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How to reconcilie humanities with natural sciences: A two-levels methodology

Recent developments in natural sciences, humanities and transdisciplinary approaches demonstrate intriguing correspondences between different fields of human knowledge, possibly revealing common principles in the realisation of natural and cultural processes, reinvigorating the debate on a possible integration of science (von Bertalanffy 1968). In their attempts to link natural sciences and humanities, methodological approaches such as analogical or metaphorical thinking most often lead to the reduction of intrinsically different properties to mere general similarities between natural and cultural phenomena, without making a clear distinction between what such processes effectively share (common principles) and what makes natural (and inside natural processes, between physical, biological, neuronal, etc.) and cultural processes irreducible to one another (specific characteristics).

Building a more general theory (Hull 1982, Callebaut & Pinxten 1987), or meta-theory (Delorme 1997) that encompasses natural and cultural processes might serve as an alternative to such reductive approaches. Such a methodology rests on a two steps process which can be illustrated by the following relation (Callebaut & Pinxten 1987:37): biological exemplar ? general model ? model of culture. Such a two-levels methodology allows for the conceptualisation of common principles (at the conceptual, theoretical level) and the recognition -and analysis- of specific characteristic (at the local, contextual level) which can also lead to the re-conceptualisation of local, "disciplinary" theories.

The Hispanic Baroque: Complexity in the First Atlantic Culture (2007-2013). Multidisciplinary and international team, 35 researchers. We consider the cultural system under the light provided by its "baroque patterns". How the formation of discourses on identity (information that guarantees the cultural reproduction) locks with specific technologies of culture (ways of doing things in a reproducible manner) to provide dynamic stability to the whole system. This stability shows that the system is more efficient (permanence) when it produces certain interactions, and that this efficiency relies on its networks of artistic production. How these efficiencies are created in three spheres of culture (the constitution of the Baroque; its religious expressions; a culture of cities), and how and why they emerge, transformed as neobaroque patterns, today.

Two-levels methodology can be exemplified (cf. illustration above) with the general conceptualisation of the variation/selection interplay that takes radically different form in the natural and cultural realms, which is based, in the case of biological evolution, on the co-evolution of organisms/populations and their natural environment, and in the cultural sphere, on the dialectical relations between the social behaviours (individual and collective creativity, innovations) and the selective action of institutional conditions (social values what is good/bad, collective rules –what is permitted/forbidden , routines). Such an approach is also useful inside natural sciences, as illustrated by the common but differentiated realisation of selection processes at different biological levels (multipolar selection).

References:

Bertalanffy L. von (1968/1993), Théorie générale des systèmes. Traduit de l'anglais (Paris: Dunod).

Callebaut W. & Pinxten R. (1987), 'Evolutionary Epistemology Today: Converging Views from Philosophy, the Natural and the Social Sciences', in Callebaut & Pinxten (eds.) (1987), Evolutionary Epistemology : A Multiparadigm Program with a Complete Evolutionary Epistemology Bibliography (Dordrecht et al. : D. Reidel), 3 55.

Delorme R. (1997), 'Evolution et complexité: l'apport de la complexité de second ordre à l'économie évolutionnaire', Economie Appliquée, 50(3), 95-120.

Hull D.L. (1982), 'The Naked Meme', in Plotkin (ed.) (1982), Learning, Development and Culture: Essays in Evolutionary Epistemology (Chichester: John Wiley), 273 327.