Milne-Edwards, Darwin, Durkheim and the Division of Labour: A Case Study in Reciprocal Conceptual Exchanges between the Social and the Natural Sciences

Abstract

Much attention has already been paid to the important historical role played in the constitution of scientific discourses by the transference of concepts from one area of knowledge to another. The enquiries generally focus on the analogical or metaphorical nature of these conceptual transfers. Some investigations suggest that these transfers consistently aim not so much at monistic or reductionist explanations as at providing heuristic scaffolding or firmer scientific basis and authority for fledgling domains of knowledge. This is why one should generally expect a typical declivity in the process, the more exact and established sciences providing conceptual frameworks for the less firmly grounded ones. Thence the frequent borrowings of the biological sciences from the physical sciences, and of the social to the biological and the physical sciences.1