The Biologising of Childhood

Developmental Psychology and the Darwinian Myth

John R. Morss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138037731
• eBook ISBN: 9781351711128
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1990, this book looks at the history of developmental psychology in order to locate and evaluate the role played by biology in its most influential formulations.

First Charles Darwin's own writings on child development are examined. It is shown that Darwin endorsed such ideas as the 'recapitulation' of evolutionary ancestry in the developing child, even though this is inconsistent with his natural selection theory. The first great developmentalists – Hall, Baldwin, Freud – adopted and applied these non-Darwinian evolutionist ideas. The next generation – Vygotsky, Piaget, Werner – applied similar ideas in a variety of ways.

Alongside this evolutionism, but interconnected with it, sensationist/empiricist forms of epistemology were directing developmentalists (from Rousseau onwards) to see the child as having to work himself out of sense-bound experience – to develop further and further from the 'here-and-now'.

Contemporary developmental theory retains these influences: biological approaches (ethological, psychobiological) remain pre-Darwinian in spirit; lifespan theories remain attached to biology; formal/cognitive approaches remain attached to sensationism. 'Social context' approaches are rather half-hearted, and it is only the social-constructionist orientation which seems to offer a real alternative to biology. Major conclusions are stated in chapter ten, which includes a re-evaluation of Darwin's role.

1Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The influence of Charles Darwin on developmental psychology is a major focus of this book. This influence has been widely recognised, and indeed widely advertised within the discipline. But the nature of Darwin’s in-fluence has not been as straightforwardly benevolent as some histories of developmental psychology would imply. Some such histories give the impression that early developmentalists recognised fairly readily what is now identified as the Darwinian message; the discipline was therefore able to shake off any pre-Darwinian ideas and set off on the upward path toward its present state. Such influence as the older, misguided biologies may have exerted were thus inherently transitory; and certainly of no more than antiquarian interest now. Developmental psychology’s “official” history, if I could call it that, records the discipline’s progressive assimilation of the Darwinian enlightenment.¹That the discipline is now truly Darwinian is rarely questioned.

I exaggerate, of course. But accounts of the history of developmental psychology have certainly been “triumphalist” in tone, and the appeal to Darwinism is as much rhetorical as substantial.² Moreover, the claims which are specific to developmental psychology rest on more general, traditional assumptions concerning the Darwinian influence, and these assumptions are themselves coming to be seen by historians of biology as quite misleading.³ The triumphalist account perpetuates some serious errors concerning the nature of Darwin’s so-called “revolution.” Darwin scholars have, over the past few decades, re-evaluated this formulation which greatly distorts the relationships between Darwin’s work, that of his predecessors, and his scientific community. The ideas and claims which are now termed Darwinism stand out much more clearly with hindsight than they did in their time. Darwin’s own writings reflected changes in emphasis as his ideas developed; Darwin himself consistently endorsed “non-Darwinian” principles, as later identified; Darwin himself exaggerated the distance between his own claims and those of such earlier writers as Lamarck. Again, the reception of Darwin’s ideas was multi-faceted, differing from one country to another. For example, resistance was total and long-lasting in France. Even where the environment was more receptive, Darwinism cannot be seen as having swept all alternatives before it. The substance of these alternatives has also been represented as being chiefly of a religious nature: but some religious thinkers of the time were very positive toward the “natural theology” they saw in Darwin. Much more serious was the opposition from other kinds of biology, especially versions emphasising an overall order to the scheme of evolution. These alternatives seemed indeed to have triumphed over Darwinism by the closing years of the 19th century.⁴

The most basic, but erroneous, assumption of the triumphalist account is that a Darwinian revolution swept aside all opposition. As a consequence of this key assumption, the influence of non-Darwinian ideas on early developmentalists is treated as necessarily superficial. Darwinism, after all, was right and the alternatives were wrong (and Lamarck, of course, was wrong and silly). Such a simplistic framework must distort more detailed considerations. There is a tendency also to include under Darwinism various notions which are considered to have been desirable influences, even though they may be common to other frameworks: Thus Darwinism is used rather loosely as a category for positively-toned attributions of biological influence. All in all, it would seem fair to describe developmental psychology’s appeal to Darwin as a myth: A myth of origin and a myth of legitimacy.⁵

Clearly, the definitions of “Darwinism” and of “non-Darwinism” are quite crucial here. By Darwinism I shall refer to the set of claims centred on the primacy of natural selection as the mechanism for evolutionary change: Essentially, that variations occur basically by chance, and that selection for better adaptiveness takes place on such chance variations. This standpoint is usually referred to by historians of biology as neo-Darwinism, a term which recognises that Darwin himself did not hold such a radical position and that its formulation was a later development. Readers should therefore be prepared to discover that Darwin himself was not always, or not strictly, a Darwinian in this sense. This situation, even if confusing, is not meant to be pejorative: It has been argued quite persuasively that Darwin’s own, more eclectic position is one which still has much to recommend it.⁶ On this point of the evaluative tone of the terms used, I should admit that “non-Darwinism” is employed more than once in an accusatory way in the chapters which follow; that is, an adherence to non-Darwinian biologies is treated somewhat as a guilty secret to be unearthed. This practice is stylistic and is intended to be more than a little ironic in tone.

Alternatives to Darwinism have been referred to and categorised in several ways in the relevant literature. The major non-Darwinian “name” is Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, but the term “Lamarckist” requires just as much qualification as Darwinist; and, again, Lamarck himself was no Lamarckist. Non-Darwinians of the latter 19th century brought to centre stage a mechanism which, for Lamarck, had been of quite minor significance: The assimilation into genetic material of habits acquired during an animal’s lifetime. This “use-inheritance” or the inheritance of acquired character—a mechanism consistently endorsed by Darwin himself—is what is here referred to as Lamarckism (again more accurately, “neo-Lamarckism ”). Lamarck himself shared with the later non-Darwinians a more general and more profound conviction: That the animal kingdom manifests design and order in its progressive transformations. That is, evolutionary change has direction, an overall plan. For Darwinism, in contrast, evolution is determined “from the bottom up,” by low-level, proximate mechanisms.⁷

Non-Darwinian biology focused on high-level laws governing evolutionary change, and hence on directionality and progress in evolution. The Lamarckist mechanism was invoked as a means by which direction could be given to variations: variations originate as direct adaptations or accommodations to the environment (certainly not, however, as mere efforts of will). Evolution is thus directed by habit, and natural selection is allowed the minor role of weeding out inappropriate variations (those which arise in nonadaptive ways). Many alternative formulations for mechanism were proposed, giving different weight to use-inheritance, to natural selection, and to other factors; but the adherence to high-level “laws” of evolution was paramount. This insistence on general laws gave legitimacy and significance to perhaps the most general of the developmental claims of the non-Darwinians: The claim encapsulated in the notion of recapitulation.

The term recapitulation has been defined and employed in different ways by different writers.⁸ Since the strongest version of the claim has lost credibility, many authors have been at pains to establish that their own approach (or that which they wish to endorse in another) is most definitely not recapitulation. I shall use the term to refer to any proposal, however loosely formulated, by which some aspects of a sequence of developmental change are held to be parallel across contexts (where “contexts” refers to individual development; the course of evolution; the history of civilisation;the history of science). What this amounts to in general is that the same “laws” are held to be operating in individual development (ontogeny) and in evolution (phylogeny). The above qualification regarding sequence is important, since the proposal that such different contexts are similarly subject to laws of mechanics, or of physiology, is not considered to be recapitulation. To repeat: My most general use of the term “recapitulation” refers to the identification of unitary underlying laws of development. In such cases, authors seem to be seeing such phenomena as the growth of the individual or the course of evolution as examples or manifestations of “Development” (with a big “D”).

The most fundamental claim of this general kind of recapitulation is that different “series” represent manifestations of the same ordered sequence of states, that is the same hierarchy. Relationships of superiority-inferiority are essential to this picture. If it is such relationships on which a particular proposal lays stress then the term hierarchical recapitulation will be used. Other versions place more emphasis on the kinds of change observed to characterise the ascent of the scale (increasing “differentiation” or “integration”, for example). In all such cases the connection between the different contexts is essentially a “transcendental” one: It operates at a level above (or alternatively, below) the actual cases themselves. Phylogeny does not cause ontogeny, and neither does ontogeny cause phylogeny. Both in a sense are “caused” by a more general force or process: the process of Development. The different series might be described as “parallel” or “corresponding” or perhaps “correlated.” All of these terms convey the point that the two series stand on an essentially equal footing. The term “homologous” could also perhaps have been used, since it refers to similarities which arise from common descent (as in the similarities between a human arm and a bird’s wing); but “descent” has Darwinian overtones which would be quite misleading in this context.

Any time the term recapitulation is used in the chapters which follow, then, the more general sense at least is being identified. The more specific and stronger versions involve additional claims. As well as the kind of mystical connection by which two series partake of Development in general, various claims on causative relationships may also be made. The clearest example is the “biogenetic law” of Ernst Haeckel, according to which phylogeny (evolutionary ancestry) causes the sequence of stages in ontogeny. This account is referred to as ancestral recapitulation. Other writers have proposed that some causal effects can work the other way round: That aspects of individual development can guide the direction of evolution. Some have even attempted to show that causal effects operate in both directions, such that the relationship between development and evolution is a “dialectical” one.

An interest in causal relationships between individual life-courses and the course of evolution has often involved some reference to the Lamarckist principle of use-inheritance. The doctrine has been applied in the context of an animal’s habits or behaviour, such that learning may in some cases be seen as giving rise to evolutionary change. Learning, in turn, has often been identified as being based on the organism’s reception and interpretation of sensations.This doctrine of “sensationism” has been of very considerable influence on developmental thinking, as discussed in Chapter Five and elsewhere; in particular, it has led to some long-standing and very tenacious assumptions concerning the nature of early development. What I term sensationism is very closely related to the epistemological tradition of “sensationalism,” a doctrine based on the empiricist claim that all cognition ultimately derives from sensory experience.⁹ This assumption stems from such 17th-century thinkers as Locke and Gassendi and has always had close links with biological thinking, since it tends to de-emphasise uniquely human features of the acquisition of knowledge. Sensationalism stressed “the continuity of animal and human reason, the associationist view of intelligence, materialistic psychology, and habit as the key to mental progress”. The importance of this philosophical stance includes its “significant influence” on the subsequent development of evolutionary theories; a demonstration of this is its employment by Darwin and its role in the definition of the concepts of instinct and of intelligence.

Excepting for some glances further back, especially in Chapter Five, the book takes the middle to late 19th century as its point of departure. Some comments should therefore be made on those intellectual traditions which, like the sensationalism noted earlier, prepared for and provided the background to the emergence of evolutionist thinking and of empirical developmental psychology. A starting-point for such a discussion is somewhat arbitrary, but mention should certainly be made of the notion of progress in human affairs as explored in the French Enlightenment of the 18th century. Focusing in particular on the modern history of Europe, such writers as Condorcet were able to argue that (despite irregularities and variations) the present should be seen as essentially better than the past, and that the course of human progress should be expected to continue into the future. The tradition against which Condorcet was arguing was the “Classical” position which viewed modern civilisation as secondary and essentially inferior to that of ancient Greece and Rome. Condorcet was writing in the period just prior to the French Revolution, an upheaval in which considerable appeal was made to this notion of progress. And although Condorcet’s own concerns were principally with human society, others such as his younger colleague Pierre Jean Cabanis were discussing the issue of the perfectibility of animals:That is, a universal tendency toward developmental progress. Such a tendency depended on the acceptance of continuity among animal types and between animals and mankind: A notion central to the construction of theories of evolution during the next century. Cabanis’ claims were of direct influence on Lamarck, and, indirectly, on Darwin. More generally, the notion of progress in human affairs came to dominate 19th-century thought.¹⁰

One approximate contemporary of Condorcet was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose writings were an important source for the Romanticism of the early 19th century. Associated with this movement were such idealist philosophical traditions as those of Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Fichte. In German-speaking Europe, in particular, there emerged an attitude to man and nature known as “Nature-philosophy” which sought for general laws and general processes underlying change in either organic or inorganic matter. Developmental change—change which seemed to be progressive and systematic—was a central concern of Nature-philosophy, as it was for the wider Romantic movement. Development was seen as a general process in Nature, becoming manifest not only in the growth of the individual but also in the relationships among different animal species. Thus, ontogenesis—the development of the individual—was seen to correspond in some way to observed patterns of genesis within the animal kingdom.

The Nature-philosophers, and those scientists influenced by them, were not working with a Darwinian model of evolution with species descending one from another by modification. Neither indeed was Lamarck, who was writing at the turn of the century but who adhered to older intellectual traditions than Nature-philosophy as such. However, the Nature-philosophers did see animal species very much as ranked in a scale, from “lower” to “higher.” In the accounts of such early 19th-century biologists as Meckel and Serres, this animal series was seen to correspond to steps in the development of the individual human. Thus ontogenesis appeared to reflect or recapitulate the animal series; “lower” animals had simply “run out of steam” before making it to the human state. Stages of development in the human correspond to the adult forms of “lower” animals: The correspondence perceived here being essentially of a mystical or transcendental nature.¹¹

In mid-century the prevailing mood of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Charles Darwin and the Origins of Developmental Psychology
• 3. Biology and the Developmentalists: Hall, Baldwin, and Freud
• 4. Biology and the Developmentalists: Vygotsky, Piaget, and Werner
• 5. “The Prisoner of the Senses”: Sensationism in Developmental Thinking
• 6. Infancy
• 7. Childhood
• 8. Adolescence
• 9. Models and Processes
• 10. Biology and Alternatives to Biology in Contemporary Developmental Psychology
• 11. Conclusions
• References
• Reference Notes
• Author Index
• Subject Index