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social behavior after all. First of all, although it greatly simplifies the
analysis of any phenomenon if its structural features are isomorphic
with a set of underlying causes, it is not true, as Sahlins appears to
think, that isomorphism between antecedents and consequents is a
requirement for their causal relation.
If
Sahlins' general demand for
cause-effect isomorphism were valid, it would also be futile to search
for a biological account of embryonal development: there ;s no
ensemble of "propensities" in the egg which are in one-to-one corre–
spondence with the properties of the fetus. (Actually the notion that
there
is
an isomorphism between an animal and its genes happens to be
an additional, purely biological misconception common among so–
ciobiologists.) Second, and more importantly, Sahlins seems to take it
for granted that the symbolic character of cultural tradition puts it
beyond the reach of biological explanations. But unless Sahlins regards
"culture" as some kind of transcendental phenomenon with laws and
dynamics of its own, independent of the biological structures of the
human (and humanoid) organisms that originated and perpetuated it,
it is far from self evident that there cannot in principle be a sociobio–
logical account of culture.
In
a later part of the book Sahlins returns to
this problem and declares that the nature of the relation between
culture and biology is "hierarchical," just as is the relation between
biology itself and physics and chemistry. According to Sahlins, "cul –
ture is biology plus the symbolic faculty," just as "biology is physics
and chemistry plus natural selection." Aha! So biology has something
to do with culture after all.
It
"puts at the disposition of cuI ture a set of
means for the construction of a symbolic order." Consequently all it
would take for a cu lture-inclusive sociobiology of the future to connect
that symbolic order with biology is a theory of meaning, just as it took
a theory of biological information for molecular biology to connect
heredity with physics and chemistry. And since the present lack of a
theory of meaning (presumably to be supplied one of these days by
cognitive psychology) is just as debilitating for social anthropology in
its attempt to account for human society as it is for sociobiology, it
seems unreasonable for Sahlins to single out on ly the latter for special
criticism.
Next, Sahlins trains his guns on "scientific" sociobiology, which,
according to him, is vulgar sociobiology plus the theory of kin
selection. He clearly holds scientific sociobiologists, such as Wilson
and Alexander, in somewhat higher regard than their vulgar col–
leagues, even though, like the latter, the former fail to appreciate the
crucial interposition of culture between human nature and social
behavior. To their credit, however, scientific sociobiologists have
