Wilson mentions without much perspective, the pioneer work of Durkheim and Weber; they deserve a few words of explanation.

Writing in the late 1800s--early 1900s, these founders of the discipline did a lot of what me might call comparative cultural history--remember at that time they had no real access to cognitive science such as today. For one thing it seemed utterly implausible to suppose that you could build one new science on another and deduce complex social phenomena--say why different cultures have such different rules about marriage, murder, war and peace, religion and political authority. It was enough just to make compendious comparisons of these diverse phenomena and then posit an overarching model. The inherent structure of these overlapping patterns would simply emerge from the vast comparative studies.

 

Durkheim's work at the turn of the 20th century came in reaction against a unified model of inherited human nature, because that way of looking at cultural difference had served the notion of racial/cultural superiority especially of Europeans: people with less-advanced material and intellectual culture were relatively backward in the evolution of culture.

Durkheim battles that demon, by discounting the principle that culture is a product of biology. Infants seem unformed, utterly lacking in distinctive traits which might develop into vast differences of mature culture; so human nature (in its pure state in the infant) cannot be much of a factor in cultural difference. The individual and his decisions are incidental: Culture shapes the individual and his choices (e.g., a native speaker of English did not choose that trait; it was socially determined).

Social traits are 'coercive' and not genetic. For Durkheim as characterized by Tooby(Adaptive Mind), "even emotions such as 'sexual jealousy' and paternal love are products of social order and have to be explained by conditions of the social group."

The guiding idea is that social phenomena are 'emergent processes': not a product that can be calculated from atomistic events at the level of the individual.

By Contrast Max Weber did a lot of work that organized diverse cultures and inevitably suggested a certain hierarchy and progression from one to another (if not progress, in Wilson's sense).

Weber's Economy and Society (unfinished but massive at his death in 1920) set forth a theory of Ideal Types, for instance, in world systems of justice. Now Weber himself was a professor of Law at the Univ. of Berlin--he wrote what we would call a dissertation on Roman agricultural practice and property law in late antiquity.

So he was a consummate historian of law: he studied how the physical realities shape society. And he turned this perspective to practical purpose; his research formed the basis for legislation, Securities Act of 1908.

His later comparative lectures that led to the vast Econ and Soc. drew upon deep study of virtually all available cultural systems: Chinese, Arab/Islamic; Greek and Roman of Course; modern Common Law and Civil Law nations.

One snapshot: Systems of justice fall into the following ordered categories:

1) irrational (not guided by general rules)

...a) formal: constrained by form or formality, such as oath or ordeal

... b) substantive: guided by individual case (but not reasoning from abstract rules)

2) rational (guided by general rules)

...a) substantive: guided by principles of ideology (beyond law itself), such as ideas of equality or utility

...b) formal rationalism: following a system of rules governed by formalities (such as precise wording of 'writs' ?).

The most instructive example of the latter, undeveloped justice being the formal 'natural law' principles of the US constitution: rights and law itself derive from contract; there is no deeper, substantive authority.

 

Democratic systems tend to evolve substantive application through utilitarian interpretation of what is 'reasonable'. Formal rationalism is "repugnant to democracy".

Sothere is an implicit evolutionary scheme: societies seem to evolve from irrational to rational ways of justice, from relying external formalistic ways for proving guilt or division of property toward a more utilitarian principle: the verdict/decision should be in the public interest (which by the way overshadows invidual liberties in this model).

One advantage of this perspective is that you can recognize 'relics' evolutionary hangover of old irrational and formalistic justice often persisting within a more advanced system. An example (mine not Weber's): trial by battle was available in Britain as late as 1818--the very time when Bentham was laying the foundations of Utilitarianism--among the more advanced forms of 'substantive rationalism' in Weber's scheme.

My point is: the pioneers of social science are after something fundamental akin to what Wilson and modern socio-biologists would like discover: the pre-rational roots these evolutionary hangovers.

Weber's most famous contribution Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5) essentially a study in paradox: Calvinism rejects the notion of winning your way to heaven with good works (or paying your way with dispensations); the elite are already chosen, one rises to heaven only by grace. But in this life one can discover proof of being chosen by commercial prosperity; so work hard.

Of course conspicuous consumption is shunned; saving and investing is favored. Thus the foundations of capitalism rooted in a sort of wishful thinking. p.173. "asceticism [the characteristic attitude] looked upon pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of wealth as a fruit of labor in a calling was a sign of God's blessing".

Even more important:" the religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a wordly calling as the highest means to asceticism, and as the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful lever for expansion of ...the spirit of capitalism."