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REJOINDER TO FRACCHIA AND LEWONTIN
Author(s) -
RUNCIMAN W. G.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
history and theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.169
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1468-2303
pISSN - 0018-2656
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2005.00306.x
Subject(s) - nothing , darwinism , epistemology , individualism , principal (computer security) , philosophy , methodological individualism , evolutionary theory , sociology , law , political science , computer science , operating system
In their response to my article, Fracchia and Lewontin have not refuted any of my three principal objections to theirs; they have ignored altogether my suggestion that evolutionary game theory illustrates particularly clearly the benefits that neo‐Darwinian concepts and methods can bring to the human behavioral sciences; and they have attributed to me a version of “methodological individualism” to which I do not subscribe. It is, as is usual at this stage of a Kuhnian paradigm shift, too soon to say how much selectionist theory can contribute to the human behavioral sciences in general and comparative sociology in particular. But selectionism's critics achieve nothing by alleging that its proponents are committed to propositions to which they do not in fact assent and deny propositions with which they in fact agree.