Leaving the Cave: Evolutionary Naturalism in Social Scientific Thought

521 Pages·1996·30.299 MB·English

by  Pat Duffy Hutcheon

leaving the cave(cid:10)(cid:13)
Evolutionary
Naturalism in
Social-Scientific
Thought
PAT DUFFY HUTCHEON
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hutcheon, Pat Duffy, 1926-
Leaving the cave : evolutionary naturalism in
social-scientific thought
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88920-258-3
1. Social sciences - Philosophy - History.
2. Naturalism. I. Title.
H61.H87 1996 300M C95-932396-1
Copyright© 1996
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
Cover design by Leslie Macredie using an illustration created for
this book by Sandra Woolfrey.
Printed in Canada
Leaving the Cave: Evolutionary Naturalism in Social-Scientific Thought has been pro-
duced from a manuscript supplied in electronic form by the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be
reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechani-
cal—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photo-
copying, recording, taping, or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems
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Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6.
To my grandchildren
and all their generation
The frailty of our reason
and the brevity of our sojourn here
need not deter the inquiring mind.
For by searching out the footsteps
of the giants, we—like they —
can leave the confines of the cave behind.
— Pat Duffy Hutcheon
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xv
One
Distant Echoes of a Road Not Taken: Undercurrents of
Naturalism in the Classical World 1
Two
Erasmus: The Re-emergence of Naturalism 18
Three
Pioneers of Modern Social Science: Montaigne, Hobbes and Hume 30
Four
The Political and Educational Theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 57
Five
Harriet Martineau and the Quiet Revolution 70
Six
The Dialectical Materialism of Karl Marx 97
Seven
Charles Darwin: The Reluctant Revolutionary 114
Eight
Herbert Spencer: Setting the Stage for a Unified Study of Humanity 128
Nine
What Price Immortality? The Faustian Tragedy of Sigmund Freud 149
Ten
Ivan Pavlov and the Third Copernican Revolution 172
Eleven
John Dewey and the Universality of Scientific Inquiry 186
Twelve
From Naturalism to Mysticism: Henri Bergson 205
Thirteen
The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl 217
V
vi Leaving the Cave
Fourteen
Emile Durkheim and Max Weber: A Matter of Boundaries 228
Fifteen
The Process of Cultural Evolution: George Herbert Mead 258
Sixteen
George Santayana on a Unified Social Theory 276
Seventeen
Bertrand Russell and the Quest for Philosophical Certainty 293
Eighteen
The Evolutionary Social Theory of Julian Huxley 310
Nineteen
The Existential Political Theory of Hannah Arendt 324
Twenty
Eric Fromm and Humanistic Psychology 346
Twenty-One
The Genetic Developmentalism of Jean Piaget 361
Twenty-Two
Karl Popper and the Evolution of Scientific Knowledge 380
Twenty-Three
The Radical Behaviourism of B.F. Skinner 399
Twenty-Four
Modern Evolutionary Theory: Richard Dawkins and
Stephen Jay Gould 420
Twenty-Five
Thomas Kuhn and the Crisis in Social Science 445
Twenty-Six
Toward a Unified Social Science 466
Appendix
Evolutionary Spiral 493
Index 497
Preface
T
his book was prompted by a question that just would not go away. How
can one explain the general failure of social science to accumulate reli-
able knowledge? It has been around, in its present modern form, for over three
centuries, and its seeds have been germinating for much longer. Why, then,
the dearth of progress in all but a few isolated areas of scholarship? Why are
practitioners in the social realm (such as therapists, politicians, educators and
criminologists) still being forced to operate virtually on a "wing and a
prayer" while the public continues to suffer the consequences of failed trial-
and-error interventions?
As a sociologist of historical, theoretical and interdisciplinary bent, I had
become dissatisfied with the excuses of the increasingly beleaguered scientists
within these disciplines, and with the popular celebrations of irrationality
favoured by the anti-scientists among us. In the end, it was in the justifications
of the latter group that I discerned a glimmer of the possible answer.
I began to conjecture that there must be some formidable obstacle to the
scientific study of humanity in our culture— if not in human nature, as the
non-rationalists believe and even seem to hope. It came to me that the domi-
nant current of thought in every society, in every historical era, has been fun-
damentally opposed to the very idea of the operation of cause and effect in hu-
man behaviour. This led me to ponder on the nature of the world view that
would encourage social science to flourish, and to marvel that elements of it
had continued to survive at all, in an environment so consistently hostile.
For I saw at once that the way of thinking conducive to the development of
a scientific approach to human studies has been with us for a long time, al-
though its influence is muted even now, in this so-called age of science. It is a
way of thinking usually referred to as naturalism, and it has been associated
throughout history with the companion idea of evolution. It stems from the
premise that human beings are continuous with all of nature, and that all of na-
ture is continuously evolving. I recognized, as well, what I had already sensed
but not fully understood about this minority stream of thought. It has always
posed a threat to the established philosophy in every time and place in history.
It could not do otherwise, for its two necessary premises about existence, and
of the place of humankind within it, are in direct conflict with prevailing be-
liefs about human nature.
vn
viii Leaving the Cave
This dilemma is too often overlooked by practising social scientists. We
seldom pause to reflect that the premises of naturalism are also the philosophi-
cal prerequisites for any behavioural or social discipline attempting to be sci-
entific in fact as well as name. Without a firm grounding in the philosophy of
naturalism, social science can be nothing but an empty promise. It is impera-
tive, therefore, that we understand the nature of the necessary premises of this
world view.
The first concerns a commonality and consistency among all existing in-
organic and organic forms. It implies that humans are an integral part of the
"stuff" of the universe, no less natural than any other part. This naturalistic
premise requires no injection of—nor interjection by — an unknowable
"spirit" from beyond nature at some crucial point in our emergence. Nor does
it demand belief in some mysterious access to a consciousness beyond that
created by our experience of nature. It implies, simply, that our actions and re-
lationships (regardless of the complexity of the connections involved) are as
subject to causality as are those of any other existing entities. It is this crucial
conclusion that both justifies and demands the use of the scientific method in
studies of human relations.
A recognition of human groundedness within nature has allowed the pio-
neers of naturalism to focus on its other defining premise. This has to do with
the distinctiveness of our species as the only animal thus far to have evolved a
critical consciousness and culture. It involves the human animal, firstly, in its
role as knower, and secondly, as artist and valuer. Proponents of the naturalis-
tic view have tended to be interested in the evolutionary origin and use of
reason — and of language and sense-perception — in the ongoing human task
of observing regularities, and of proposing and testing explanations of these.
Many have celebrated the worth of our species' imaginative and aesthetic
products such as architecture, music, literature and the visual arts. Others have
dealt with the significance of humankind's capacity for morality: the propensi-
ty to create ideals, and to make choices, which then function to direct and
shape individual characters and the very culture which gave them birth.
People with these sorts of abiding interests, commitments and assump-
tions have been the true social scientists all through history — whether they
were known as social philosophers, philosophers of science, humanists, psy-
chologists, sociologists, anthropologists, political economists, or by more eso-
teric labels. Often they have pursued their chosen path at great risk to their
careers, if not, indeed, their very lives. For an insistence on explaining human
behaviour in terms of natural evolutionary processes undermines the very
foundation of "conventional wisdom." It has been an unpopular practice in
every age.
At this point in my thinking, I knew what I must do. I had come to the real-
ization that too often we have been taught to revere the wrong heroes. We have
Preface ix
been encouraged to create larger-than-life idols out of the prophets of mysti-
cism, and to cower within the caves of absolutism that their words have con-
jured up. I decided that it is time for a thorough look at the builders of the nat-
uralistic and evolutionary current within social-scientific thought: one that
would consider them in the context of their times, and in all their human falli-
bility and lonely courage. These are the people who dared to ask, "How did it
come to be?" and "How do we know that is true?" and "Is there not a natural
explanation for those events?" It was their habit of asking and checking out
ideas that was important—not their answers, although we can only marvel at
the enduring quality of some of those early insights. These were the ancestors
of a scientific approach to what we have prematurely called social science, and
if that deeply human project is ever fully realized, it will be due, in large part,
to the maps they drew.
I discovered that, at times, their answers led us into detours and costly
dead-ends. Inevitably, however, the method forced succeeding inquirers back
to the enduring path that opened up ahead. And the search went on.
The criterion used for selecting my heroes was a universally influential
contribution to the origin, survival or enhancement of concepts crucial to the
development of any or all of the major components of the naturalistic world
view. These are: (1) the idea of evolution as the key to understanding change
at all levels of existence; (2) the crucial assumption of cause and effect in hu-
man behaviour; (3) the idea of knowledge as humanly devised and verified;
and (4) the belief that morality and creativity are grounded in, and restricted
to, human experience.
On the whole, my attempt to trace the perseverance of this naturalistic cur-
rent within social thought throughout twenty-six centuries of cultural evolu-
tion has been at once intriguing and profoundly sad. From the perspective of
humanity in general I found it to be the story of opportunities lost and possi-
bilities unrealized. All too often the record revealed a painful "rediscovery of
the wheel," century after century. The failure of scholars to evaluate and build
upon what came before — and even to read seriously the works of their con-
temporaries operating from competing models and in related disciplines —
has been an almost insurmountable obstacle to progress in every era. It is my
hope that this book will be a means by which all who enter any of the social
sciences may become aware of the common ontological, biological and
psychological grounding of the entire field, and of the encompassing concep-
tual map within which their own particular problem area must be located.
For the major discovery of this study is that, over the centuries, there has
indeed been a cumulative build-up and enhancement of certain significant
ideas. I have tried to show how these ideas form the outlines of a commanding
new conceptual framework: one that is beginning to be recognized as evolu-
tionary naturalism. I view this as the source of an emerging paradigm that