science

Homo duplex

Homo duplex is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Homo duplex rather than just read about it. In short: Homo duplex is a view promulgated by Émile Durkheim, a macro-sociologist of the 19th century, saying that a man on the one hand is a biological organism, driven by instincts, with desire and appetite and on the other hand is being led by morality and other elements generated by society. For Durkheim, what enables human beings to transcend their individual, bodily nature is participation in collective life.

Key takeaways

Homo duplex belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Homo duplex to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Homo duplex from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Homo duplex is a view promulgated by Émile Durkheim, a macro-sociologist of the 19th century, saying that a man on the one hand is a biological organism, driven by instincts, with desire and appetite and on the other hand is being led by morality and other elements generated by society. For Durkheim, what enables human beings to transcend their individual, bodily nature is participation in collective life. Institutions, most prominently religious and educational ones, provide the concepts, moral norms, and categories of thought that individuals internalize through socialization. Left unchecked the individualism leads to a lifetime of seeking to slake selfish desires which leads to unhappiness and despair. On the other hand, collective conscience serves as a check on the will. This is created by socialisation. Highly anomic societies are characterized by weak primary group ties—family, church, community, and other such groups.

Quotes Émile Durkheim

Far from being simple, our inner life has something like a double centre of gravity. On the one hand is our individuality ... On the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves. Not only are these two groups of states of consciousness different in their origins and their properties, but there is a true antagonism between them.

David Foster Wallace

But the young educated adults of the 90s got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.

Sigmund Freud used these ideas in his essay Civilization and Its Discontents, he wrote civilisation is created through restraint – is "built up upon a renunciation of instinct"

See also Homo economicus Homo Hierarchicus Names for the human species Suicide by Émile Durkheim.

References

Further reading Jerzy Szacki, Durkheim, Common Knowledge, Warsaw 1964, p. 251. Steve Taylor, Durkheim and the Study of Suicide, Macmillan, 249 pp, July 1982, ISBN 0 333 28645 6 Emile Durkheim and Steven Lukes, (translated by W.D. Halls), The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, Macmillan, 264 pp, November 1982, ISBN 0 333 28071 7 Teja Jonnalagadda, The Power is Yours: My Experiments With Truth, Independent Publisher, Montville 2017, ISBN 1549555413

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Homo duplex

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Homo duplex claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Homo duplex before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Homo duplex ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Homo duplex

In research: Homo duplex appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Homo duplex in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Homo duplex is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Moral psychology, Émile Durkheim, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Homo duplex outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Homo duplex in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Homo duplex means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Homo duplex out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Homo duplex in simple terms?

Why does Homo duplex matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Homo duplex?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Homo duplex.