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Paving the Way for an Evolutionary Social Constructivism

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Abstract

The idea has recently taken root that evolutionary theory and social constructivism are less antagonistic than most theorists thought, and we have even seen attempts to integrate constructivist and evolutionary approaches to human thought and behavior. We argue in this article that although the projected integration is possible, indeed valuable, attempts to date have tended to be vague or overly simplistic about the claims of social constructivists. We proceed by examining how to give more precision and substance to the research program of evolutionary social constructivism, a task we accomplish by focusing on the specific selection pressures that may have shaped the psychological and cultural mechanisms leading to social constructions. The benefit of such an integration for social constructivism is to provide a solid foundation in the natural sciences. For evolutionists, evolutionary social constructivism expands the assortment of methods used in studying the interplay between culture and human nature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophy, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

    Andreas De Block

  2. Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Andreas De Block

  3. FWO-Flanders, Catholic University of Brussels, Belgium

    Bart Du Laing

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  1. Andreas De Block
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  2. Bart Du Laing
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Correspondence to Andreas De Block.

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De Block, A., Du Laing, B. Paving the Way for an Evolutionary Social Constructivism. Biol Theory 2, 337–348 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2007.2.4.337

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