The Social Brain: Sociological Foundations

“Genes and neurons are social entities” (p. 133). If such a statement may sound radical or even provocative, it is not so much due to the content itself. Rather, it is a consequence of the hegemony of the most reductionist approaches that have influenced the study of cognition during the past thirty years. These approaches suggest that to uncover the secrets of human cognition, emotions, and behavior, we need to focus solely on the brain, neurons, or genes. But the limitations of these paradigms are becoming increasingly evident. Indeed, many scholars regard it as an essential need to find credible alternative models. It is now necessary to design models that integrate the biological, cultural, social, and technological aspects of cognition without prioritizing any single element. Despite the ongoing dominance of reductionist perspectives, alternative theoretical proposals have always existed; they were put forth by social scientists, life scientists, and neuroscientists. Sal Restivo relies precisely on this diverse literature to formulate his “social brain” model in The Social Brain: Sociological Foundations, with the aim to “integrate and extrapolate the various emerging proposals designed to revise classical thinking about the brain/mind/body and the directions such revisions should be taking. This integration has led to the most highly networked model of the brain-in-the-world literature” (p. 116).