https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_N._Bellah
Sociology of Multiple Realties and Structure of Evolutionary Change
Robert Bellah, one of the most influential American sociologists in our century, engages in a biological theory of organism’s adaptive development and conserved core processes, furthering the significance of cultural evolution; its uniqueness differs from biological determinism. Bellah discerns the organismic view in the common book by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart The Plausibility of Life.
In this book the authors utilize a theory of punctuated equilibrium, which views long periods of stasis as punctuated by bursts of innovation. This structural theory of evolutionary change (Stephen Gould) can be applied to the study of history of cellular innovation, which is featured by both conservation and diversification of organisms (economy). Conserved core processes, in-depth structure imply the punctuated part, which is mainly unchanged until the present (an equilibrium or stasis).
The organismic perspective in the control of variation focuses on the idea of facilitated variation, looking at the organism’s selective activity in the long age course of evolutionary history. This position is based on structures of the conserved core processes on which the organism evolves in mutation, variation and diversity. A structural theory of conserved core processes makes the case for promoting facilitated variation, which generates novel development in phenotypes without undermining the punctuated continuity of the core processes.
In this regard, Robert Bellah takes a keen interest in integrating the structural theory of stability and change with his masterpiece Religion in Human Evolution (60-66). The great innovations of core processes have undergone periods of extensive modification of both protein structure and function, generating the components of new core processes in the emergence of higher order of life.
A period of enormous innovation in the rapid remodeling is not simply based on the logic of facilitated variation, but it refers to the intimation of true novelty with the emergence of the new conserved processes.
The body plan, according to Kirschner and Gehart, has an anatomical structure, as central in its development built within s conserved core process, as operating in catalytic metabolism and other biochemical regulatory mechanisms. In repeated episodes of great innovation new genes and proteins arose in each episode, until the components and processes has established into prolonged conservation.
This aspect refers to a structure of deep conservation underlying the organism’s capacity to generate phenotypic variation, diversity, and novelty; it is seen in diversification of anatomy and physiology in the evolutionary history of animals (Bellah, 64; The Plausibility of Life, 68-9).
This said, Bellah pays attention to how variation of phenotype is organized and facilitated by conserved core process, capable of producing efficient and remarkable change. Instead of lumbering robot vehicles, organisms are actors playing the most significant role in the process of evolution.
Drawing upon the facilitated variation, the organism takes part in its own evolution, as related to its long history of variation and selection or natural selection and heredity. This approach becomes central in explicating the concept of “evolvability” in structural terms rather than purely adaptational terms (Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 50).
Darwin and Spencer
According to Bellah, an analysis of evolvabilty by facilitated variation runs counter to Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism, which undermines the aspect of variation. Against Spencer’s notion of competition, struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest, a structural theory of life maintains that history has the deep structure and history of societies. “It includes their organizations, their capacity to adapt, their capacity to innovate, perhaps even their capacity to harbor cryptic variation and diversity.” (The Plausibility of Life, 264).
Driven in this structural spectrum, Bellah identifies a scheme of cultural evolution (mimetic, mythic, and theoretic culture according to Merlin Donald) in terms of each conserved core process. Each episode is never lost, even though reorganized by new innovation of core processes. Rather, each promotes variation, becoming adaptive and innovative, while each is essential to cultural integrity. A biological theory of conservation and variation is taken as the conceptual platform for Bellah to undertake sociology of religion in furthering axial religion and its great innovation (Bellah, 65).
Bellah’s contribution can be seen in his sociological synthesis of cultural evolution with the structural theory of punctuate equilibrium, as related to conserved core process. This epistemic stance underwrites the acquisition of new capacities and great innovation in the description of conserved core process.
Bellah rejects Spencer’s controversial idea of progress, coming to terms with Gould’s preference to Darwin himself. In fact, Darwin favors the term natural selection than evolution built into the meaning of progress.
What concerns Darwin is about the slow working of natural selection instead of promoting the idea of any inherent disposition and force for progress. According to Darwin, variation must meet “three crucial requirements: copious in extent, small in range of departure from the mean, and isotropic.” Gould considers these three attributes of variation to be Darwin’s most brilliant insight.
Indeed, Darwin “realized that selection could not otherwise operate as the creative force in the evolution of novelties.” Darwin provides an alternative for the organism to generate a profusion of phenotypic variation upon which natural selection acts. (Gould, Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 60).
Gould incorporates Darwin’s theory of variation into a structure of evolutionary theory, confronting the camp of neo-Darwinian synthesis, as well as social Darwinian controversial concept of progress. Actually, acquiring new capacities can be spoken of as a fact on the part of organisms, as undertaken through the facilitated variation in the course of evolutionary history. ; It is perhaps performed in their own way of self-organization and emergence. They have acquired new capacities in dynamic interaction with the environment. It is not merely through passive adaption and fitness (Bellah, 66).
Cultural Evolution: Parental Care and Empathy
In Bellah’s view, an evolution of new capacities can be elaborated in Frans de Waal’s co-emergence hypothesis, which relates to correlation of intelligence, sociability and the emphatic capacity of understanding others’ feeling. Advanced empathy in human childhood is primarily based on parent care. It is not merely confined to humans.
Empathy in the co-emergence hypothesis refers back to birth of parent care in evolutionary time. If females in their parent care failed to sensitively respond to danger, hungry and pressure out of the environment, they never propagated their genes.
Although there is the dark side of evolution, as characterized in terms of “nature red in tooth and claw,” it never means the whole narrative, because cooperation is expressed and occurs even during fights. In mutual defense or in their aftermath, victims may receive solace. The relationship between empathy and bodily dimension is well articulated by de Waal: “Bodily connections come first—understanding follows.” (Bellah, 72). With this enactive dimension in mind, Bellah focuses on the development of empathy and ethics as central to religion among humans.