Sociocultural Systems and the Challenge of Sociobiology

Abstract

This paper represents an outline of some of the main points I am trying to develop in a monograph examining the possibilities of an evolutionary model on the truly sociocultural level of reality. It will contain a few general critical statements concerning theories of the genetic determination of sociocultural patterns of human actions and interactions. It will argue that much of the difficulty in the debate stems from the inability of many scientists to allow that sociocultural systems are structured entities that cannot easily be understood entirely in terms of psychology, biology, chemistry, or physics, and must therefore be studied also at their own level. Thus an attempt is made to distinguish three major evolved strategies of evolution: the phylogenetic, the ontogenetic, and the sociogenetic. On this basis, a model of sociocultural evolution on its own level, with its unique mechanisms of variation, selection, and adaptation to its relevant environment is outlined. Such a model is informed by modern system theoretic concepts from information theory and general systems theory, and is argued to be homomorphic to other levels of evolution.