Bridging Levels of Systemic Organization [and Comments and Reply]

The Concept of Meaning In Recent Anthropological Theory

“…Anthropologists often uncritically accept philosophical positions and introduce these into the anthropological literature via argument from authority rather than rational dialectic." (Rubenstein & Laughlin, 1977;460) This is already happening with respect to anthropologists emphasizing ideas about 'meaning' from the philosophy of language.…”

On “Culture and Sociobiology”

“…Since the range and type of data as well as the methods of investigation that are considered legitimate in a science are in large part determined by the theoretical paradigm guiding its research programs, it is of no small consequence to note that the sociobiological investigation of human behavior yields "incomplete data" -especially when, as Barkow asserts, this incompleteness cannot, even in principle, place the theoretical formulation in jeopardy. I would suggest, and suspect that Barkow would agree, that we need to be wary of any theoretical framework that requires us to deal only with data from a single level of systemic organization (see Rubinstein and Laughlin 1977). Yet this is precisely what sociobiology urges us to do.…”

“…Thus, even if the data at hand should prove "incomplete," these approaches have the advantage that the introduction of additional levels of data would not need to be justified anew in every case (cf. Rubinstein and Laughlin 1977, dAquili, Laughlin, and McManus 1979, Laughlin and Brady 1978.…”