Justin’s Notes

Every Theory Has a History Except Mine

2026-07-20 · AI-generated insight

Derbyshire's trichotomy of human-nature theories contains a rhetorical tell worth noticing. He gives Religionism a genealogy in cognitive science, traces Culturism from Aristotle through Locke to Bastian and Boas — and then declares that "Biologism is just ordinary scientific method applied to humanity." Two views get histories; the third gets exemption from history. That's the classic move of naturalizing one's own position: everyone else has an ideology, I have reality.

Degler's account quietly punctures this. The culture concept didn't win because it was a comforting dogma imported by a German émigré; it "conquered" anthropology and diffused across the social sciences because it did genuine explanatory work — it accounted for differences among human groups better than the racial biology it displaced. And crucially, the biologism it displaced was the ordinary science of its day. Pre-Boasian racial science thought of itself exactly as Derbyshire thinks of Biologism: not a theory with a pedigree, just method applied to humanity. Degler's whole project is showing that Darwinism in American social thought declined and revived — that is, that Biologism has a history too, and not an innocent one.

Diamond then shows the trichotomy leaks at the seams. By Derbyshire's categories, Diamond should be a Biologian: a materialist, an evolutionist, someone who explains humanity through ordinary science. Yet his conclusion — that history diverged because of environments, not biological differences among peoples — lands him with the Culturists on the question that actually matters politically. Diamond is applying "ordinary scientific method" and getting a Boasian answer.

The synthesis: the real fault line isn't biology versus culture as mechanisms — everyone concedes both operate. It's whether you treat your current explanatory framework as a contingent scientific achievement (Degler's view of Boas) or as the view from nowhere (Derbyshire's view of himself). The frameworks that admit their own history tend to age better than the ones that claim to have none.

Woven from these notes

Until the 1890s Boas used the term as his fellow anthropologists did: as another word for civilization or “high culture.” Franz Boas’s exposition of the concept of culture as an alternative to race in accounting for differences among human groups was a genuine seminal contribution. The idea not only conquered his own field of anthropolgy but spread as well to other social science disciplines. The diffusion was remarkably rapid. Again and again in the early years of the new century American social scientists outside of anthropology testified to the influence of his writings on their conception of human nature and the place of biology or race within it.
— Carl Degler In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought
There are three theories of human nature enjoying widespread support at present. For convenience, I’ll tag each one of them with a single adjective. Religious. Our species Homo sapiens is the special creation of God, either as a one-off miracle or by God-guided evolution. Human nature is a mix of attributes, some natural ones arising from plain biology, some supernatural ones inserted by God. We are the Chosen Species. The God-given attributes are unique to our species. They are the same in all human populations, forming the foundation of our essential equality. Their existence is independent of our biological nature, even to the degree that they can continue to exist after our deaths. Being nonbiological, they don’t evolve, even if other features of the living world do, so that our evolution, if it ever took place, ended (except perhaps for some incidental biological features) when God decreed we have these supernatural attributes. These God-given attributes include the moral sense, which accesses transcendent truths—i.e., truths that do not dwell in the world of matter. God rules! Cultural. Our species arose, like all other species, from the ordinary processes of evolution. However, these processes ceased in the early history of the species, leaving us with a human nature uniform across all populations and unchanging over time, forming the foundation of our essential equality. This human nature has very little innate structure and is extremely plastic. By placing it in a suitable environment, or applying suitable pressures, the mind (and therefore the behavior, which issues from the mind) can be shaped in any way at all. “Human nature” does not really exist independent of the environment an individual happens to be in, especially that part of the environment made up of other human beings—“the culture.” Moral standards are arbitrary, and are taken in by the individual from the culture. Culture rules! Biological. Our species arose, like all other species, from the ordinary processes of evolution, which have continued to the present day. Human nature is a collection of characteristics all susceptible to biological explanation. Some characteristics of a person’s nature can be shaped to some degree by “cultural” (i.e., social or environmental) forces; some cannot. Human beings are a part of the living world, and nothing more. Our equality consists in being members of a single species; though our species, like any other with very wide distribution, exhibits regional differences. The characteristics of an individual human being are templated in his genome. They may be somewhat modified by womb events or life experiences; or they may need to be “instantiated” by postpartum environment. (An individual’s genome may, for example, predispose him to be eloquent or tongue-tied when using language; but which language he uses will depend on his childhood environment.) The repertoire of human behaviors, and of ideas, including moral ideas, about behavior, are innate, the result of evolutionary processes acting on our social lives across many generations. Biology rules! For convenience in what follows, I’ll label adherents of these three views with the more or less made-up words “Religionists,” “Culturists,” and “Biologians.” Each point of view has a history. Religionism emerges from core features of human thinking, as described by cognitive scientists like Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained, 2001), Scott Atran (In Gods We Trust, 2002), and Bruce Hood (Supersense, 2009). Culturism has roots in the tabula rasa (“blank slate”) theories of Aristotle and Locke. It was put into its modern form by German anthropologist Adolf Bastian (1826–1905). Bastian coined the phrase “the psychic unity of mankind.” His student Franz Boas brought these ideas to the United States, becoming the most influential American anthropologist of the early twentieth century. Biologism is just ordinary scientific method applied to humanity.
— John Derbyshite We Are Doomed
History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.
— Jared Diamon Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies