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Culture, biology, and human behavior

A mechanistic approach

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Abstract

Social scientists have not integrated relevant knowledge from the biological sciences into their explanations of human behavior. This failure is due to a longstanding antireductionistic bias against the natural sciences, which follows on a commitment to the view that social facts must be explained by social laws. This belief has led many social scientists into the error of reifying abstract analytical constructs into entities that possess powers of agency. It has also led to a false nature-culture dichotomy that effectively undermines the place of biology in social scientific explanation. Following the principles of methodological individualism, we show how behavioral explanations supported by data and theory from the neurosciences can be used to correct the errors of reificationist thinking in the social sciences. We outline a mechanistic approach to the explanation of human behavior with the hope that the biological sciences will begin to find greater acceptance among social scientists.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, P. O. Box 270, 08903-0270, New Brunswick, NJ

    Horst D. Steklis & Alex Walter

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  1. Horst D. Steklis
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Horst D. Steklis is Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. His research and publications have focused on a variety of issues in primate biology, including the neurobiology of communication (“Primate Communication, Comparative Neurology, and the Origin of Language Reexamined,”Journal of Human Evolution 14:157–173, 1985) and the proximate and ultimate causes of aggressive and sexual behavior (“Menstrual-cycle Phase and Sexual Behavior in Semi-free-ranging Stumptail Macaques [Macaca arctoides],” with Robin Fox,International Journal of Primatology 9:443–456, 1988; “Loss of Estrus in Human Evolution: Too Many Answers, Too Few Questions,” with C. Whiteman,Ethology and Sociobiology 10:417–434, 1989). His current research interests are in the behavioral ecology and biology of wild chimpanzees.

Alex Walter is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Rutgers University. His dissertation research concerns the sociobiology of inbreeding avoidance with respect to the custom of parallel-cousin marriage in Morocco.

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Steklis, H.D., Walter, A. Culture, biology, and human behavior. Human Nature 2, 137–169 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692185

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