Abstract

Let us by-pass a lot of disputation by starting with the objections to the dispute itself. It is surely a misfortune, not a gain, both to the biological and the social sciences that a discontinuity has appeared between them over the topic of Human Nature—that the findings of each group seem in important ways alien and unusable for the purposes of the other. To be forced to give up hope of learning anything from a particular source is always a misfortune, it cannot be a cause for triumph. The unity of the world we study calls for free trade in information and in concepts between all the sciences. Autonomy cannot be isolation. Of course each discipline needs to be distinct and to use its own methods. But each also vitally needs to be open to suggestions from its neighbours. Barriers ought not to be raised except against real dangers. In the case before us, I want to say that the suspicions of the social sciences, from which this particular gap largely arises, are misplaced. The contraband article which they fear is real enough, but it is no real part of the physical sciences. It is irrelevant melodrama. What actually is part of the physical sciences cannot be contraband; it is truth which has somehow to be studied and accepted. The workings of prejudice on both sides make this hard, causing contraband sometimes to be exported as fact, and fact sometimes to be rejected as contraband. In this paper I suggest that we concentrate on understanding these prejudices—not because psychoanalysing our errors is any substitute for seeking truth, but because in an ingrained dispute like this it may be the only way to start doing so.