Sociology, Science, and the End of Philosophy
Sal Restivo Sociology, Science, and the End of Philosophy How Society Shapes Brains, Gods, Maths, and Logics
Sal Restivo Department of Technology, Culture and Society NYU Tandon School of Engineering Brooklyn, New York, USA ISBN 978-1-349-95159-8 DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95160-4 ISBN 978-1-349-95160-4 (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016963213 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration erhui1979/gettyimages Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
A Note on the Bibliographical Epilogues In one of my classes on the sociology of religion, a student asked my teaching assistant why she didn t believe in God. She said: Because I read books. Every book is the apex of a structure of knowledge. The book is only as good, as trustworthy, as worthy of the intelligent reader s time as the structure of knowledge it is based on. Structures of knowledge are never consistent, coherent, and free of ignorance and superstition. But some, and therefore some books, are better guides to how things work than others. To be educated is to know, but not to know absolutely, how to separate on an ever-increasing learning curve and with improving degrees of confidence the wheat of grounded knowledge (including educated guesses and reasoned speculations) from the chaff of ignorance, charlatanism, lies, and superstition. The books I list here are at the apexes of structures of knowledge that speak through the book in your hands. Some are keys to the more and less established facts of the matter on which I ground my ideas; some are foils included because they have had some impact on the learning communities within which I run. I have also used the epilogues to update material in the text. The epilogues are continuous with their chapters and should be so read. They are not designed to be merely references. v
Acknowledgements This book is for Leslie Brothers, who mentored me on all things brain and mind in Santa Monica and over email for many years; for Randy Collins, with whom I first discussed issues of robots and the social theory of mind on the beaches of Dubrovnik and who is one of the truly inspiring champions and exponents of the sociological imagination; for Karin Knorr-Cetina, who like me never stopped being a sociologist; for my father, Philip Restivo, who though without much formal education introduced me to the very idea of interrogating God; for my mother Mafalda and my father Philip without whose unconditional love I would never have written a word; and for my teachers at Brooklyn Tech and City College of New York who gave me the chutzpah to take on the sociology of God and mathematics. My conversations with sociologist Julia Loughlin over a period of more than twenty years remain among the most important chapters in the biography of my studies of the hard cases. My young friends, colleagues, and collaborators Sabrina Weiss and Alexander Stingl have helped to keep me in the moment of rapidly changing intellectual currents and contributed significantly to my thinking about brains and minds. And I can t say enough about what my graduate students H. Gil Peach, Peter Bellomo, Wenda Bauchspies, Jennifer Croissant, Colin Beech, Azita Hirsa, Monica Mesquita, and Rachel Dowty have contributed to my thinking, writing, and research; for Kaia Raine née Karl Francis, friend and specialist in mental health, vii
viii Acknowledgements who encouraged my musings on mind and brain while going through the difficult process of a transsexual transition; for Michele Pieters, a dream and a nightmare and one of my twenty-first-century muses; and my colleagues and friends Ellen Esrock, Audrey Bennett, the late John Schumacher, Langdon Winner, Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Bart van Kerkhove, Karen Francois, Rik Pinxten, and Jens Hoyrup have taught me much about thinking and inquiry. Linnda Caporael deserves special mention as someone who more than most people understood my project and reached similar conclusions drawing on a different network of thinkers in social psychology and evolutionary theory. I have been blessed by having some wonderful students and want to especially thank my teaching fellow Eleanor Dunn, now a neuroscientist, and my current teaching fellow and research assistant Jessica Ko. This is also for Mary Gail, who rolled her eyes when I explained my work as a theorist and asked critical questions about the whys and wherefores of what I do that often left me speechless, thank you. Our run was short but she made me think. In my previous books I have made it a point to thank my mentors, teachers, and educators, and I would have liked to share this book with them, especially Marie DeLio, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Quinn, Bernard Rosenberg, Aaron Noland, Burt and Ethel Aginsky, John and Ruth Useem, Jim McKee, Jay Artis, Frank Camilleri, and Bill Form. And for you. Lia. Over the course of my career I have had the good fortune to call some outstanding scholars my friends, and this book reflects in no small part what I learned from them; in particular, I am indebted to and memorialize Donald Campbell, Milton Rokeach, Sylvan Tomkins, David Bohm, Joe Needham, Mary Douglas, and Dirk Struik; and Jerry Ravetz, Les Levidow, and Hilary and Steven Rose who like me are still pursuing the goals we championed in the radical science movement. Finally I want to thank my commissioning editor at Palgrave, Holly Tyler, who saw the significance of my initial proposal and helped me frame it and make my title more discoverable.
Contents 1 Prologue 1 2 The Science of Society 31 3 What About the Gene and What About the Brain? 81 4 The Social Lives of Minds and Brains 95 5 Thinking Machines: Flesh and Metal, Metal and Flesh 165 6 God and Society: Emile Durkheim and the Rejection of Transcendence 197 7 The Social Construction of Mathematics 253 8 What Can a Sociologist Say about Logic? 283 9 Conclusion: The Liminal Context 311 ix
x Contents Appendix 1 Moments in the History of the Science of Society 323 Appendix 2 Modeling the Social Brain: Updated version of the Restivo-Weiss model of the social brain 333 Index 335
List of Tables Table 2.1 Principles of intellectual innovation 62 xi
List of Boxes Box 4.1 The Chinese Room 108 Box 6.1 An Immodest Proposal 228 xiii