The Political Nature of "Human Nature"

Biologists, social scientists, and philosophers have speculated about human nature. Is there such a thing, and if so, how does one describe it? Fortunately I do not need to review the history of such speculations, since Alison Jaggar has provided a lucid discussion of the main issues and has located th~ debates in their historical and political contexts.! What I can do is evaluate the biological suppositions that underlie the concept of a human nature. The ambiguity of the term biology is at the heart of questions about what scientists do when they try to examine nature. We use the word to denote what scientists tell us about the nature of organisms and also the living experience. When I speak of "my biology," I am usually referring to how I experience my biological functions, not to what scientists tell me about them. I can also use the word as the name of the scientific discipline, as in "I am studying biology." These multiple meanings for biology reflect confusions and ambiguities about the connections between scientific descriptions and the phenomena in the real world that scientists try to describe. It is important that we be aware of this ambiguity when we think about "human nature." Are we describing the natures of real people-you and me--{)r an abstraction or reification that biologists construct? "Human nature" does not describe people. It is a normative concept that incarnates historically based beliefs about what human beings are and how they should behave. Biologists' claims about human nature are embedded in the ways they learn about and describe living organisms. Most biologists, like other scientists, accept the notion that nature can best be described in terms of different levels of organization. These levels extend from ultimate particles, through atoms and molecules, to cells, tissues, and organs, to organisms considered individually, and then to groups of organismssocieties. Biology nowadays is concerned with the range of levels from atoms and molecules through organisms, and also with groups of organisms and their relations with each other over time (evolution) and space (animal behavior and ecology). Some biologists learn about organisms by taking them apart; others observe whole organisms in the laboratory or in the field. Yet these levels are not credited with equal authority. Most biologists (as well as chemists and physicists) believe that the "lower" atomic and molecular levels are more basic and have intrinsically greater explanatory potential. Thus we find scientists and science writers describing genes (which are molecules) as keys to "the secret of life" or as "blueprints" of the organism. Numerous biologists believe that we would understand a great deal more about ourselves and other animals if we knew the composition and sequence of all the genes on our chromosomes. This belief in the superior explanatory content of "lower" levels is usually referred to as reductionism, and at this time reductionism is the dominant mode of thinking among biologists. Reductionists assert that the study of organs, tissues, and molecules can yield