The Biological Basis of Sociology 



(Based on a contribution to the Second Conference 

 on the Social Sciences, 1936) 



There are two extreme views which might be taken concerning the 

 significance of biological data and conclusions for sociological thought. 

 It might be held, either that our present biological knowledge has 

 no relation to the understanding of social phenomena; or conversely, 

 that it is more important than any other illumination we can expect 

 to have. The first of these views might perhaps be taken by some 

 old-fashioned theologian, but probably no reader of this book would 

 support it. The second has a more subde appeal, and has been rather 

 widely held. Nevertheless, I believe it to be exceedingly dangerous. 

 I believe, on the contrary, that while our present biological knowledge 

 can furnish us with many essential guiding principles and clues in 

 the study and direction of social phenomena, it must at all points be 

 supplemented by principles derived from observation of the social 

 facts themselves and applying only to those facts. In the world of 

 nature we have to deal with a succession of levels of complexity and 

 organisation. The principles which apply to one of these levels do 

 not apply to the others, although at every level the principles appro- 

 priate to the lower levels must be taken into account, modified though 

 they may be by the special new conditions prevailing. At the level of 

 life itself, this doctrine is not vitalism, any more than it is **crystallism" 

 to demonstrate the special laws which govern the behaviour (to use 

 a convenient facon de parler) of liquid and solid crystals.^ Similarly, 

 in the associations of highly cerebrated ape-like organisms which are 

 studied by sociology, new principles apply, principles which are 

 meaningless when mentioned in connection with lower levels, 

 principles which may have manifestations familiar to us by quite other 

 names, such as purpose, the good life, social cohesiveness, love, etc.^ 



^ See the author's Order and Life, pp. 46, 47. 

 ^ After writing the above, I found the following: 



"The laws of social development are specific laws. It is, therefore, fundamentally 

 incorrect and methodologically impermissible to transfer mechanically laws of a 

 biological order into the province of social development" (Bukharin, N., in the 

 Marx Memorial Volume of the Moscow Academy of Sciences, 1933, Eng. tr., 

 Marxism and Modern Thought, p. 33). 



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