Reply to Staples and Gecas

Abstract

Staples and Gecas' comments and criticisms are founded on a whole series of serious misinterpretations and misconceptions of the overall intentions of my article. These misinterpretations seem to be due to their desire to defend the credibility of the theory of the social determination of behavior at all costs. In this case, their supportive commitment to exonerating the pragmatists and symbolic interactionists of any fault, especially in the use of misleading and empirically untenable biological assumptions about human nature, has led them unfairly to manufacture shortcomings in my own arguments. Adamant and misdirected criticisms of the relevance of biology for the analysis of human social behavior of the kind outlined by Staples and Gecas are not unique in the history of sociology. The ultimate consequence of this type of rather limited critique, as Dennis Wrong (1961:184) has succinctly pointed out, is that its . . particular selective emphasis is generalized-explicitly or, more often, implicitly-to provide apparent empirical support for an extremely one-sided view of human nature. Staples and Gecas appear in all respects to be content with the traditional social scientific interpretation of the nature of human nature, despite its obvious conceptual and empirical shortcomings. It is exactly at this point that scientific debate ceases and is replaced by ideologically based discussions of semantics which take on the character of meaningless exegistic exercises. In summarizing Staples and Gecas' comments, it appears that their dissatisfaction with my article is predicated on at least two issues: my reference to biosociology and the question of human individuality and biology. In the first instance, they argue that I offer indication . . . of how biological factors might constructively contribute to an understanding of human social behavior. A task of this nature is of course an immense undertaking and certainly not one which could be adequately treated in a short article. It was never my intention, either directly or indirectly, to accomplish such a difficult project within the context of reviewing the theories of the pragmatists and symbolic interactionists. In fact, my reference to a number of biosociological analyses and theories was made merely within the framework of concluding remarks. These remarks were intended to indicate the future possibility of sociologists actively participating in inter-disciplinary research of a biosociological nature-nothing more, nothing less. Surely my purposes here, which were clearly indicated in the article, are completely undeserving of Staples and Gecas' needlessly cutting observation that Petryszak's vague use of 'biosociology' does little to promote the constructive inclusion of biological factors in the study of human social behavior. It is important to observe that my reserved references to biosociology are far more constructive and concrete than Staples and Gecas' own vague suggestion that . . there are indeed ways in which biological factors can be usefully incorporated into a fuller understanding of the social self. What then are these ways and what theorists have attempted them to date? It is ironic, although by no means surprising, that given the failure of these two critics to indicate the ways