Re: The SSSM revisited

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 03:32:19 MST


Cliff Stabbert wrote:
> Tuesday, December 3, 2002, 9:33:51 PM, Emil Gilliam wrote:
>
> EG> Here is a scan of two pages from "The Mind", a volume from the Life Science
> EG> Library, published in 1964 by Time-Life Books:
>
> EG> http://homepage.mac.com/gilliame/.cv/gilliame/Public/sssm.gif-link.gif
>
> EG> I know of no better example of what we now call the Standard Social Sciences
> EG> Model (SSSM). From our modern-day perspective of evolutionary psychology, it
> EG> seems utterly ridiculous -- did man really lose its "instincts" a long time
> EG> ago, and gain "learning" and "reasoning" in return (whatever those are), as
> EG> shown on a neat graph? But in 1964 this truism was a firmament of
> EG> intellectual life (and it still is in some circles). A nice sober reminder
> EG> of how times change...
>
> Ehm, I would dispute that this was "a firmament of intellectual life".
> It may have been (and still to a degree be) a pop science notion but I
> doubt you'd see much support for it in academia after the early 20th
> century. See Freud, Jung, etc. Of course it all depends on how you
> define "intellectual life", perhaps you can clarify which circles such
> ideas were supposedly taken seriously in.
>
> --
> Cliff

That is incorrect. It was *the* standard in Sociology,
Anthropology, Psychology for most of the 20th century. Check
out Chapter 1 of "The Adapted Mind" by Barkow, Cosmides, Tooby
for corroborating evidence and a detailed analysis and critique
of SSSM. SSSM also had deep effects on educational and social
policies.

- samantha



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