Introduction

Author(s):  
Tim Lewens

Many evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced human nature, but large numbers of evolutionists have also rejected it. It is also important to recognize the nuanced views on human nature that come from the side of the social sciences. This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the human nature debate, from the anti-essentialist consensus to the possibility of a Gray’s Anatomy of human psychology. Three potential functions for the notion of species nature are identified. The first is diagnostic, assigning an organism to the correct species. The second is species-comparative, allowing us to compare and contrast different species. The third function is contrastive, establishing human nature as a foil for human culture. The Introduction concludes with a brief synopsis of each chapter.

2021 ◽  
Vol 250 ◽  
pp. 07001
Author(s):  
Wadim Strielkowski

This paper aims at explaining the universality and broadness of the research in energy studies. Specifically, it wants to show that the energy research is not a solely engineering or natural sciences field and how it can be done in social sciences. The paper draws some relevant examples including energy research in literature and poetry, history, religion, art, as well in other social sciences and humanities. In general, it becomes apparent that energy research can boast vast depths and angles that are worth exploring for any social scientist. Given the key importance of energy research in the third decade of the 21st century and the worldwide focus on the renewable energy sources, electrification of transport and heating in the face of the threatening global warming and climate change, it seems relevant to focus on researching the perspectives and paradigms for the traditional and renewable energy sources in the 21st century using the toolbox of the social sciences.


2020 ◽  
pp. 87-126
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham

Part 2 Writing History: Problems of Neutrality This Part of the book challenges widespread assumptions that, where it matters, it is possible or desirable for historians to avoid value judgements and the sorts of evocative descriptions that imply or could reasonably be expected to prompt such judgements. The first section distinguishes between History and particular traditions within the social sciences in order to show why the ‘rules’ about moral evaluation can be different in these differing endeavours. The second section establishes the widespread existence of evocations and evaluations in the very labelling and description of many historical phenomena, suggesting not just how peculiar works of History would look in their absence of evocations and appraisals, but that their absence would often distort what is being reported. These arguments are key to the distinction made in the third section about rejecting value neutrality as a governing ideal while insisting on truthfulness as a historian’s primary duty. The fourth section highlights the nature of most historical accounts as composites of a range of perspectives as it considers questions of context, agency, outcome, and experience. The composition gives rise to the overall impression, evaluative or evocative, provided by the work. The fifth section brings together a number of the chapter’s themes as it examines an important case of the historian’s judgement—judgement about the legitimacy of power in past worlds where legitimacy could be as contested as often today.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-122
Author(s):  
Stefan Bargheer

The three volumes reviewed in this essay assemble over 40 case studies written by more than 50 contributors that trace the development of the social sciences and humanities in Europe (East and West) and a number of countries in Latin America, North Africa, and East Asia. Two of these volumes grew out of the European research project ‘International Cooperation in the Social Sciences and Humanities’ (INTERCO-SSH); the third volume extends the focus of this project to Eastern Europe. A particularly innovative aspect shared by all contributions is the application of a transnational research perspective.


Author(s):  
Crisbelli Domingos ◽  
Sebastião Lourenço dos Santos

In the past decade or so, a small but rapidly growing band of literary scholars, theorists, and critics has been working to integrate literary study with Darwinian social science. These scholars can be identified as the members of a distinct school in the sense that they share a certain broad set of basic ideas. They all take “the adapted mind” as an organizing principle, and their work is thus continuous with that of the “adaptationist program” in the social sciences. Adaptationist thinking is grounded in Darwinian conceptions of human nature (2004, p. 6).


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Hatim H. Tawfiq

The present study investigates the sociocultural factors that affect second language learning. The investigation is built under five factors that are presumed to affect second language learning. The first factor is related to the effects of personality traits that are linked to second language learning, such as: self-efficiency, willingness, extraversion, and introversion, etc. The second factor pertains to motivation and second language learning. The third one is stereotyping and its effects on second language learning. The fourth is about social distance as a sociocultural factor of second language learning. And the fifth factor is about attitude. The study looks for how much effects do the factors mentioned so far have got in second language learning. A questionnaire is constructed to extract perceptions about the hypothesized factors from 62 participants. Responses are analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to get statistical descriptions about the factors that mostly affect second language learning. The analytic statistics gives the following mean values for each factor: attitude = 20.58, stereotype = 20.00, motivation = 19.84, social distance = 19.74, and personality 18.85. The study concludes with the consensus belief that attitude is a crucial factor of second language learning.


1980 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Markham Berry

Professionals who work in the social and physical sciences and who have a serious commitment to the Bible have, in a sense, two data bases. To integrate them is a difficult task. We are pressed to bring them both into focus by the holistic thrust of the Bible as well as by the penchant of our minds to synthesize. To do this effectively we need simple but not simplistic models. Our integration must further be comprehensive, not partial, basic, not peripheral. This article describes a method of doing this kind of integrative work. Initially, four fundamental criteria are presented. In the second section the basic methodology is worked out, and in the third, some primary themes are described and illustrated around which this particular integrative system works.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 231-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cate Watson

Narratives of the future can be seen as a form of colonialisation, structuring fields of discourse, in a process which Johan Galtung (cited in Andersson, 2006) refers to as ‘chronological imperialism’. However, futures narratives can also be used to disrupt these attempts at colonialisation through surfacing problematic assumptions in order to explore alternative scenarios. In this paper I first consider modal narratives and possible worlds and their relevance to the social sciences. I then discuss Sohail Inayatullah's ‘Causal Layered Analysis’ (CLA) - a narrative technique for constructing past and present and imagining the future. CLA draws on a ‘poststructural toolbox’ to examine problematic issues using a process which focuses on four levels of analysis: litany (the official public description of the issue); social science analysis (which attempts to articulate causal variables); discourse analysis or prevailing worldview; and myth/metaphor analysis. The aim is to disrupt current discourses which have become sedimented into practice and so open up space for the construction of alternative scenarios. In the third part I demonstrate how this approach can be used to examine ‘big issues’ taking as my example the current preoccupation with troubled and troublesome youth.


Author(s):  
Rosemary L. Hopcroft

This chapter provides an overview of The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society. Chapters in the first part of this book address the history of the use of method and theory from biology in the social sciences; the second part includes chapters on evolutionary approaches to social psychology; the third part includes chapters describing research on the interaction of genes (and other biochemicals such as hormones) and environmental contexts on a variety of outcomes of sociological interest; and the fourth part includes chapters that apply evolutionary theory to areas of traditional concern to sociologists—including the family, fertility, sex and gender, religion, crime, and race and ethnic relations. The last part of the book presents two chapters on cultural evolution.


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