Thus, on either side, the "Great Wall" between the social and the natural sciences (Morin, 1973)
remained the sole horizon of knowledge and inquiry. The biologists and behavioural scientists
showed little interest in the fact that in Homo sapiens food not only nourishes but also signifies.
They scarcely noticed that human organisms are conscious and that they share representations.
The sociologists and ethnologists, on the other hand, rightly endeavoured to show that biological
organisms and individuals are immersed in, and constructed by, social forces. But conversely,
following the Durkheimian principle that the social can only be explained in social terms and
complying to the authority of cultural relativism, they no doubt often failed to consider that
groups and societies are made up of individuals generally endowed with a biological organism...