Alfred North Whitehead thought societies are held together with “instinctive emotions.” His idea is similar to E.O. Wilson’s theory of “moral sentiments.” Both ideas are in the tradition of British empiricist philosophy.
Wilson thought humans inherit moral sentiments, which are expressed individually in terms such as conscience, self-respect, empathy and remorse.
He thought it was human nature to make something of these sentiments. And so we use them to construct social codes involving such things as honor, patriotism, compassion and altruism.
It’s the glue that holds our societies together. Or more precisely, it’s the glue that keeps individuals from pursuing their own ends to the ruin of the group’s.
Here’s Whitehead, writing a generation earlier, with a similar idea:
My main thesis is that a social system is kept together by the blind force of instinctive actions, and of instinctive emotions clustered around habits and prejudices.
We have two expressions of the same idea. One version is in the language of a mathematician and logician, and the other is in the language of a biologist.
• Sources: The quote is from Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. It was originally a series of lectures, the Barbour-Page Lectures at the University of Virginia in 1927. I found it here:
http://www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadsymbolism.htm
If you prefer to read on paper, Symbolism was published as a short book by Fordham University Press in 1985.
For a recent note on Wilson’s theory, see “E.O. Wilson on religion,” June 12, 2022.
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