History, Sociology, and Evolutionary Thinking: Epistemic Limits Reconsidered

Abstract

This article examines the tension between sociology and history as a methodological problem of reconciling general concepts with historical specificity. It assesses evolutionary theory as one influential attempt to address this challenge. Focusing on Neo-Darwinian social evolutionism, in particular on W. G. Runciman’s selectionist framework, the article argues that evolutionary theory does not establish the general causal mechanisms it claims to identify, but instead, provides a vocabulary for describing recurrent features of historical processes. The argument therefore proposes a reconceptualization of evolutionary theory as a Weberian ideal-typical framework whose value is heuristic, descriptive, and comparative rather than causal.