The goal of this post is to provide a brief approach to the thesis of Homo suadens of the brothers Castro Nogueira (et al.) that, from an approximation of a naturalist, made a proposal to transform the array heuristic in the social sciences, “an invitation –say– to-other sociology and its practical applications”. Even for non-advanced in the methodology of the social sciences and the sociology of knowledge, the following paragraphs are very-nourished of links of the terminology that might be unknown to the reader. On the work of the Castro Nogueira offers a catalogue of resources (books, articles, videos, etc), many of which are free to access and download.
The brothers Luis, Laureano and Miguel Ángel Castro Nogueira, from their respective fields of study (philosophy, biology, and social sciences) have been working in recent years on an original proposal that sets out the thesis central of a extensive contribution to the debate “nature-culture”.1 His methodological proposal is structured, on the one hand, from the Strong Programme (David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins,…) of the sociology of scientific knowledge, from a reinterpretation of the Actor-Network Theory (Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law…) –this, in turn, heiress of the “Knowledge-Power” of Michel Foucault, especially in his book words and things– and sketches ontological of the space-social time (STD) of Peter Sloterdijk’s bubbles” (el woven ecstatic [of ecstasy] of the subjects in the interior space of a common where you feed each other those who live in truth together).
On the other hand, the brothers Castro Nogueira establish a bridge towards the frontier disciplines of the social sciences that have an emphasis in the study of culture and human behavior from a perspective of darwinian and that have gained significant empirical evidence, such as lto sociobiology (E. O. Wilson), the ecology of behavior (John R. Krebs, Nick Davies, Richard D. Alexander), meme (R. Dawkins; S. Blackmore; D. Dennett), the psychology of evolution (L. Cosmides and J. Tooby; D. Buss; S. Pinker), the epidemiology of representations (D. Sperberg: Explaining culture: a naturalistic approach) and the theories coevolutivas of the heritage dual (L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. W. Feelman; R. Boyd and P. Richerson), disciplines sociobiológicas, these, to which reference may be made unifying them under the term naturalist program for the social sciences.
The brothers Castro Nogueira made a deconstruction of the central body traditional theories in the social sciences, the Standard Model (I), so called by the psychologists, evolutionists, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby. He has spent years with the conviction that cultures are self-referential that can be interpreted by themselves –explain the social by the social, without taking into account the characteristics psychotherapy of the human nature. The brothers Castro Nogueira, along with others, approached the naturalist program in the social sciences and establish a critical dialogue with ME, by evidencing the consequences of the obstinate resistance shown by the individuals when they want to submit to categories, causation, and determinism of the discourses of scientific-social of ME, and it forces them to be left to narrate for them. Would agree that the postulates of the human nature implicit in the social theory from Durkheim to our days, lack of empirical content in a way that does not correspond with the empirical evidence available in the disciplines sociobiológicas. Thus, in opposition to the Homo oeconomicus and the Homo sociologicus, The brothers Castro Nogueira propose the model of the Homo suadens and the learning system assessor, which constitute the central pieces of your thesis.
The fundamental thesis of the brothers Castro Nogueira, the origin of the Homo suadens, part of that “social learning is characteristic of our hominid ancestors was rather similar to that of chimpanzees, based on mecanimsos of social learning indirect and capabilities of imitation, rudimentary. Its transformation into a system of cultural transmission, similar to the human required the development of the ability to approve or disapprove the conduct that they learn the children”. Next to the imitation, the inclusion of this capability produced a qualitative leap in the system of cultural transmission. Hominids in both capacities, that the Castro brothers Nogueira called individual assesor –Homo suadens (from the Latin suadeo: to evaluate, approve, advise)– produced a system of cultural transmission more efficient and adaptive, so that it is put into practice a new process of transfer of information on the value, positive or negative, of the learned behavior, absent in non-human primates.
Basic bibliography
Who’s afraid of human nature?
Laureano, Luis and Miguel Ángel Castro Nogueira
(Tecnos, 2008)
About this book can be a extensive review on this website that I made with my fellow Javier Prieto: Review in Cisolog
More reviews:
Review in the SESBE
Review in MADRID+D
Review ATHENEA DIGITAL
Review in JOURNAL OF BOOKS
Review in THEORIA
Chapters of free access and download:
Of the third part: The challenge of naturalistic social sciences
A new ontology of the social bond
Deconstructing the standard model in the social sciences
Of the fourth part: Greenhouses of Being. Modus suadens and metaphysics
Enter flow with the Logos
The metaphysics of Evil and the well-being in the culture
An auspicious animal:only for sinneontes select (Nietzsche)
Being and time: a colony of algae
The malaise in the culture, the “Discourse of Rome”
Althusser dynamite the Large Greenhouse
Of a Logos without air (Derrida) to a Logos hiperventilado (Sloterdijk)
Why are we so significamentosos?
Homo suadens and well-being in the culture: the vents of the art
.
Social science and human nature: an invitation to the other sociology and its practical applications
Luis and Miguel Ángel Castro Nogueira and Julián Morales Navarro
(Tecnos, 2013)
More biography of the Castro brothers Nogueira (et al.)
- Dress rehearsal for a ballet anarchist (Ediciones Libertarias, 1997).
- The laughter of the space. The imaginary space-time in contemporary culture: a reflection sociological (Tecnos, 1997).
- In the shadow of Darwin: The approaches of evolutionary human behavior (Siglo XXI, 2003).
- Methodology of the social sciences: an introduction critical (Tecnos, 2008).
- “Social science research and naturalistic. Elements for an interpretation in the evolution of culture and human societies”(Doctoral Thesis of Miguel Angel Castro Nogueira in free access and download. UNED, 2010)
- Chapter “Deconstructing some constructivismos” free access and download.
Chapters and articles, free access and download
- 2005 – ‘what space we inhabit really men?’ (Journal of Social Studies, no.. 22, December 2005, pp. 89-98).
- 2006 – ‘The wiring of neuronal innate Pinker condemns culture: intertextuality and intersexuality’ (Empiria: Revista de methodology of social science (11), 133-171).
- 2009 – ‘Darwinism and social science: an interpretation of evolution of the culture’ (Ludus vitalis: journal of philosophy of the life sciences 17 (32), 281-306).
- 2009 – ‘Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Focus of Darwinian Culture’ in: Evolution and Adaptation. 150 years after the Origin of Species, pp. 477-485 (SESBE).
- 2012 – “Transforming the matrix heuristics for the social sciences. Lights (and shadows) of the research naturalistic culture’ (Empiria: Revista de methodology of social sciences (23), 41-81. This number is a monograph on naturalism, coordinated by the Castro brothers, that hosts very interesting articles of other authors: Monograph No. 23-2012 of Empiria).
- 2012 – special issue social Dimensions of the human animal in evolution (Journal of the Spanish Society of Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 7 -esp-):
– ‘Evolution and ethics: the biological basis of morality’ (pp. 55-62).
– ‘Naturalism and culture: the hypothesis of Homo suadens’ (pp. 63-70).
Videos
“Organic metaphors of the urban”. Conference of Luis Castro in 2008
Download: PowerPoint
View on The Living City: a Conversation with Luis Castro and Juan Ojeda (university Professor of Urban Geography at the University Pablo Olavide. Seville) on the concepts and complexities of our current cities.
Interview with Laureano Castro (2009)
Web site of Luis Castro Nogueira in Portal UNED
You can also see the communication that I made next to Israel González Navarro at the XI Spanish Congress of Sociology: Facts and values: the problem of objectivity in sociology from the perspective of the Homo suadens.
NOTES
- this debate can be seen an interesting post on the blog “Notes of Anthropology”: Nature vs Culture [↩]