Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 19:20:11 +0300 (EET DST)
Subject: Re: 'sociality' again


Gee. What is Holy?

Adam is right. I ended up in troubles. That's because of my
sociologisms: why for example that kid didn't managed to
do this or that isn't fruitfully answered by invoking god or
genes. Sociality is better 'explanation' - or better: it's
better horisont for closer study. But broad historical &
evolutionary schema needs different kind of explanations.

I just don't happen to know anthropology enough in order to
say anything deep about development of sociality. I have
read something on birth of language, but that has been quite
speculative because of object.


"I think you, Jukka, make two contradictory statements :

" If they [human & animal sociality -jl] are different,
when hominids hadn't differentiated themselves from apes
they had "animal sociality". At some point in time, they
had developed "human sociality". The development of one
>from the other HAS to be explained. "

Agreed. In general, though, I've sometimes wondered whether
we should try to explain development. And isn't development
an explanation (or is it just a horisont for it)? Then
again, distinctively 'human sociality' is of such an
importance to us that it surely should be on top of an
agenda.


" If you don't explain it, then why did it happen ? Lack of
explanation inevitably leads to invoking god and/or sparks
of humanity. Or superficially more scientific, langauge
floats down from the sky and lands on human beings, so
differentiating us from other animals. "

That's right, I guess. But if I don't have facts on
something then I don't try to explain it. At the moment it
seems that we can't give any well grounded argument about
development of language. I've been told that researchers
simply can't agree even on basics (great example: was
Neanderthalian a species or what?). For me that means: kind
of philosophical or speculative story is all by which we can
have broad and general view on that particular development.
But this isn't strictly explanation, I'm afraid. Evald
Ilyenkov once wrote about Spinoza how he (as philosopher)
simply stated that what happens in brains (objectively) and
what happens in mind (by introspective gaze) is one and the
same process. Sp. wasn't able to prove it, so he left it for
future scientists to study and prove that this really is the
case. In a same way, I believe, marxists theories on human
development through work and labour are most fruitful ones.
But surely anthropologists are supposed to do quite a lot of
new research in order to really prove those theories.

Yours, Jukka



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