Transforming the heuristic matrix of social sciences: lights and shadows of the naturalistic approaches on culture

Abstract

Darwin’s attempt to analyze the human culture and behavior from a naturalistic point of view was not sympathetically received by most of the thinkers who have developed the foundations of the social sciences. The traditions that form the main body of social science theory, —the so called Standard Model (SM)-, share the belief that human cultures are systems that can be understood in a selfreferential manner, regardless any psychobiological characteristics of human nature. However, in recent years, different naturalistic approaches try to examine human cultures from an evolutionary perspective. In this article, from our own naturalistic approach, based on what we call social learning assessor and our radical Homo Suadens condition, we set up a critical dialogue with the SM, intending to show the causes of the stubborn resistance shown by individuals when they are subjected to the whole frame of categories, causality and determinism of social scientific discourse and its powerful narratives.