Agathos: An International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences (Nov 2014)
THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF HUMAN NATURE: PROBING THE PSYCHO-SOCIAL PROPENSITIES IN BEHAVIORAL MATRICES (WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO E. O. WILSON)
Abstract
What E. O. Wilson calls here “deep history” I have chosen to call “deep structure.” As he points out, deep history in his research is nothing less than “biological history,” and since he believes “that biology must someday serve as part of the foundation of the social sciences,” we will suggest here then that the deep structure of human nature is imbedded in human culture and vice versa. The genetic composition of Homo sapiens implies a “deep structure” within the human animal itself. In this deep structure, we will find “genetic propensities shared by enough humans to be called ‘human nature’,” according to Wilson. The deep structure of human nature is imbedded in the deep history of biological evolution which has produced human culture, a culture dependent upon both biological evolution and psycho-social evolution. These cultural propensities appear in the behavioral matrices of the human animal, as we shall see, in the tripartite interconnectedness of biology, sociology, and psychology. These propensities are explored here.
