Por uma sociologia dos cérebros, Gabriel Tarde, monadologia e neurohistória

Abstract

In his work The Laws of Imitation, Gabriel Tarde characterizes imitation as an intercerebral action at a distance. Based on a distinct metaphysical conception developed via the idea of the monad, Tarde develops his universal sociology, built on the primacy of possession as the constitutive act characteristic of the cosmos. In this sense, imitation is one more particular manifestation of this possessive cosmological generality. In this thesis, we seek to highlight certain consequences resulting from the idea that imitation is intercerebral action. Therefore, the brain, understood here within this sociological conception as possessing it own agency, will be considered via three dimensions or scales of pertinence. In the first, we present the relationship between the homeostatic processes constitutive of biological beings in general, and their connection with the emergence of consciousness, specifically considering the neuraonal formation of the brain. We especially highlight the connection between primordial feelings, which are in constant dialogue with the brain, and the way this complex is reflected in the beliefs and desires whose imitation is mediated by the brain in Tarde’s sociology. In the second dimension, we will expand our focus, from the neuronal scale of the first, to consider the properly socioanthropological level. I seek to show the fundamental role of sharing of intentionality, according to the Theory of Shared Intentionality and the associated ratchet effect, with anthropological creativity as an extension of the recursivity of images in the mind. Such recursivity constitutes a continuum of images that mediates both the imitation of beliefs and desires and the conditions of possibility for invention. I argue that there is a type of proto-metaphor manifesting the possession of images in the mind, which could instantiate the emergence of inventions via the formation of unprecedented mixtures of images. Finally, I will consider the plasticity of the brain, which is an irreducible factor in its capacity to mediate and transform its relations with the environment, presupposing a reciprocal plasticity between both the internal and external environments. This leads to certain consequences that a Tardean sociology would deal with within the purview of a reformulated “historical materialism”, considering the coordination of a plastically constituted and statistically apprehended environment in a type of ecological thought. I undertake a reflection about certain political and material conditions in the context of social and technological arrangements, which result from this plasticity and the architecture of Tarde’s metaphysics, based on the two pillars of difference and repetition. As I argue here, the problem of coordination becomes a fundamental programmatic aspect of the architectonic formation of Tarde’s sociology.