**3. The "short circuit" between empirical results and second-degree observation: The case of sociobiology**

Empirical research has gathered a considerable amount of valuable descriptions with its statistical-descriptive method. The main problem of these investigations is that they are often linked to conclusions, which are based on assumptions that are subtracted from empirical verification. This is the case of sociobiology when, before formulating the assumptions that will be verified, parts from the idea that social capabilities are contained in the genome, for example: studies that conclude a relationship between "racial ancestry" and social phenomena subject to other forms of determination. The following is stated in one of them [18], for example:

were the conditions that made it possible for the anthropological species to develop the capac-

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The key process to understand the evolutionary development of the anthropological species is the ontogenesis. For millions of years, our species development was characterized by two parallel processes: the dissolution of instinctive and inflexible genetically determined forms of behavior and enormous learning in the first phases of ontogenesis. Through its relationship with the person responsible for its care, the member of the species in initial stages was able to acquire experiences that allowed it to increase its actions competence and arrange reality into a comprehensible world, which led to a gradual radical change of the genetic material, so instinctive structures lost their strength as determinants of the actions. In the transition from animal to man, the lengthening of the primary relationship in ontogenetic development played a fundamental role. Everything seems to indicate the lengthening of the close motherson relationship during the first years of life, and the huge amount of learning that takes place here made the instinctive mechanisms ineffective, in a process that lasted thousands of years. In the determination of human actions, the genetic basis plays a limited role, it is only present in fields closely linked to survival, such as feeding, sexuality, and defense. The evolutionary consequence of this process is the extreme inability of the anthropological species to survive

The evolution of the *Homo sapiens* would not have been possible if functional mechanisms for the construction behavior pattern linked to learning had not developed along with the dissolution of instinct. Brain development was key for this. Even though we do not know much about the brain's evolutionary development and the formation of differentiated neuronal zones, these made the acculturation process of men possible, and, with it, the formation of cognitive and normative structures. There is no doubt that without the brain's constructive capacity, these structures wouldn't have formed. However, it must be clear that these are only brain capacities and not cognitive competences, the latter must be acquired in a constructive way by every member of the species in their experiences in the

Since the anthropological constitution hardly has any survival instincts, the member of the species in initial stages is forced to develop mechanisms that allow it to lead an independent life. In its interaction with the adult, the new member of the species coordinates its motor skills, achieves greater competence in its actions, and develops structures that it uses to organize the world. The requirement for this to happen is precisely the social relationship with the adult in charge of its care, usually the mother. The newborn finds in her not only a figure that keeps his body alive but also a representative of the outside world from whom he learns a huge amount of behaviors and knowledge. The mother–child dyad is the stage during early ontogenesis in which the decisive learning process of survival takes place. Here begins every way of understanding reality, all the knowledge about our surrounding environment, every thought. For this reason, mother–child interaction and the mental capacities acquired in it are of paramount importance in the construction of cultural forms of life,

ity to learn? How was the human being formation process as such possible?

by itself at birth.

outside world.

especially cognition.

*We find that European ancestry is consistently and usually strongly positively correlated with cognitive ability and socioeconomic outcomes (mean r for cognitive ability = .708; for socioeconomic wellbeing = .643). And even further:*

*12 zero order correlational analyses found a substantial positive relationship between European ancestry and both cognitive ability and general socioeconomic well-being…*

*While the association between racial ancestry and outcomes is consistent with a genetic hypothesis, to obtain decisive evidence in support of such a position, one would need to identify specific alleles that vary between ancestral groups which are directly* [19] *or plausibly indirectly* [20] *associated with cognitive and/or socioeconomic outcomes on the individual level…*[21]*. 1*

In the conception of the individual that this study parts from, remnants of absolutist thought are still present: the sociocultural forms of life are presented as if they could be explained from a genetic a priori. In a second-degree observation, one may ask: What does this mean? How important is, for the behavior of an individual, what past generations, in the natural history of the species, have contributed as genetic material? How exactly does this material lead to certain behaviors?

This study shares the false supposition that genetics determines the cognitive level with the rest of the sociobiological investigations. The great wealth of psychogenetic and educational studies, initiated by Jean Piaget, has shown that the determinants of any individual's behavior do not reside in the genes but in learning, the actions of a subject are the result of its life experiences. The theoretical attempts to re-naturalize mental capacity have failed. To effectively evaluate the influence of the genetic background in cognitive abilities—which the study intends to show—first we need to remember the role played by the genes and the development of learning in the natural evolutionary history of the species. This way, it must be clear what biological equipment can and cannot do. Let's take a better look at this.

#### **3.1. Theoretical excursus**

Undoubtedly, the key to understand the cultural forms of life, including cognition, morality, love, and so on, should be sought in the natural history of the species first. The development of what characterizes the anthropological species was linked to the natural evolutionary history. Therefore, sciences try to reconstruct the development of these forms in the long transition process from animal to man. Some of the key questions sciences seek to answer are: What

<sup>1</sup> A more detailed analysis of this investigation as well as the reply of its authors can be found in [22].

were the conditions that made it possible for the anthropological species to develop the capacity to learn? How was the human being formation process as such possible?

often linked to conclusions, which are based on assumptions that are subtracted from empirical verification. This is the case of sociobiology when, before formulating the assumptions that will be verified, parts from the idea that social capabilities are contained in the genome, for example: studies that conclude a relationship between "racial ancestry" and social phenomena subject to other forms of determination. The following is stated in

*We find that European ancestry is consistently and usually strongly positively correlated with cognitive ability and socioeconomic outcomes (mean r for cognitive ability = .708; for socioeconomic well-*

*12 zero order correlational analyses found a substantial positive relationship between European ances-*

*While the association between racial ancestry and outcomes is consistent with a genetic hypothesis, to obtain decisive evidence in support of such a position, one would need to identify specific alleles that vary between ancestral groups which are directly* [19] *or plausibly indirectly* [20] *associated with cog-*

In the conception of the individual that this study parts from, remnants of absolutist thought are still present: the sociocultural forms of life are presented as if they could be explained from a genetic a priori. In a second-degree observation, one may ask: What does this mean? How important is, for the behavior of an individual, what past generations, in the natural history of the species, have contributed as genetic material? How exactly does this material lead

This study shares the false supposition that genetics determines the cognitive level with the rest of the sociobiological investigations. The great wealth of psychogenetic and educational studies, initiated by Jean Piaget, has shown that the determinants of any individual's behavior do not reside in the genes but in learning, the actions of a subject are the result of its life experiences. The theoretical attempts to re-naturalize mental capacity have failed. To effectively evaluate the influence of the genetic background in cognitive abilities—which the study intends to show—first we need to remember the role played by the genes and the development of learning in the natural evolutionary history of the species. This way, it must be clear what biological equipment can and cannot do. Let's take a better

Undoubtedly, the key to understand the cultural forms of life, including cognition, morality, love, and so on, should be sought in the natural history of the species first. The development of what characterizes the anthropological species was linked to the natural evolutionary history. Therefore, sciences try to reconstruct the development of these forms in the long transition process from animal to man. Some of the key questions sciences seek to answer are: What

A more detailed analysis of this investigation as well as the reply of its authors can be found in [22].

*1*

*try and both cognitive ability and general socioeconomic well-being…*

*nitive and/or socioeconomic outcomes on the individual level…*[21]*.*

one of them [18], for example:

to certain behaviors?

look at this.

1

**3.1. Theoretical excursus**

*being = .643). And even further:*

18 Statistics - Growing Data Sets and Growing Demand for Statistics

The key process to understand the evolutionary development of the anthropological species is the ontogenesis. For millions of years, our species development was characterized by two parallel processes: the dissolution of instinctive and inflexible genetically determined forms of behavior and enormous learning in the first phases of ontogenesis. Through its relationship with the person responsible for its care, the member of the species in initial stages was able to acquire experiences that allowed it to increase its actions competence and arrange reality into a comprehensible world, which led to a gradual radical change of the genetic material, so instinctive structures lost their strength as determinants of the actions. In the transition from animal to man, the lengthening of the primary relationship in ontogenetic development played a fundamental role. Everything seems to indicate the lengthening of the close motherson relationship during the first years of life, and the huge amount of learning that takes place here made the instinctive mechanisms ineffective, in a process that lasted thousands of years. In the determination of human actions, the genetic basis plays a limited role, it is only present in fields closely linked to survival, such as feeding, sexuality, and defense. The evolutionary consequence of this process is the extreme inability of the anthropological species to survive by itself at birth.

The evolution of the *Homo sapiens* would not have been possible if functional mechanisms for the construction behavior pattern linked to learning had not developed along with the dissolution of instinct. Brain development was key for this. Even though we do not know much about the brain's evolutionary development and the formation of differentiated neuronal zones, these made the acculturation process of men possible, and, with it, the formation of cognitive and normative structures. There is no doubt that without the brain's constructive capacity, these structures wouldn't have formed. However, it must be clear that these are only brain capacities and not cognitive competences, the latter must be acquired in a constructive way by every member of the species in their experiences in the outside world.

Since the anthropological constitution hardly has any survival instincts, the member of the species in initial stages is forced to develop mechanisms that allow it to lead an independent life. In its interaction with the adult, the new member of the species coordinates its motor skills, achieves greater competence in its actions, and develops structures that it uses to organize the world. The requirement for this to happen is precisely the social relationship with the adult in charge of its care, usually the mother. The newborn finds in her not only a figure that keeps his body alive but also a representative of the outside world from whom he learns a huge amount of behaviors and knowledge. The mother–child dyad is the stage during early ontogenesis in which the decisive learning process of survival takes place. Here begins every way of understanding reality, all the knowledge about our surrounding environment, every thought. For this reason, mother–child interaction and the mental capacities acquired in it are of paramount importance in the construction of cultural forms of life, especially cognition.

If we consider the null cultural situation of the newborn and the interactions established in the first stage of the biography, there can be no doubt that the conditions at the beginning of the formative process at any age and in any society are the same. In every age and in all societies, for 40,000 years, the member of the species in the early stage, with nothing but a few instincts to ensure its survival, is forced to develop mechanisms that allow it to lead an independent life. It is exactly this situation which repeats everywhere what creates equality in the early cognitive structures. The same conditions in which the process takes place determine the same results. Therefore, there is no known society, present, or past, in which its members hadn't started to coordinate their motor skills or build the schemes of object/subject, space, time, and causality in the early stage. The same thing that happened to the phylogenetic development continues to occur at the beginning of every biography. At this level of knowledge, ethnic and cultural differences play no role.

Scientific review of what happens in evolution allows us to confirm that sociocultural life forms, including cognition, do not take shape in the biological sphere itself, the genome, or the brain. The biological sphere does not know of mental abilities, it only provides the conditions to build them. A "naturalization of the mind" on the understanding of human forms of existence as links to a species evolution is only admissible in the sense that cognitive, linguistic, normative, and esthetic competences are constructed over natural capacities without being stored in them. If we consider the defining role of learning in the acquisition of cognitive competences, belonging to a race lacks explanatory validity when trying to find the reasons that truly allow to understand the differences between individuals in the field of cognition.

The Relationship between Theory, Scientific Explanation and Statistics in the Social Sciences

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75117

21

**3.3. The detachment of the "ethnicity" variable from the historical and social context**

than the rest.

A second argument in sociobiological studies to be challenged is that the "European ancestry" variable appears detached from its historical and social context; as a consequence, statistical relationships formulated with it do not contribute to consider the true problem posed by the fact that a white minority, those with a European ancestry, in some Latin-American countries, show better cognitive abilities and significantly higher income rates

If we want to comprehend the relationships between these variables, it is necessary to resort to history to understand what this relationship truly means and contemplate the changes introduced by the democratization in the composition of power in democratic Latin-American societies and which have resulted insufficient to put an end to social inequalities. This is not the place to explain in detail what the links with European ancestors mean sociologically, because this would require a broad and deep reflection, but the situation with the minority of "European ancestors" can at least be mentioned and referred to what is truly significant in

In Latin America, the European arrival at the beginning of the sixteenth century occurred through a cruel war of conquest. The Spaniards destroyed the old indigenous world and imposed a regime of domination, in which they occupied the positions of civil, ecclesiastical, and military power. The indigenous people were not only plundered but were also subjected and enslaved. After 300 years, the Latin-American criollos started to drive the Spaniards out through the independence war, but this didn't mean a profound change in the conditions of the poor peasants and indigenous people. Independence made way for the development of the middle class and brought a certain improvement in the situation of the mestizos. In Mexico, it wasn't until after the 1910 Revolution that the old rural regime, based on the concentration of land in large private states, disappeared to finally make way in the 1917 Constitution for some

Despite industrial progress, the expansion of the middle class, the considerable increase in miscegenation, and even the democratic advances in Latin-American countries, regional elites have maintained certain ethnic purity since colonial times. However, traits such as skin color and race purity are unimportant in sociological analysis; what truly matters is the permanence of the same elite at the top of the composition of power and the mechanisms that have

current sociological studies: its status in the composition of power.

of the demands of peasants and workers.

kept them in power.

As Piaget pointed out, almost every competence has a biological basis from which they part, but human competences are constructive processes, neither human conscience nor subjectivity is determined by nature, which only offers the opportunity to develop them. The newborn doesn't count with a world in order; for him, there is no space nor time, objects lack shape and permanence, and there are no causal relationships between them. Nor does he have the capacity to organize his toward an end and doesn't even perceive himself as being independent of the outside world. He will have to learn all of this through a long constructive process.

### **3.2. Reconsideration of ethnic determination in cognition**

After briefly reviewing the natural history development of the anthropological species, we turn our attention to sociobiological studies.

It should be clear by now that human beings do not count with a competence for action nor a structure of the self provided beforehand by nature. He doesn't bring with him the principles of social organization, nor does it have enough knowledge of the outer world he is born into. Unlike other species, he doesn't possess an array of the natural elements that, fixed in the genetic code, reduce them to the elements relevant for action, as it happens with instinct.

If we bear in mind that at birth every member of the species is in this null cultural situation and undertakes a constructive process of the world, and that all of this happens in every society and in every age, one must ask, under the precepts of sociobiology: what is the point of trying to statistically demonstrate that belonging to a race, or genetic constitution, has any relationship with cognitive abilities?

If European, indigenous, or African children are born with a biological equipment that does not ensure their survival in any way, and all of them have the same task of undertaking the lengthy process of constructing their world and survival competences of action before them, how is it possible then to search the reason for the cognitive abilities in genetic differences?

Sociobiology parts from the assumption that cognition forms are found in the genome (more recently, in the brain). It assumes that cognition forms are already given in the genetic material, and while stored there only wait for an opportunity to manifest. However, the construction of the cognition forms happen on a stage different from the biochemical evolution.

Scientific review of what happens in evolution allows us to confirm that sociocultural life forms, including cognition, do not take shape in the biological sphere itself, the genome, or the brain. The biological sphere does not know of mental abilities, it only provides the conditions to build them. A "naturalization of the mind" on the understanding of human forms of existence as links to a species evolution is only admissible in the sense that cognitive, linguistic, normative, and esthetic competences are constructed over natural capacities without being stored in them. If we consider the defining role of learning in the acquisition of cognitive competences, belonging to a race lacks explanatory validity when trying to find the reasons that truly allow to understand the differences between individuals in the field of cognition.

If we consider the null cultural situation of the newborn and the interactions established in the first stage of the biography, there can be no doubt that the conditions at the beginning of the formative process at any age and in any society are the same. In every age and in all societies, for 40,000 years, the member of the species in the early stage, with nothing but a few instincts to ensure its survival, is forced to develop mechanisms that allow it to lead an independent life. It is exactly this situation which repeats everywhere what creates equality in the early cognitive structures. The same conditions in which the process takes place determine the same results. Therefore, there is no known society, present, or past, in which its members hadn't started to coordinate their motor skills or build the schemes of object/subject, space, time, and causality in the early stage. The same thing that happened to the phylogenetic development continues to occur at the beginning of every biography. At this level of

As Piaget pointed out, almost every competence has a biological basis from which they part, but human competences are constructive processes, neither human conscience nor subjectivity is determined by nature, which only offers the opportunity to develop them. The newborn doesn't count with a world in order; for him, there is no space nor time, objects lack shape and permanence, and there are no causal relationships between them. Nor does he have the capacity to organize his toward an end and doesn't even perceive himself as being independent of the outside world. He will have to learn all of this through a long constructive process.

After briefly reviewing the natural history development of the anthropological species, we

It should be clear by now that human beings do not count with a competence for action nor a structure of the self provided beforehand by nature. He doesn't bring with him the principles of social organization, nor does it have enough knowledge of the outer world he is born into. Unlike other species, he doesn't possess an array of the natural elements that, fixed in the genetic code, reduce them to the elements relevant for action, as it happens with instinct.

If we bear in mind that at birth every member of the species is in this null cultural situation and undertakes a constructive process of the world, and that all of this happens in every society and in every age, one must ask, under the precepts of sociobiology: what is the point of trying to statistically demonstrate that belonging to a race, or genetic constitution, has any

If European, indigenous, or African children are born with a biological equipment that does not ensure their survival in any way, and all of them have the same task of undertaking the lengthy process of constructing their world and survival competences of action before them, how is it possible then to search the reason for the cognitive abilities in genetic differences?

Sociobiology parts from the assumption that cognition forms are found in the genome (more recently, in the brain). It assumes that cognition forms are already given in the genetic material, and while stored there only wait for an opportunity to manifest. However, the construction of the cognition forms happen on a stage different from the biochemical evolution.

knowledge, ethnic and cultural differences play no role.

20 Statistics - Growing Data Sets and Growing Demand for Statistics

**3.2. Reconsideration of ethnic determination in cognition**

turn our attention to sociobiological studies.

relationship with cognitive abilities?
