Biology and the Social Sciences

In: International social science journal: ISSJ, Band 26, Heft 4, S. 598-610

Abstract

The nativist hypothesis of the founders of generative grammar, that universal grammar is an inborn structure or mechanism, biologically specific to man (& hence only fathomable in biological terms), raises the question of whether or not everything in human life can be reduced to biological factors. However, Marx's & Engel's criticism of Feuerbach, which emphasizes that treating man as merely an element of his species & disregarding the concrete societal conditioning of man, is to miss the essence of man, has recently found support from Francois Jacob, an eminent contemporary biologist. Jacob translates the Marxian distinction into the terms 'genetic code' & 'culture code', & shows that, with evolutionary progress, the rigors of heredity have been weakening, that the genetic program which includes a closed part, which is formulated in a strictly defined way, & an open part, which leaves the individual a certain freedom of development, has been increasingly emphasizing the latter, so that culture forms the second genetic system, which is superior to heredity & which goes beyond the schema of biological explanations. Where the line of demarcation between culturally created HB & behavior determined by genes must be drawn, though left unanswered by Jacob, does not involve anything more than a recognition of the specific nature of the various levels of the motion of matter, & hence of the specificity of the knowledge of each level. Even if the most basic level is that of waves & electromagnetic fields, movements of matter at a higher organizational level, though still based on the lower forms, evince new properties & regularities, adding up to a new quality which is not mechanically reducible to those fundamental forms of the movement of matter. Thought is not a product of the movement of matter & cannot be reduced to a certain form of such movement. The theory of alienation is a good case in point. For, apart from purely pathological cases, the observed subjective alienation has no independent, purely biological, elements, rather, they are all ultimately a reflection of the corresponding elements in objective alienation. Without comprehending objective alienation processes, which take place in a given society, one cannot comprehend those subjective alienation processes. But even pathologies, like cases of schizophrenia, cannot be understood through deciphering of the genetic code & other 'reduction' procedures, but point to the continuing relevance of scientific social science methods. K. Schmitt.