The Concept of Unified Theory

Abstract

Considering the spectrum of interpretations of the holistic principle, this principle proves either trivial or false. However, since evolutionary debates in science and philosophy continue hinging on notions of holism and emergence (Rose et al. 1984; O’Neill et al. 1986; Sattler 1986), it is hard to embark on an analysis of current evolutionary concepts and theories without getting entangled in the holism-reductionism controversy. The holistic objections against ethological and sociobiological accounts of human social relations povide examples that are typical of this situation. When holists dismiss biological explanations of sociocultural phenomena without further examination, they allude to the “reductionist” premises of these explanations, that is, insensitivity to the allegedly emergent character of human culture. Whatever the merits or limits of biological contributions to social science may be, the holists ignore the problem of making biological and cultural levels of organisation comparable and, above all, commensurable in complexity in order to put sociocultural structures into an evolutionary perspective. The application of concepts of emergence to evolutionary problems in social science is thus illustrative in quite a general sense. It shows that holism is particularly well designed to obscure, rather than explain, evolutionary processes.