From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu 12 Feb 2004 - 05:14:41 GMT
Stephen (not Elliot) Gould has made important delineation between
historical origin and current utility. Durkheim says some pertinent
stuff in his _The Rules of Sociological Method_ (1938. The Free Press.
New York. translated by Solavay and Mueller) that one might want to keep
in mind when reading what Gould says about Durkheim in his brick-like
magnum opus _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_. Durkheim says (page
90):
(bq)"To show how a fact is useful in not to explain how it originated or
why it is what it is. The uses which it serves presuppose the specific
properties characterizing it but do not create them. The need we have of
things cannot give them existence, nor can it confer their specific
nature upon them. It is to causes of another sort that they owe their
existence. The idea we have of their utility may indeed motivate us to
put these forces to work and to elicit from them their characteristic
effects, but it will not enable us to produce these effects out of
nothing." (eq)
This quote is in the context of Durkheim criticizing a method employed
by Spencer and Comte whom he mentions in the preceding paragraph, but at
least to my eyes it looks like Durkheim is making the distinction
between historic origin and currect utility that Gould focuses upon.
Correct?
Now in Gould's book _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_ (2002. The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts) he
is critical of Durkheim's apparent lack of knowledge of this distinction
or his not using it in a certain case. Citing someone named Catton for
critique of Durkheim, Gould says that Durkheim was unaware of functional
shift which he could have gleaned from familiarity with Darwin. Gould is
also impressed by Nietzsche's knowledge of this. Gould focuses on
Durkheim's work on division of labor as elaborated by Catton. He notes
Durkheim being correct on the utility of the division of labor, but then
Gould says (page 1239]:
(bq) "[Durkheim] then erred in assuming that this current utility also
permits the inference that division of labor arose, in explicit analogy
with speciation, as a direct adaptation for its current function of
reducing competition and stabilizing both social and economic systems."
(eq)
I'll need to track down the source Gould cites (ie-Catton). I'm not
familiar with Durkheim's work on division of labor. Maybe Durkheim did
overlook the distinction between current utility and historic origin in
the context of division of labor, but interestingly, as I think the
quote of Durkheim I provided above shows, Durkheim was not ignorant of
the distinction itself, which if he failed to utilize it in the instance
of division of labor if this use was apt, would make one wonder why he
failed to do so.
Gould might have been quite interested in this quote as it seems to
dovetail with his arguments on the importance of this distinction.
I pulled this discussion of Durkheim from Gould's index. I haven't had a
chance to read the whole brick from front to back.
The citation for Gould's source on Durkheim is:
Catton WR, Jr. 1998. Darwin, Durkheim, and Mutualism. In _Advances in
Human Ecology_, Volume 7. JAI Press Inc. pp. 89-139
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