eBook - ePub
The Taming of Evolution
The Persistence of Nonevolutionary Views in the Study of Humans
Davydd Greenwood
This is a test
Share book
- 226 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Taming of Evolution
The Persistence of Nonevolutionary Views in the Study of Humans
Davydd Greenwood
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson's human sociobiology and Marvin Harris's cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin's theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes.
Frequently asked questions
How do I cancel my subscription?
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is The Taming of Evolution an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access The Taming of Evolution by Davydd Greenwood in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Evolution. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
III Complex Continuities
The case for simple continuities of pre-evolutionary thinking in the works of such authors as Galton, Kretschmer, and Sheldon is easily madeâso easily that many critics of contemporary biological determinism dismiss important contemporary authors with a polemical but perhaps too derisive wave of the hand. The Sociobiology Study Group, for example, dismisses E. O. Wilsonâs statements about humans in an article titled âSociobiologyâNew Biological Determinismâ (1977).
Such an approach will not win the day. There are indeed continuities between pre-evolutionary and contemporary biological determinist views of humans, but the issue is not therefore simple. A number of contemporary thinkers have made good-faith efforts to treat humans in accordance with what they conceive to be the requirements of an evolutionary perspective, only to continue key elements of preand nonevolutionary thought against their own intentions. This complex kind of continuity can be seen in E. O. Wilsonâs human socio-biology and Marvin Harrisâ cultural materialism, among many other contemporary biologically based approaches.
Two mistakes are often made in attacking such efforts. The most common is to assume that these scholars are acting in bad faith, that they are nefarious conspirators against the truth. The reduction of scientific controversy to a battle between the good guys and the bad guys is a strategy usually employed when intellectually based criticism seems too weak for the task. To assume that such thinkers are operating in bad faith is both intellectually sterile and overoptimistic. More frightening to contemplate is the possibility that intelligent, sincere, well-trained scientists can expend their efforts on these problems and then unknowingly reproduce quite predictable pre- and nonevolutionary views. This possibility suggests that a powerful and durable cultural system, rather than some personal failure of rationality and good faith, lies at the center of the problem.
Equally important is the consistent failure to set contemporary thinkers in an adequate intellectual/historical context.1 Were I now to discuss Wilson and Harris directly against the backdrop of Hippocrates, Jean Bodin, and Francis Galton, I would be treating them stereotypically. Their arguments are detailed, complex, and keyed to a restricted range of biological and evolutionary issuesâthe evolution of social forms for Wilson and the relation between social practices and ecological adaptation for Harris. To treat them as if they were global biological determinists is to miss the subtlety of their arguments. Such an approach also fails to account for the attractiveness of their arguments to many academic audiences, unless we believe that these audiences also share social class interests with the authors.
To cope with these problems, it is necessary to pose such contemporary thinkers as Wilson and Harris against analyses of some of their legitimate pre-evolutionary counterparts. A fair comparison is one in which the specific subject and the level of detail of the pre-evolutionary view are on a par with those of the contemporary authorâs effort. For this reason, Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate in detail how humoral/environmental theories have been deployed socially to explain and legitimate particular social arrangements.2 In the first case, they are used to support a hierarchical system through a strong emphasis on genealogical arguments; in the second, a more egalitarian system is supported by a view that centers, in part, on assertions about the requirements of successful accommodation to the environment. In these detailed contexts, which elaborate considerably the arguments I have already made about humoral/environmental theories, I set the works of E. O. Wilson (Chapter 6) and Marvin Harris (Chapter 7).
CHAPTER 4
Purity of Blood and Social Hierarchy
Humoral/environmental theories have generated highly specific and elaborate rationales and explanations of particular political systems, both hierarchical and egalitarian. Indeed, much of their appeal arises from their promise to correlate detailed and specific ânatural lawsâ with particular social structures.
The ideological system that supported and explained the separation of nobles and commoners throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance rested on humoral/environmental theories, with their reliance on fixed ânaturalâ categories. European concepts of nobility were based on the assertion that nobles enjoyed superior social status because of the material quality (purity) of their blood; that is, the social hierarchy expressed a natural hierarchy in the quality of the humors of the populace. These ideas, far from being rigid, could be employed to explain and justify very different kinds of hierarchical social structures. There is a tendency to treat the past in unidimensional fashion. Part of the staying power of humoral/environmental theories arises from their immense flexibility.
Blood has received an extraordinary amount of attention in Western thought. Blood as the primary source of the other humors, blood as life, blood as death, bleeding of patients, menstrual blood, the blood of religious sacrifice, and the blood of kinship encompass a vast field of Western discourse. We can get a glimpse of these riches in the widespread notion of the pure blood of nobility.
Classical Ideas about Blood and Behavior
Beyond the four-part humoral view already discussed, certain classical ideas about body fluids form a backdrop for the concept of blood nobility.1 In Greek thought, the lungs (viewed as blackish, spongy sacks containing blood and breath) were the seat of consciousness. The various states of consciousness were attributed to degrees and types of moisture in the lungs. Dry lungs yielded the alertness and sobriety characteristic of the waking state. Wet lungs, characteristic of the sleeping state, resulted in loss of awareness and forgetfulness. The drinking of wine could cause the lungs to be wet.
The interaction between blood and breath was the very stuff of consciousness. When air was drawn into the lungs, it interacted there with blood, which gave off its vapors (consciousness and intelligence) in the breath. âGreeks and Romans related consciousness and intelligence to the native juice in the chest, blood (foreign liquids affected consciousness for the most part adversely), and to the vapour exhaled from it, breathâ (Onians [1951] 1973:63).
The headâperhaps more accurately the brain and its fluidsâwas revered as the seat of the seeds of being and individual character. The head was the essence of a person in a genealogical sense. In the Greek view, the head was connected through the spine to the genitals, the two linked by another liquid, the cerebrospinal fluid, called aiön. Together these fluids, blood and cerebrospinal fluid, gave rise to the states of consciousness and essential character of individual human beings. Both aiön and blood were passed on generationally and both were affected by the environment. Thus both were part of the ânatural frame.â
The complexity of the distinction between the cerebrospinal fluid and blood gave rise to an extensive medical literature. Learned debates raged about the source of the cerebrospinal fluid and its functionsâwas it a fifth humor, a product of the blood, or a direct product of digestion?2
Regardless of the conceptualization of the relationship between blood and cerebrospinal fluid, there was general agreement that the material states of these fluids directly influenced behavior. The genealogical principles gave an individual a particular constitutional makeup of blood and aiön, and the environmental principle continuously acted on that ânatural frame,â causing modifications in their states.
In explanations of nobility, the main emphasis was on the primacy of the genealogical principle in the creation of noble behavior. One could be noble by genealogy only. To admit environmental influences on nobility would be to imperil the exclusionary system. Yet humoral theories are by no means intrinsically nonegalitarian, as the discussion of Enlightenment uses of humoral doctrines in Chapter 5 will show.
Concepts of Nobility and Blood in Spain
The wealth of Spanish documentation on the subject of blood nobility is awesome, and the diversity of motivations of the writers adds a fascinating complexity to the subject. Classical authors, churchmen, monarchs and their jurists, and jurists representing other interests were all involved.
The Classes of Nobility
The most widely accepted classifications of types of nobility appearing in Spanish documents from the fourteenth century onward were the product of syntheses developed by Spanish jurists who read the classical and ecclesiastical texts on this subject and then disputed each other in print. According to these authors, there were three classes of nobility. The first, primary natural nobility (nobleza natural primera), included all classes of entities, animate and inanimate. Because God created all the categories, they all had intrinsic dignity and importance. Each species of entity contained better and worse representatives. The best representatives were called ânoble.â The connection between this idea and the chain of being is clear. What is noble in the natural world is that which most closely approximates the eternal Idea of it. This first category of nobility formed a background for all viewpoints and was not actively disputed.
The second class of nobility, natural secondary and moral nobility (nobleza natural secundaria y moral), was unique to human beings. It came to individuals either through direct inheritance from the first fathers of humanity or because, through great acts of valor or wisdom, the individuals had restored their bloodlines to the purity characteristic of the first fathers. This class of nobility was also called nobility of blood (bidalguĂa de sangre).
Humans were initially created by God in a state of purity. In this original state, all human actions were right actions, for nothing could have caused them to be otherwise. But humans were also created with the ability to sin, and through sin they fell from this original state of purity. Those humans whose behavior most closely approximated that of the first fathers of humanity and who, through all generations, maintained a steadfast commitment to right actions and reverence to God were considered to be noble: âNobility is nobility that comes to man by lineageâ (Alfonso X [El Sabio] [c. 1265] 1848).
In this view, nobility was the closest approximation to the original purity of creation, and it was transmitted genealogically. Those who through sin, heresy, or disloyalty stained their bloodlines were no longer noble. Such people were, of course, the immense majority.
There were two categories of people who could claim nobility of blood. The first consisted of the magnates, those extremely famous and wealthy Spanish families whose background and nobility could not be questioned because of their social power. The behavior and social prominence of another lesser group suggested that they, too, were noble, though they did not have the power and wealth to force public recognition. These people petitioned the ruler for letters patent of nobility (executorias). In theory, the ruler could neither absolve people of their sins nor purify their lineages; but as Godâs lieutenant on earth, he had the power to examine the records of a personâs behavior and family background. If these records indicated that the person was truly noble, the ruler could grant the letters patent that ârecognizedâ (not created or granted) that nobility. Nobles who gained their status in this manner were called nobles by letters patent (hidalgos de executoria) but were also considered to be nobles by blood (hidalgos de sangre).
The third class of nobility was civil political nobility (nobleza polĂtica civil). This kind of nobility was granted to individuals by a ruler in recognition of their service to the crown. It was a prize of honor awarded by the state to its servants because of their superiority in the use of the sword or the pen. Such people were also called nobles by grant (hidalgos de privilegio). There were numerous categories of grant (Isasti [1625, 1850] 1972, Moreno de Vargas [1636] 1795, Nueva recopilaciĂŽn⊠[1696] 1918).
Thus there were three major roads to socially recognized nobility: proper genealogy combined with general public recognition of it, proper genealogy and right actions recognized as such by a ruler, and service to a ruler sufficient to merit a grant of nobility. In theory, all three rested on the same basic principle: the genealogical transmission of material purity of blood that caused right action and belief. The purity/nobility relationship was the core of this naturalistic explanation and justification of human behavior and hierarchical social structures.
Double Meanings
A key to the operation of this system of concepts was the multiple meaning of biological/physical terms. Blood was a physical substance circulating through the body and, following the humoral theory, was a direct cause of an individualâs character and actions. Certain qualities of blood were important in the concept of nobility: purity, clarity, and cleanliness. It was not blood itself that made right actions, but its purity, clarity, and cleanliness. Purity of blood was not conceived as a metaphor in any sense; it was felt to be a specific physical property. Purity of blood resulted from genealogy and consanguinity.
The antitheses of these concepts helped to bound this conceptual universe and set its social context. The opposite of nobleman was commoner, and the opposite of the nobility was the populace. The quality opposed to purity/clarity/cleanliness was impurity or (the term most commonly used at the time) mixture. The opposite of nobility was thus mixture, meaning both physical mixture of noble and non-noble blood (creating impurity) and the social mixture arising from unknown genealogical background (always assumed to mean mixed noble and commoner elements). By the same logic, the state of purity had to be proved, for purity was the exception. The ordinary human condition was mixture.
A number of ambiguities must be dealt with at this point. First, as we have seen, there are two Spanish terms that we translate as ânobilityâ in English: nobleza and hidalguĂa. My understanding is that bidalguĂa came into use later and that the term emphasizes the social implications of nobility. The derivations of these terms supplied by jurists of the period are highly fanciful.
Ambiguities in the meanings of blood do not end with nobility, since ideas about blood expand into the realm of fertility, racial differences, and so on. There were also complex debates about the nobility of women, especially when a noblewoman married a commoner or a commoner woman married a nobleman.
Principles and Social Realities
A much deeper ambiguity centers on the sources of nobility themselves. In the ideal model, nobility was a direct genealogical transmission from the first fathers of humanity, who were created pure in blood. By this genealogical principle, anyone who was noble had to be directly descended from them. Yet the theoretical systems also recognized the possibility that people could, through right acts, restore purity to their bloodlines. This view is much harder to rationalize theoretically within the genealogical principle. After all, if purity of blood directly caused noble behavior, how was it possible for someone with impure blood to act in such a way as to purify it? The difficulty is great and its logic is readily understood. The legitimacy of noble privilege was given a naturalistic justification in a genealogy that supposedly placed i...