Human Nature and Social Propensities

Abstract

The argument so far has been that, in order to avoid the grand circularities and teleologies of much of the theorizing and systems-building during the development of the social sciences, a notion of human nature has to be developed. This is to give a social science a basis in reality — in biology and evolutionary theory — rather than simply being based on un-substantiated enlightenment-inspired notions of direction, purpose and progress. The model of human nature which we require must, in other words, not only remain consistent with the purposeless and directionless nature of Darwinian principles of evolution, but also incorporate an understanding of the amoral principles of genetics and the bio-electrics of current neural sciences. It must be a human nature which is not just a black box out of which magically spring all the ingredients for humanness — be they goodness, perfectibility and potential happiness or, conversely, evilness, imperfection and misery. It has to be a human nature that can realistically be seen to contain motivators of human behaviour, for better or for worse.