Biosociology and the Standard Social Science Model: In Search for the Golden Mean

The article examines the main provisions of the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM): the psychic unity of the humankind; the exclusive role of sociocultural factors in determining the human nature; the exclusion of evolved biological features, mental and other human traits from consideration; learning as the mechanism for incorporating culture by individuals and their development. Psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides proposed this model in 1992. According to their estimates, it dominated in social sciences and the humanities in the 20th century. The assumptions of this model entered into sociology due to the adoption by sociologists of Emile Durkheim's idea on the sufficiency of explaining social facts by other social facts for their adequate understanding, the subordination of biopsychic processes to social ones, and were entrenched under the development of the ideas of social constructivism. In recent years, as a consequence of the changes in the body of scientific knowledge associated with the convergence of the naturalistic methodology of natural sciences with the sociocentric views of the humanities, an explicit or implicit revision of this model has been observed. In sociology, this process was initiated by the development of biosociological research (neurosociology, evolutionary sociology, social studies of genomics, and some others), in which attempts of incorporating evolutionary and biological variables are being made. These studies revealed that basic mental mechanisms in humans are similar to those of other animals and are formed in the process of evolution when dealing with different adaptation problems. In turn, the sociocultural environment supports/suppresses/configures people's predispositions to certain types of social perception, cognition and behavior and differentiates the influence of the genes and other neurobiological factors on humans. Tooby and Cosmides originally described the Standard Social Science Model with the aim of demonstrating alternative research possibilities (in their case, this was evolutionary psychology). However, their attempt has not escaped criticism for a simplified drawing of the methodological and ontological foundations of social sciences and the humanities (in particular, centering them around the idea of human mind as a blank slate in its extreme version), reassessment (and sometimes incorrect estimation) of the SSSM role in the formation of secular ideology, etc. Representatives of biosociological areas, as a rule, do not explicitly criticize this model. However, their studies offer a new perspective beyond the sole explanations of the social by the social and thereby promote the development of a more complex and balanced sociological approach.

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