Roger D. Masters

Biology, Ideology, and Human Social Behavior

There are two distinct questions to be asked of any description or explanation offered of the events, phenomena, and processes that occur in the world around us. The first is about the internal logic and asks: Is the description accurate and the explanation true? . . . [The] second question to be asked of descriptions or explanations is about the social matrix in which science is embedded -and it is a question of equal importance.... [The] internalist, positivist tradition of the autonomy of scientific knowledge is itself part of the general objectification of social relations that accompanied the transition from feudal to modern capitalist societies (pp. 31-33).