The Imagined World Made Real: Towards a Natural Science of Culture

by Henry Plotkin.
Rutgers Univ. Press, New Brunswick, NJ, U.S.A., 2002. 300pp.,
Paper. ISBN: 0-8135-3268-X.

Reviewed by Rob Harle

recluse@lis.net.au

The subtitle of this book; Towards a Natural Science of Culture describes its thesis precisely. Plotkin has successfully laid the foundations upon which a bridge may be built to synthesise the so called ‘hard’ natural sciences and the social sciences.

Considering the recalcitrant dogmatism of many scientists, especially biologists, Plotkin’s task in bringing together coherently, such disparate matters as evolved traits and financial markets or apartheid was not an easy one. I think he has succeeded exceptionally well.

This book will cater to a wide audience. Both the lay reader interested in the connection between evolution and our day to day social activities and also the academic who is not quite satisfied with the incomplete answers to the big questions of sociology and biology. I would go so far as to suggest this book should become a standard core text for undergraduate students, in both the social and natural sciences. At the very least it will caution them into not becoming too myopic.

Plotkin’s writing style is free flowing and easy to read and as he says himself he wanted the book to be self-contained. So references really are for further reading, not ‘necessary’ reading so as to understand the complex specifics of say, evolutionary theory. It is clearly not a primer in biology or evolutionary psychology. "The question at the heart of this book is can human culture be brought within the explanatory framework of the natural sciences?" (p. 3).

Plotkin also asks astutely, why should we bother to explain culture in this manner? (pp. 7-11). His answers are quite involved but basically he acknowledges that ‘hard’ science methodology is the best tool we have for making sense of our world, beyond the folk level. He does not condemn the folk ‘way of knowing’ but argues that the rigour of scientific investigation extends and confirms or alternatively shows such knowledge to be false. "We are questing far beyond the commonplace predictions we make about one another’s behaviour" (p. 9). Therefore it is essential and well overdue that such methodology be applied to one of the most important and complex of human concerns – culture.

The book has seven comprehensive chapters and an excellent index. Chapter One; Marrying the Biological and Social Sciences, "…lays out the general problem of the relationship between the social and natural sciences…" (p. xiii). Chapters Two to Six inclusively, to support Plotkin’s thesis, get down to specifics such as; The Evolution of Intelligence, The Emergence of Culture, Naturalizing Culture the Process Way, Causal Mechanisms and Individuals, Groups and Culture. The final chapter, The Strangeness of Culture surveys what Plotkin sees as the most important issues raised by the " social-science approach to culture". He even suggests that it might be best for the reader to start with this chapter then go to Chapter One.

Plotkin is a professor (of psychobiology) at University College, London. As one would expect his arguments throughout the book are presented in a scholarly way and backed by extensive and sound research.

The idea of biological explanations for social and cultural phenomena is not new. Not long after Darwin’s, The Descent of Man was published in 1871, Herbert Spencer was attempting to create a science(?) known as Social Darwinism. This together with the Eugenics of Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin) has left sociobiology or evolutionary psychology as it is now called with a negative stigma. Much of this criticism resulted from the ethical pronouncements of Spencer. Moore’s "naturalistic fallacy’ or the impossibility of deriving "ought" from "is" demolished Spencer’s specific notion of an ethics based on evolutionary theory. Even E. O. Wilson’s, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis met with extreme criticism and in some cases disgust from many sections of the academic world.

Given the importance of the ethical aspects of the Social Darwinian legacy I would have thought Plotkin would have given more attention to this aspect of the history of his project. This ethical dilemma needs to be overcome as well as the more scientific details before a true synthesis is achieved.

This minor criticism aside, Plotkin’s, The Imagined World Made Real: Towards a Natural Science of Culture will go a long way in dispelling much of the unwarranted and in some cases almost ‘phobic’ criticism of attempts to create a bona fide natural science of culture, and it is not before time.