Altruism: A Social Science Chameleon

The self-interest paradigm that has dominated and defined social science is being questioned today in all the social sciences. Frontline research is represented by C. Daniel Batson's experiments, which claim to present empirical evidence of altruism. Impressive though this is against the background of the self-interest paradigm, its ultimate significance might be to illustrate the inadequacy of social science to deal with a transcendent reality like altruism.