Conclusion

Abstract

In this work I argued that if sociology and the sociology of law do not take the other disciplines seriously into account, they risk losing their scientific utility. The social sciences, whenever they remain in isolation, find it increasingly difficult to formulate plausible predictions or explanations, and can only provide partially verifiable theories. Human beings are cultural animals due to their biology: they are “animals” because they have evolved over a timescale that is beyond the reach of the individual (hence their instinctual cognitive capacities), and they are “cultural” because at the individual level, they can influence the behavior of their peers and descendants to a remarkable degree. Legal systems are pseudo-moral rules deriving from our biosociality, and that for a proper understanding of legal emotions (somewhat different from our “legal consciousness”) we need to also draw on the paradigms of cognitive science, among the others needed to form a full picture of our attitudes to the law. Sociologically, the law can be seen as a super-meme: a biosocial constraint that develops in complex societies. The super-meme hypothesis may explain the spurious contradiction between law as a static and historical phenomenon and law as a dynamic and promotional element. In discussing the cognitive biases that affect our legal behaviors, I highlight the distinction between defensive and assertive biases, the former safety-seeking, the latter risk-taking. It is precisely by balancing these opposite biases that we can make sense of the ambivalence of social behavior, torn between the comfort of protection and the challenge of the unknown.