the double trinitarianism of the neanderthal of trinity *

摘要

T he author explains in his Preface that this short book ofnonly 224 pages is no mere coda to the three volumes of his Treatise onnSocial Theory (1983-1997) but the culminating synthesis of his effortsnover many decades to reorient comparative sociology in the light ofnneo-Darwinian theories. He acknowledges throughout that he isnwriting against the grain, in the sense that most sociologists remainnresistant to the approaches he recommends. In an Epilogue he engagesndirectly with the opposition from two camps of ‘‘die-hards’’, Marxistsnand post-modernists, whose objections he rebuts with ‘‘knock-down’’narguments. His stance is that of a supreme rationalist theorizing on thenbasis of evidence, but at the same time one who is aware that he isnwriting ‘‘within a culture’’, the master narratives (teleologies) which nonlonger stand up to scrutiny. Members of other cultures hold differentnbeliefs, which cannot be dismissed as irrational. The sociologist isnobliged to pursue truths beyond the consciousness and the compre-nhension of the actors but, following Kuhn, Runciman concedes that thenarbiters of this truth can only be the contemporary intellectualncommunity.