Abstract
Insects factored as ‘symbols of instinct’, necessary as a rhetorical device in the boundary work of early social psychology. They were symbolically used to draw a dividing line between humans and animals, clarifying views on instinct and consciousness. These debates were also waged to determine if social psychology was a subfield of sociology or psychology. The exchange between psychologist James Mark Baldwin and sociologist Charles Abram Ellwood exemplifies this particular aspect of boundary work. After providing a general background of the debates, I turn specifically to the writings of Baldwin and Ellwood between 1890 and 1936, tracing the use of insects as ‘symbols of instinct’.
The use of insects as ‘symbols of instinct’ factored into the debates of instinct and consciousness that became especially salient in the boundary work of early social psychologists. Early social psychologists proclaimed various differences between humans and social insects, such as culture and intellect, in order to establish the arguments for a human consciousness that went beyond instinct. Instinct was one of the shared, yet contested, concepts in both fields of sociology and psychology and therefore a crucial point of discussion in early social psychology. In this article I intend to examine the use of insects in the social psychological discourse for a closer look at the idea of instinct and the boundary work within the field. Defining social psychology involved boundary work between the two disciplines and debate as to whether this new subfield was more sociological or psychological. I will especially focus on the contending ideas of James Mark Baldwin (1861–1934) and Charles Abram Ellwood (1873–1946) as they uniquely illustrate this specific boundary work from their respective fields of psychology and sociology. The development of this debate illustrates the shift in ideas concerning instinct for discipline boundary work and for the individual theorists.
Many recent histories of social psychology have begun to elaborate on the debates in this subfield (Danziger, 2000; Good, 2000; Greenwood, 2004; Jost and Kruglanski, 2002; Lubek, 1993, 2000; Lubek and Apfelbaum, 2000; MacMartin and Winston, 2000; Stam, Radtke and Lubek, 2000). Certainly early social psychology was not a unified discipline and in particular had definitional difficulties surrounding whether it was a subfield of psychology or sociology. As Albion Small lamented in 1905:
[I]t would tend to clear needless obstacles from the path of this progress, if common consent could be gained to co-operate, so far as feasible, in dispelling the mistiness that surrounds the phrase ‘social psychology’. Sociologists and psychologists have thus far failed to reach the sort of understanding about border problems, and division of labor, which would best economize the work of both. (Small, 1905: 646) To delimit the fields of the newer social sciences is much more difficult than to locate the boundaries among the older natural sciences. Social psychology, since it touches both psychology and sociology, is experiencing some especial difficulties in the definition of its scope and method. (Young, 1925: 156)
Boundary work provides the legitimacy that scientists use to distinguish science from non-science, rhetorically mapping out the distinct lines between the two realms (Gieryn, 1983). As Evans (2009), Good (2000), Jasanoff (1995), Swedlow (2007) and Gieryn himself note, boundary work can also be used as a concept to describe inter-disciplinary disputes over scientific claims, and in making clear distinctions between types of science or disciplinary boundaries. In particular, Good (2000: 383) describes the boundary work of social psychology, referring to the process as the ‘disciplining of social psychology’. This process contained disputes over boundary objects; ‘topics that were of common interest to both sociologists and psychologists: self and identity, emotion, social interaction, sex and gender, interpersonal relationships, groups and crowds’ (ibid.: 391). The concept of instinct also became a boundary object in the creation of social psychology as a discipline. Boundary objects such as instinct can lend themselves to different interpretations while still remaining recognizable between social worlds and providing some sense of connection (Star and Griesemer, 1989). Debates over instinct became one of the common, yet contested, themes in the formation of social psychology.
Although it is beyond the scope of the article to elaborate fully on the instinct debate in general, the article’s focus emerges from the context of the larger debate. Instinct theories, popularized by William James and William McDougall, were central in the formation of early social psychology (James, 1890; McDougall, 1908). However, by the 1920s the enumeration of instincts began to give way to questioning the importance of them altogether for understanding human behavior. The role of culture began to offer more explanations for sociological social psychologists, while the behaviorism of Watson and the experimental method began to dominate for psychology and the social psychologists in that field. For a time, however, discussions of instinct factored heavily in the boundary work of the two disciplines.
In mapping out disciplinary territory many dividing lines may coexist around the boundaries. Insects as symbols of instinct provided one of the means to draw distinct lines within the larger ‘rhetorical maps’ of early social psychology (Gieryn, 1999). It became requisite in early texts to include a discussion of insects in relation to humans to provide an outline of the boundary and the author’s place in the debate on instinct and social psychology. 2 One annoyed critic of such rhetorical style complained: ‘Why should stories of animal behavior, theories of linguistic development, or diagrams of the nervous system be introduced where their specific relation to social psychology cannot be demonstrated? … Too often are readers first informed of life among the ants and bees, and then led on to other topics with never a reference again to the insects’ (Lemmon, 1936: 668). Not incidentally, this author was writing on the question of boundaries for social psychology; the title of her article ‘What is Social Psychology?’ speaks to the ongoing problem of definition. She perceived that some of the confusion was based on ‘fundamental disagreements’ between the ‘social psychologies’ and preferred texts whose authors clearly aligned themselves on either side of the line she felt was drawn between the sociological and psychological approaches to social psychology (ibid.: 673).
As Lemmon had protested, insects were mentioned frequently as a rhetorical device rather than an actual topic of study. They became ‘symbols of instinct’ necessary to situate one’s position in the social psychology debates. How the field should address instinct was determined by how important it would be for humans and how it might be studied. 3 There were many differing opinions on instinct, and as Noon (2005: 375) claims, ‘To invoke “instinct” at the end of the nineteenth century was to enter into one of the most contested regions of evolutionary discourse’. Social psychologists were also grappling with various conceptions of evolution. A neo-Lamarckian strain predominated and comparative psychology’s use of animal studies was the norm (Cravens, 1971; Stocking, 1962).
In this article I will first provide a general background for how insects were utilized as ‘symbols of instinct’ in the theoretical ideas of early social psychologists. The debates among sociologists and psychologists over instinct and social psychology were not only fueled by deeply held beliefs but also were disciplinary turf wars. In the second section of the article I will include the claims and interactions between James Mark Baldwin and Charles A. Ellwood to illustrate the outlines of this specific aspect of boundary work. Baldwin and Ellwood were involved in the early formations of social psychology and approached it from their respective disciplines of psychology and sociology. Both were well respected in their fields and their arguments were influential at this early stage of social psychology’s formation. Their intellectual exchanges with each other are found in their work as their thinking on insects, instinct and social psychology developed along with the boundaries of the discipline.
Social insects and humans: Instinct or learning?
In attempting to delineate the nature of the self, one of the issues that became crucial for social psychologists was the role of instinct versus learning and intelligence or consciousness variously defined. Kimball Young, writing in 1930, referred to the earlier controversies over instinct that prevailed in the general scientific and even the humanities discourse. At the time of Young’s writing the debates seemed to be leaning heavily against the role of instinct and rather toward an acceptance of behaviorism and social learning for the human self. However, this was the result of boundary work that required a revision of the idea of evolutionary ties of continuity between instinctual animals and rational humans (Greenwood, 2008). Insects as ‘symbols of instinct’ were utilized in the dividing line that was constructed between instinct and intelligence. Insect behavior was commonly accepted as being driven by instinct, although to what degree insects shared similarities to human society and to what degree they could achieve higher intellect was being debated. 4 This dividing line became important in the fight over the disciplinary borders of sociological social psychology and psychological social psychology.
Floyd H. Allport (1924) designated insects as the species on the border and as a marker at the top of the lower, instinctually driven end:
Our study of the social activities of animals has revealed that in species not lower in the scale than insects individuals respond to the presence and behavior of one another in a manner which aids their life adjustments. (Allport, 1924: 167–8) The lowest forms of animal life, although not without power of varying their responses to their surroundings, make essentially stereotyped responses to the environment upon which they are dependent. This is true up through animals of the grade of development of the insects. The vertebrates, however, show a very decided tendency to make variant responses to their environments. And we may say that the more highly differentiated the nervous structure in the vertebrates the more decidedly variant may be the reaction types which they are able to make in case of need. (Bernard, 1924: 88–9)
Bernard’s ‘stairway of habit technique'. (Bernard, 1926: 154)
As Bernard suggests, one must ‘read upward’ to see that instinct is a quality that humans build on as opposed to lower animals that remain on an instinctual level. 5 Social insects became a border species used to make claims about consciousness and instinct within social psychology. For instance, Allport believed insects showed ‘true social behavior’ and that it would be important to study the ‘origin and development of social life among the lower orders that a fuller understanding of the human aspect may be gained’ (Allport, 1924: 156, 147). However, deeming insects not to have language, he also thought that there was a limit to the extent of comparison that could be made. Therefore, Allport encouraged continued study of the higher stages of development exhibited in infants and children (ibid.: 147).
L. L. Bernard also felt that because humans modified their instincts on the ‘stairway of habits’, it was the acquiring of these habits that should be studied rather than instinct itself. The research subject therefore would be the ‘child and citizen’ to determine how they ‘build up their habits upon the basis of instincts, directly or indirectly’ (Bernard, 1924: 533). Unlike Allport, however, Bernard did not feel that insects were quite social, rather that ‘the insect has a narrow locus and dies in the same season as which it is born, or makes the transition by means of metamorphosis. Its instincts are practically fixed’ (ibid.: 530). In contrast, ‘Man is able to dispense with instinct because he has a highly complex and well organized social environment’ (ibid.). Even within an argument against instinct for humans, Bernard felt the need to include a discussion of its symbolic representative, the insect.
Although William James created a list of instincts as early as 1890 in his Principles of Psychology, it was William McDougall in his 1908 An Introduction to Social Psychology that really solidified a theory of instinct as an explanation of human behaviors. These various instincts, such as a ‘gregariousness’ instinct, were linked to emotions and resulting behaviors; these were innate and heritable. Complex behaviors, labeled ‘sentiments’, were a result of more than one instinct (Harlow, 1969; McDougall, 1908, 1921). McDougall was influenced by a more Lamarckian approach and believed that social psychology should trace human nature through an ‘evolutionary scale far back into the animal kingdom’ (1908: 17). He was a prominent figure in early social psychology and the debate on instincts. In his book The Group Mind, he devoted a chapter to ‘group spirit’ and elaborated on whether this particular idea of collective behavior could be applied to animal societies.
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Because he viewed instinct in insects as so highly developed he was not completely convinced they had the level of group spirit he attributed to humans. ‘Even in such animal societies as those of the ants and bees, its presence, though often asserted, seems to be highly questionable’ (McDougall, 1920: 92). However, McDougall did further address this ambiguous case of the social insects, because they were an obligatory part of the rhetoric of boundary work within the discipline:
When we observe the division of labour that characterizes the hive, how some bees ventilate, some build the comb, some feed the larvae and so on; and especially when we hear that the departure of a swarm from the hive is preceded by the explorations of a small number which seek a suitable place for the new home of the swarm and then guide it to the chosen spot, it seems difficult to deny that some idea of the community and its needs is present to the minds of its members. But we know so little as yet of the limits of purely instinctive behaviour (and by that I mean immediate reactions upon sense-perceptions determined by the innate constitution) that it would be rash to make any such inference. (McDougall, 1920: 92–3)
Insects clearly factored as representatives of instinct in the early texts of social psychology. Many viewed instinct as the evolutionary link between ‘lower’ animals and humans but this emphasis decreased as social psychology developed. The discussion of insects proved important as a symbolic marker used as a rhetorical device in the boundary work of social psychology. As ideas of evolution changed and more experimental methods emerged in social psychology, the role of insects as symbols of instinct became less of a matter of debate. To better understand how the role of insects as symbols of instincts factored into the boundary work of social psychology I will present a more focused example of this debate between two early social psychologists.
James Mark Baldwin and Charles Abram Ellwood
James Mark Baldwin (1861–1934) and Charles Abram Ellwood (1873–1946) easily represent both sides of early social psychology before the boundary that marked it as a distinct field. Both men were influential in their home disciplines, Baldwin in psychology and Ellwood in sociology, alongside their place in early social psychology. They were also noted for their contributions to related fields as well; Ellwood’s work extended into education, criminology and social reform (Jensen, 1946), Baldwin was influential in educational reform, philosophy and later cognitive psychology (Baldwin, 1926; Wozniak, 1982). Both men were recognized internationally, Ellwood by the International Congress of Sociology and the Institut International de Sociologie (Jensen, 1946); Baldwin as a correspondent for the Institut de France Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Wozniak, 2009). Baldwin also served as president elect, along with William James, for the International Congress of Psychologists (Baldwin, 1926).
Baldwin was clearly instrumental in the establishment of the new psychology. He founded an experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Toronto in 1889, claimed to be the first in the British Empire. He was subsequently invited to fill the Stuart Chair in Psychology at Princeton University in 1893 and created a psychology laboratory for that department as well (Baldwin, 1926). He was one of the founding members of the American Psychological Association and president in 1897 (Sewny, 1967; Wozniak, 2009). His Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901) was intended to ‘produce a recognized international terminology for philosophy and psychology’ (Baldwin, 1926: 72). Baldwin is one of the early leaders in experimental psychology and mostly known for his contribution of the ‘Baldwin effect’. He considered imitation the main factor in evolutionary growth; learned adaptations that kept an individual alive could be passed on socially to successive generations and would contribute to a selective process that complemented Darwin’s natural selection (Baldwin, 1909: viii–ix). Baldwin considered this process ‘organic selection’, and also credited C. Lloyd Morgan and H. F. Osborn with arriving at this same idea (Baldwin, 1896, 1926; Obiols and Berrios, 2009; Wozniak, 2009). Baldwin’s Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology was written in 1897 in part as a textbook for the new field of social psychology. 7 Another significant work in social psychology was Baldwin’s The Individual and Society or Psychology and Sociology in 1911. His focus on cognitive processes and the individual placed social psychology under the realm of a psychological approach.
Ellwood was viewed as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of American sociology. While serving as chair he was responsible for establishing two sociology departments, the University of Missouri and Duke University. His 1910 textbook Sociology and Modern Social Problems advanced the discipline of sociology at the university and high school level, by 1946 having sold over 300,000 copies (Jensen, 1946). LoConto (2011: 114) identifies four major themes that remained throughout Ellwood’s work: ‘(1) similarities in group and individual behavior; (2) qualitative methods as a means to understanding human behavior; (3) utilizing the social sciences as a means of helping others; and (4) a focus on communication as a means of creating reality through human interaction’. Many of the concepts woven into his work, according to LoConto, are believed by some to be incorporated into the field of Symbolic Interaction. Ellwood viewed sociology as a way to advance humanity and his later interest in cultural evolution not only emerged from shifts in his thinking, but also tied into his earlier commitment to social evolution as ‘leading to social betterment’ (Turner, 2007: 125). Ellwood became president of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association) in 1924 (Jensen, 1946). He also chaired the section on Social Psychology (Odum, 1951: 128–31). Through the 1930s he had been credited with being the ‘father’ of sociological social psychology (LoConto, 2011). During an invited talk for the Congress of Arts and Sciences held during the 1904 St Louis World Exposition, Ellwood took special care to note in his introduction that social psychology was listed as a subfield under sociology (1906: 859). His social psychological publications include Some Prolegomena to Social Psychology published in 1901 as a book derived from a previous series of articles in the 1899 volumes of the American Journal of Sociology. In 1917 he published the textbook An Introduction to Social Psychology. Many of his articles were devoted to promoting the emerging subfield as one that belonged under the field of sociology (1899, 1901a, 1908, 1924).
Baldwin and Ellwood addressed each other’s ideas through their publications, and this resulting exchange can illustrate the type of boundary work between sociology and psychology over the new discipline of social psychology. Specifically the rhetorical emphasis on lower animals, including insects, and the role of instinct can be delineated from this exchange. The development of the field can be shown to emerge with some compromises on the importance of evolutionary ties to insects, instinct and the boundaries of sociology and psychology.
James Mark Baldwin participated in the boundary work between psychology and sociology, although some of these contributions are overlooked in the shadow of his theory of imitation as well as his departure from Johns Hopkins due to a personal scandal (Horley, 2001; Mueller, 1976; Petras, 1968; Wozniak, 1982).
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His thoughts on insects in the debate between instinct and intelligence were influential in moving beyond the reliance on instinct within the theoretical approaches of social psychology.
While not ruling out the possibility of a gregarious instinct to account for lower animal societies he criticized the notion that such an instinct could explain the complex phenomenon of human society. Human society is too high on the evolutionary scale to be explained by the same instincts, and to do so is to falsely interpret the meaning of evolution. (Petras, 1968: 140)
Baldwin believed that the animal studies of comparative psychology could not fully capture mental development in humans, and focused on children as a more precise model for understanding the role of learning in human development. He specifically felt the need to address the model of social insects in his writing and to argue for a distinct difference between instinctual insect behavior and the role of learning for human behavior. Baldwin explained that whereas only instinct was passed on for insects, acquired social abilities were passed on in humans.
The influence of social heredity is, in a large sense, inversely as the amount and definiteness of natural heredity. By this is meant that the more a person or an animal is destined to learn in his lifetime, the less fully equipped with instincts and special organic adaptations must he be at birth. This has been made so clear by recent biological discussion that I need do no more than refer to it. (Baldwin, 1897: 61)
Using his ideal model, Baldwin compared the human infant and insect development. Infants start out with less instinctual abilities, but have greater capacity for learning. The developmental path is not simply just one of rising higher in consciousness but is a different project altogether for humans and insects.
In the insects we find the instinctive apparatus marvellously complete; much of the life-history of the insect being prepared for in the equipment which he brings into the world. The other extreme is realized in the human infant. He has very few instincts, and these are almost all fitted to secure organic satisfaction. Many of them terminate with the rise of volition. The insects have remarkable instincts, but cannot learn to do new things; the baby, on the contrary, has no complete instincts to speak of, but can learn to do almost anything. Now the learning capacity is the capacity to which social heredity appeals and which it calls into play; on the other hand, the instincts are the result, in their method of acquisition by the individual, of natural heredity; so it is plain from the simple statement of these facts that the two kinds of heredity are in inverse ratio to each other. The insect pays dear, therefore, for his early ‘start’ on the infant toward maturity; and the infant gets a royal reward for the toil and trouble of his early months and years. (Baldwin, 1897: 62)
Charles Ellwood initially disagreed with Baldwin about the role of instinct being so different for animals and humans and criticized this rejection of the ‘“doctrine of development” which since Darwin has been the major premise of all scientific thought about man’ (Ellwood, 1901a: 728). Ellwood believed that insect societies provided a baseline of development from which we could actually model human organization:
Let us consider the case of the social insects – the ants, bees, and wasps – to bring out our point still clearer. As is well known, these animals exhibit a marvelous degree of organization in the groups which they form, the division of labor and the corresponding division of individuals into classes among them often surpassing that found in human societies of considerable development. From an objective point of view these groups of insects seem as truly societies as any human groups. Moreover, we cannot well deny to these creatures some degree of mental life, for they are known to show, both as individuals and as groups, considerable power of adaptation in the presence of danger. Some have even gone so far as to claim that they see among them the beginning of that process of suggestion and imitation which M. Tarde and Professor Baldwin make the sole factor in the human social process. (Ellwood, 1901a: 729) However, it is usually recognized that the organization which colonies of these insects exhibit is an outcome of certain habits of cooperation which have become innate in the species through a process of natural selection in the course of a long period of evolution. In other words, the societies formed by ants, bees, and wasps are organized upon the basis of instinct. Now, if instinct plays such a rôle in the organization of sub-human societies, and if human societies are admittedly genetically related to these, is it not probable that instinctive impulses have much to do with the organization of human society; and not simply one instinctive impulse, the tendency to imitate, but many? If it be objected that, in so far as the organization of society is a matter of instinct, it is physiological and not psychological, the reply is that then all social organization is physiological, for the tendency to imitate is admitted to be an instinct. (Ellwood, 1901a: 729–30) In saying that man is a being whose social life is an organization arising from his growth as a self – as a being who thinks himself and so thinks others also in relation to self – is not to say that there are no factors in his social life due to the lower functions – impulses, emotions, instincts, etc. Man is also an animal. He has certain spontaneous tendencies company-wards, apart from his great capacity to think himself into conscious social life. This, however, if it were all he had, would lead to the sort of gregarious life called above ‘socionomic’; that is, in the main. This is what the animals have. In its type it is a life together, because it is natural for them to live together. It represents the ‘instinctive’ and ‘spontaneous’ periods of equipment. This fully admitted, – that there is such company life among animals, – we yet find it different from the human, just as the child’s early spontaneous reactions – bashfulness, organic sympathy, etc. – are different from his later reasonable and reflective attitudes. Yet the transition is gradual, as the spring up of the form of organization called the ‘self-thought’ situation is gradual. (Baldwin, 1902: 524–6) Finally, the whole argument of Professor Baldwin’s book is that society is a product of self-consciousness; that it depends in all phases of its evolution upon the development of the self-thought. Accordingly, he finds the matter of social organization to be thoughts; and he denies that animal associations constitute true societies, since animals do not possess self-consciousness. Does not this make human society a purely intellectual construction? Is not this an ultra-psychological view which neither the sociologist nor the psychologist who takes biology into account can afford to countenance? (Ellwood, 1907: 282–3) At this point it is that child psychology is more valuable than the study of the consciousness of animals. The latter never become men, while children do. The animals represent in some few respects a branch of the tree of growth in advance of man, while being in many other respects very far behind him. In studying animals we are always haunted by the fear that the analogy may not hold; that some element essential to the development of the human mind may not discover itself at all. (Baldwin, 1906a: 5–6) The criticism (Ellwood) that I find here a break in the genetic line – an impassable gulf between animals and man – is contradicted by my whole view of the social life as a gradually developed thing emerging with the consciousness of self. Yet this continuity of development assumed, the point emphasized in the foregoing pages is the fact of a growing and typical difference between that gregarious consciousness which mainly reflects fixed and unprogressive nervous functions biologically selected, and that consciousness which, becoming freed from these limitations, shows its capacity for the psychological organization which is intellectual and ethical. To this latter alone I apply the term ‘society’; to the former ‘company’. (Baldwin, 1902[1897]: 525–6)
And yet this connection was not a strong one. ‘The parallelism with animal development is quite clear from this new point of approach. The only stage for which an evident analogy has not been pointed out by other writers is that called “projective”’ (Baldwin, 1906a: 18). Citing examples of social behavior in certain animals Baldwin, however, clarified that ‘These creatures show a real recognition of the one individual by another, and a real community of life and reaction, which is quite different from the reflective organization of human society, in which the self-consciousness and personal volition of the individual play the most important role’ (ibid.). While in general Baldwin ascribed the lowest stage of mental awareness to social animals, he deemed it important to place a footnote to specifically address the case of the social insects. ‘The “social” life of certain of the hymenoptera, notably bees and ants, illustrates an extreme “projective” social development embodied in instinct’ (ibid.: 19). Baldwin felt that social insects developed imitation into a highly developed set of instinctual behaviors that gave the appearance of social development.
Ellwood’s cultural turn
Although Ellwood’s critique of Baldwin’s imitation theory remained, it came to center on other reasons than Baldwin’s supposed break with evolutionary continuity. Along with a shift in ideas about evolution for sociology in general, Ellwood found himself less opposed to the separation of human society and animal societies. As Cravens (1971) explains, Ellwood became exposed to the ideas of cultural anthropology. The case of the social insects diminished in its importance along with a less neo-Lamarckian influence on evolutionary ideas in the social sciences (Cravens, 1971; Stocking, 1962). By the 1920s the hold of instinct over sociology and social psychology began to loosen (Cravens, 1971). Ellwood’s ideas of evolution came to have more in common with Baldwin; however, his commitment to sociological boundary work remained. Yet, how would he reconcile the loss of instinct and the ‘the case of the social insects’ as a significant rhetorical tool of his social psychology boundary work?
By 1918, Ellwood had begun to accept a more cultural definition of evolution. In his article ‘Theories of Cultural Evolution’ in the American Journal of Sociology he explained what the shift would require in terms of the previous ideas of animals. After first declaring culture to be the distinguishing mark of human societies, Ellwood swiftly and specifically turned to insects:
The wonders of a hive of bees, or of a hill of ants, are truly ‘social’, that is, they involve psychic interstimulation and response, but they are not ‘cultural’. The organization achieved by such animal communities is not, so far as we know, on a cultural plane, but has been produced wholly by the action of the biological factors of variation, heredity, and selection, with perhaps the addition of a slight amount of habituation. … A rigid biological-geographical determinism will easily cover all of the facts of their social life. (Ellwood, 1918: 780) … these things man shares with the rest of the animal world … if they alone could furnish an adequate basis for interpreting the social life of man, the sociology of a hive of bees should be adequate for a human group; and human sociology would be, when reduced to its lowest terms, a rigid biological-geographical determinism. (Ellwood, 1918: 780–1) Social life begins with animal association. Many animals besides man, as we have already said, live in groups and adjust themselves to one another through some sort of consciousness of the presence of other individuals in their groups. Even instinctive activities frequently require some degree of reciprocal consciousness on the part of individuals for their functioning. Thus collective behavior, or social life, begins far down in the reaches of animal life. The life of the social insects, such as the ants and the bees, sufficiently illustrates this phase of social life. But not until social life, or collective behavior, depends upon acquired uniformities of action, rather than upon inborn or hereditary uniformities of instinct, is there opportunity for the domination of such behavior by conscious processes. (Ellwood, 1924: 6–7) Human social life is thus dominated by ‘culture’, and culture is a matter of habits acquired by interaction with other members of one’s group. This interaction is, however, almost wholly on the psychic plane, and is mediated by suggestion, imitation, and the more definite forms of communication, such as language. Human sociology becomes very distinct, therefore, from the psychology of the collective behavior of animal groups. It is culture and habit, not instinct, which must be the main concern of the sociologist, or of anyone who offers a psychological interpretation of collective human behavior; for it is the development of culture which distinguishes the social life of man from the social life of the brutes. (Ellwood, 1924: 7–9)
J. M. Baldwin’s development of animal instinct by organic selection. Solid lines represent instinct and dotted lines, intelligence. For some animals instinct becomes more ‘perfect’ with each generation and the need for intelligence disappears. (Baldwin, 1899: 35)
Ellwood’s cultural evolution diagram. (Ellwood, 1927: 249)
The final assessment
Baldwin had continued to respond to his critics in the years after his departure from Johns Hopkins (Baldwin, 1911). Additionally, publication of Between Two Wars in 1926 chronicled his career in his own words, as did his other autobiographical piece in 1930. Although his work and life in Mexico and France, along with his personal absorption in foreign relations after the First World War, may have removed him from the American academic scene directly, his influence was still being felt (Wozniak, 1982). ‘By the early 1920s, most psychologists and sociologists, especially those who identified themselves as social psychologists, had rejected all instinct theories and had taken up the modern social science idea of culture and cultural determinism, the idea that Baldwin had anticipated so clearly’ (Cravens and Burnham, 1971: 642). Baldwin died in 1934; however, Ellwood was still interacting with Baldwin’s ideas and using them for the boundary work of establishing a social psychology grounded in sociology.
In Ellwood’s 1936 article, ‘The Social Philosophy of James Mark Baldwin’, he admits to being ‘among the earlier and severer critics of Baldwin’s social theories’ (Ellwood, 1936: 64). Due to his change of mind in regard to evolution Ellwood retracted some of these critiques. As he discussed this he claimed that he wanted ‘to confess that some … criticisms were not well grounded, and that the lapse of time has strengthened rather than weakened some of Baldwin’s fundamental positions, even though he may be personally forgotten in the sociological controversies of the present’ (ibid.: 64–5). Ellwood credited anthropology with proving Baldwin’s stance on the importance of imitation and the mind in evolutionary progress. However, Ellwood still believed that imitation should not be the one factor in evolution acting upon selection. This would, as Baldwin had himself promoted it, frame development as a mental activity, and would therefore place social psychology under psychology rather than sociology. Ellwood wanted to grant credence to the importance of learning and social heredity without losing ground for the discipline of sociology. He therefore substituted Baldwin’s idea of social heredity for what he stated ‘we would now call culture’ (ibid.: 60).
Because of this new cultural turn, Ellwood no longer defended the connection between insect societies and human societies in the way he did in his earlier work. Ellwood even took the position that a failing in Baldwin’s theory was not specifying strongly enough that insect and human societies were separate: ‘Baldwin does not make a clear dividing line between what he calls “animal companies” and “human society”. He does not say that the distinctive mark of human society is that it possesses culture’ (Ellwood, 1936: 66). Ellwood claimed that Baldwin oversimplified the dividing line by making it rest on psychological terms of self-conscious thought, rather than the more sociological (or anthropological) conception of culture. Even when Ellwood conceded some of the dividing lines in the rhetorical maps of the boundary work he and Baldwin had been engaged in, he still did not give up on claiming social psychology for sociology.
Early social psychology was a subfield divided by the boundary work involved in proclaiming it for the discipline either of sociology or psychology. By the 1920s and 1930s, ongoing critiques of instinct, changes in the ideas of evolution and the increasing acceptance of behaviorism began to settle these disciplinary disputes. Yet these changes involved dialogue between sociologists and psychologists over the definition and methods of social psychology. Instinct was one important theme among others that became a source of contentious discussion within the subfield. As a part of this boundary work many psychologists, sociologists and self-proclaimed social psychologists weighed in on the debates on instinct, insects and social psychology. As shown specifically through the boundary work of Ellwood and Baldwin, the two shifted their original positions and this shift illustrated some of the same aspects of the overall development of social psychology as a field. Instinct became of decreasing concern to social psychology, as did the emphasis on using social insects in the discourse of social psychology. Once required as a rhetorical tool in discussions of social psychology, their usefulness as symbols of instinct in boundary work disappeared. At least for a time the case of the social insects was closed.