionary Sociology” as a Vantage Point

Normativität und Emotionalität. Eine anthropologisch-evolutionäre Perspektive auf die Soziogenese zweier miteinander verbundener Modi humaner Vergesellschaftung

Toward a sociology of evolution in the Anthropocene–Shared intentionality and cooperation through understanding minds

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