Evolution Review: The Beginning[1]

Editor's note 2.0 Some time ago I lost my primary blog due to web hosting crash and was unable to recover a lot of my writings. However, through time and effort, along with support of friends, colleagues, and like minded acquaintances, I have been able recover a good portions of my writing through the Internetarchive.org Waybackmachine. So here is a recovered posting that I found recently. This posting was originally published August 26, 2007.

Editor’s Note – As some of you know, I am earning my masters in anthropology. I have taken my core courses, now I am taking my courses for my major. This is the good stuff. The stuff of magic, if you will, at any rate, from time to time I will post my papers here. This will give me an outlet during the semester to express myself, and it will give you the reader an opportunity to view my musings (assignments) and insight to theory of anthropology being taught.

The following is a response paper to a series of readings for my class Foundation of Cultural Anthropology at the University Colorado Denver. In the nineteenth century, anthropology was beginning to find itself, evolution, and the inner workings of psychology and sociology as well. In essence, the birth of social sciences brought the Age of Enlightenment to its apex. These series of reading is a review of this period, beginning with Charles Darwin’s evolution hypothesis, Herbert Spencer on culture or came to be known as social Darwinism, and then finally Alfred Russell Wallace’s on his perspectives of evolution.

End Editor's Notes

Charles Darwin

In the first of series of readings, titled, Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism lays out trains of thoughts, an overview, if you will, of the natural world, which was later used as an implied tool socially. These trains of thoughts led to modernity, which in turn, set the course of humanity better understanding in how the world worked around them. This period of understanding resulted twofold: First, with the Age of Industrialization of the European and American continents by way of Age of Enlightenment coming to full force. And second, the modernization of not only technology, but of rational thought.

Once the observers of nature accepted the principle of the scientific method, it was a matter of time before the conscious questioning of one’s surroundings would take hold. In that, in the face of God may not necessarily be questioned, but Nature itself could be, and now was mutable.

In the latter half of the first reading, as mentioned earlier, the discourse shifted from the natural world to the social development of humanity. This viewing was seen, especially through the guise of ethnocentric perspective of Western-American culture. In so being that, human civilization mimicked nature in not only in “fitness”[2] but the evolvement of cultural mores and attitudes. Some viewed this, evolutionary mimicry, as the conflict-struggle; a necessity to prune the weakest from society. Herbert Spencer believed that “the Survival of the Fittest,”[3] that competition provided the best “adaptation” of a society.

In the second reading, “The Social Organism,” by Herbert Spencer, did a comparative analysis of nature and society. In essence, he had taken a metaphor of what occurred within nature and used it as a template to ascribe and describe society as a living organism. He purported that base societies, such as aboriginal cultures, were low, primitive, in that they lacked complexity. Whereas, the more complex societies, such as the Western-American cultures of his time, were evolutionarily superior because of the complex social nature of them.

Herbert Spencer

Therefore, the layering, intricacies, and distribution of tasks, and group labors weaved the development of the culture and defined its complexity from the objective observer standpoint. In other words, to the outside observer, lack of structure, interconnectedness, represented the simplicity and primitive characteristics of an organism or a culture. Herbert Spencer’s, The Social Organism, gave the perspective of why things were, and how cultures evolved to a complex society. By way of explanation, he compared, analyzed, defended, and critiqued elements with the analogous essay of how cultures were an organism that evolved from the simple to the complex, and were living, in that, through the surrounding environs attuned (sharpened) to the development of the construct of a society. Essentially, the social organism, (the society as a whole), will inevitably develop through the eventuation of conflict and struggle from the community within. In so being that, those in power, and those who did the bidding, are in battle, in struggle, for resources, to find the fittest. Thus, Spencer’s analogy of culture gave anthropology a way to examine and criticize the dynamic of capitalism as well as the industrialism along the twin sisters of expansionist imperialism and colonialism.

In the third reading is an accounting of the events of the true public discourse regarding natural selection. There are letters from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace and their advocates[4]. These two gentlemen speculated, theorized, on how variations within a species occurred. Both shared this independently of each other of how these occurred within a species over time. Darwin primarily illustrated his introspection through how gradualism asserted this change along with “fitness”[5] of the species through adaptation and selection which allowed a species to continue. In effect, the ability of the species to propagate and allowed its continuation. Darwin’s and Wallace’s accounting set the train of thoughts of how the interaction of environment was crucial to a species.

Alfred Russell Wallace

In the telling of this view, Wallace did a better overall illustration of how “fitness” and “survival” of a species worked through selection. Wallace’s discourse (and also Darwin) took into account sexual selection (how and when mating species interacts with the opposite sex), but he, Wallace, more clearly understood the birth-death rate ratio and food resources that kept a population in check. His example of the passenger pigeon eerily represented his model versus other birds.

Wallace espouses that fundamentally the passenger pigeon fitness was key to its population abundance. In so being that, the passenger pigeon access to food resources, because of its strong fly ability, enabled it to have steady increase in terms of population, despite its low birth rate of hatchlings. Nevertheless, it is the access to food resources (along with the bird’s fecundity) that enabled the species survival. For the passenger pigeon, however, it is also why it became extinct. The added outside pressure to its survival: agriculture, hunting, and its use it during World War I eventuated its demise because of its low birth rate.

In summary, the three reading gave an overall perspective of the nineteenth century thinking of how they viewed the world. The Enlightenment Period was coming to full fruition. The rationalization beyond what “God” told us through the interpretation of frailty of our own moral introspection, but what in the observed, the tested and proven tangibility led to the discourse of the inner workings of life. These models later gave the culture-at-hand away of examining itself. The process of which led to the eventual modernization of the planet through expansionism, nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

Some viewed these events as inevitable, evolutionary and explainable, in that they fell under Providence. In so being that, it was our duty to bring to the world modernity, because of our fitness through strength and technology. Therefore, inherently our superiority was by creed, by race, and by religiosity enabled us to bring the primitive cultures enlightenment (at least that was how some viewed it, of Darwin’s and Wallace’s contribution at the time). To be sure, the politics of the day, the social mores, and era of scientific discovery led to the culmination of human modernity of today.

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[1] The readings referred to throughout this posting came primarily from R. Jon McGee’s, Richard L. Warms’ reader “Anthropology Theory: An Introduction History 3^rd and 4^th Edition.”

[2] This word is being used as Darwin and Wallace intended to mean for natural selection. However, this word would be later used by Herbert Spencer in his treatment and apology for capitalism and the creation of its effects. He believed that the Victorian England was atop of modernity and “evolutionary scale.”

[3] According to the authors McGee and Warms, it was Herbert Spencer who coined the term the “Survival of the Fittest, and was then later used by Charles Darwin as a chapter title in his fifth edition of the Origin of the Species. Spencer throughout his essay advocates that the social organism is progressive. In that, cultures are grow, from low to high. In so being that, aboriginal societies were low, and that Victorian England at the time, was high.

[4] This particular reading can be found in the third of McGee and Warms anthropology reader, Anthropology Theory: An Introduction History 3^rd Edition. . The essay titled, On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. Sir Charles Lyell and J. D. Hooker advocated for Charles Darwin to have his Origin of the Species published first, since he had for years consulted with them his ideas of natural selection prior to Wallace approaching Darwin for his opinion independently (McGee and Warms, 3^rd Edition, pp. 11-24).

[5] Take note that also part of “fitness” for a species for Darwin and Wallace also included sexual selection. Sexual selection is the mates’ ability to attract the other; the males ability to sing a song, or display colors for instance as in a peacock.