Word: evolutionism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cultural Evolution. This position rests on the argument that, some 25,000 to 100,000 years ago, modern man, Homo sapiens, was developed by biological evolution. Since then, goes the theory, cultural evolution has taken over.
The opposite side of the argument is that culture itself is genetic-that is, hereditary. "What I am trying to say," explains the author, "is that what people call social behavior always has a biological basis. The character of individuals, families, groups, classes, nations -right underneath these things are the...
Darlington states, for instance, that the incest taboo, which is not only common to all human societies but is regarded as a moral decision to avoid the hazards of inbreeding, is, in fact, instinctive. Just as evolution forbids self-pollination to the hermaphrodite flower, so evolution prohibits incest in man...
In an earlier book, Genetics and Man, published in 1964, Darlington argued that races differ in every imaginable way, and that these differences do not form some spurious scale of merit: they simply and eloquently assert evolution's demand that the species come in as many styles, shapes, personalities...
The Evolution of Man and Society carries this argument to the next logical conclusion. "We have now learned that intelligence is of many kinds," Darlington writes. "It has to be measured not on one scale but on many." It is in such diversity, in fact, that he places the only...