The Transcendence of the Social: Durkheim, Weismann, and the Purification of Sociology

Abstract

Building on Fox Keller's acute genealogy of the nature-nurture opposition as located in a certain specific social, cultural, and political history in the late nineteenth century (2010), in this paper, I address a parallel problem: the making of a really modern (i.e., non-biological) sociology nearly at the same time as the "hard disjunction" (Keller, 2010) between heredity and the environment, nature and nurture, was made. I argue rather provocatively that traces of borrowing from hard heredity to sociology can be seen in Durkheim's strategic usage of Weismann to destroy Lamarckian sociology. The transcendence of the social in Durkheim is entirely isomorphic to Weismann's transcendence of the germ plasm: in both cases, they aimed to construct objective realities, radically independent and exterior from individual tendencies and peculiarities. Weismann offered Durkheim an important scientific companion to make boundaries between sociology and biology. In a Latourian sense (Latour, 1993), the purification strategy of Durkheim was actually helped by a hybridization with Weismann's biology. In conclusion, by taking Weismann as an anticipator of the genetics revolution a few years later, I argue for a profound complicity between twentieth century non-biological sociology and genetics. They both made space for a neat distinction between biological heredity and sociocultural transmission, heredity, and heritage. If sociology and genetics thought of themselves as rivals and even enemies in explaining social facts, they should reconsider their positions.

Synthesizing Proximate and Distal Levels of Explanation: Toward an Evolution-Informed Sociology

“…While Smith (2014) uses these claims to advocate a critical realist position of the individual, centering on the messy nature of personhood and sociologists' all-too-easy dismissal of this complexity, we believe that returning to Meloni's (2016) claims about the early purification of the discipline and Barkow et al's (1995) and Lopreato and Crippen's (1999) calls for serious engagement with biological and evolutionary principles provide sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. This was most clear in Parsons' close engagement with Freud and psychological theories of personality.…”

“…While Durkheim may have opened the doors for sociologists' dismissal of personal aspects of perception and action, he did acknowledge that individuals are torn between pre-and postsocial capacities (see Meloni, 2016). In his concept homo duplex, he asserted that individuals do indeed have basic biological compulsions and proclivities, though, over time, these would be subsumed by a developing social self (Durkheim, 1995).…”

“…To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society (Mills, 1959, p. 187). Thus, the paradoxical neo-Kantian position about the impossibility of understanding perception was given a simple solution: let sociologists, masters of the social, let the public know what their real problems are. Doing so solidified the project of purifying "the social" (see Meloni, 2016) that Durkheim began by anchoring it to concrete social problems. It is no surprise that in the same book advocating the need for a sociological imagination Mills (1959) lambasts work which prioritizes interdisciplinary development rather than pragmatic, social assistance: "grand theory" as emblemized by Talcott Parsons' The Social System 1991 5 .…”

“…The idea that the "purified" (Meloni, 2016) social is the sole domain of study for sociologists persisted long after Durkheim's lifetime and indirectly impacted the rejection of Parsons' (1949) attempts to produce a more fundamentally interdisciplinary approach to social life (see Williams, 2017a). Parsons (1949) attempted to unify what he saw as separate yet fundamentally similar theories about the nature of human action.…”

“…This approach explicitly complicates perception by attributing causal weight to "the social" (see Turner, 2013;Meloni, 2016), as reflected in Durkheim's claims about sociologists' need to avoid the messier, biological aspects of individual perception in his discussions of the homo duplex or the person as simultaneously straddling biological and social sources of motivation 2 . Next, we will demonstrate how this perspective prompted work by what would later be labeled "grand theorists" such as Talcott Parsons who sought after a more interdisciplinary, holistic view of human behavior.…”