Charles Darwin

11 Key excerpts on "Charles Darwin"

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  History of Modern Psychology

  A Global Perspective

  • C. James Goodwin(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  However, one must remember that Darwin’s theory is beautiful yet deceptively simple and often misapplied. It is our hope that new generations of psychologists and social scientists will be fluent in Darwinian principles and modern evolutionary biology along with implications for human behavior, and that just as Darwin predicted, “psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (Darwin, 1859, p. 428). IN PERSPECTIVE: DARWIN’S CENTURY Although Darwin’s major influence has been on the biological sciences, modern psychology cannot be properly understood without knowing about his theory and its implications. The study of individual differences derives from his observation about individual variation within a species, and comparative psychology has its origins in an attempt to evaluate the claim of an evolutionary continuum. As will be seen in Chapter 10, Darwin’s theory also had a direct effect on Freud’s thinking about the importance of sexual motivation in directing the course of human behavior. Finally, functionalism (to be encountered in Chapter 7), which examined behaviors and mental processes in terms of their capacity for adapting the organism to the environment, also had its roots in evolutionary thinking. Darwin, in effect, naturalized the mind, causing it to be seen as the means by which the human animal survives in the struggle for existence. In recent years, some psychologists have become even more explicit in looking toward evolution as a means to explain human behavior, and the result is a new field of study called evolutionary psychology.

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  I. A. Richards and the Rise of Cognitive Stylistics

  • David West(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  In this chapter, then, I wish to present briefly the outlines of Darwinism and the impact on psychology that it had; to show the depth of Richards’s immersion within Darwinism; and to explore some of the implications, positive and negative, of this immersion. Darwinism and evolutionary psychology In the concluding chapter of The Origin of Species , Darwin had written: In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history (Darwin 1859, p. 458). According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the human species, like every species, is not the product of divine creation but of what he called ‘descent The Darwinist Foundations 23 with modification through natural selection’ (Darwin 1859, p. 435). The natural world is subject to constant change, with each change providing a new set of conditions to which the organism (such as the human being) has to adapt to survive. Those who are adapted to, or fit, the new conditions survive, procreate, and pass on their genetic structure to their offspring. These offspring, then, the product of ‘natural selection’ (since it is nature, or the natural world, that has selected them), will be different – albeit, to a miniscule degree – from the offspring of previous generations. Over vast expanses of time (‘a hundred million years,’ ‘an almost infinite number of generations’ (Darwin 1859, p. 453)), these modifications accumulate to produce the organisms that are currently in existence.

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  A History of Modern Psychology

  • C. James Goodwin(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Today, the large rectangular stone marking Darwin’s burial place can be found on the floor of the north side of the Abbey, just below the bust of Sir Isaac Newton. Darwin and Psychology’s History In 1877, Darwin made a direct contribution to the history of developmental psychology by publishing an article in the British journal Mind , called a “Biographical Sketch of an Infant.” It was based on extensive notes written years before on the physical and psychological development of his firstborn son, William. But Darwin’s main contribution to psychology was his theory of evolution, which promoted a way of thinking among American psychologists that eventually became known as functionalism . This school of thought will be examined in Chapter 7; for now it is enough to say that the functionalists were interested in studying human behaviors and mental processes in terms of how they served to adapt the individual to an ever-changing environment (Green, 2009). Consciousness, for instance, was said to serve the adaptive function of enabling the individual to assess a problem and solve it quickly. Similarly, habits served to free the individual’s limited consciousness to concentrate on unsolved problems. Two specific aspects of the theory also have had a strong impact on psychology’s history (Boring, 1963c). First, an obvious implication of the theory, which Darwin made explicit in The Descent of Man (1871), was that a continuity of mental processes existed between humans and other species. This led to an increased interest in what came to be called comparative psychology , the study of similarities and THE ORIGINS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 123 differences among all animal species. Second, the emphasis on individual variation prompted the study of individual differences , a research tradition that eventually led to the measurement of differences via intelligence and personality tests.

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  Charles Darwin

  The Shaping of Evolutionary Thinking

  • Lance Workman(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  129 Returning to Origins As we saw in Chapter 3, at the end of the Origin of Species Darwin made it clear that Darwinism might provide a guiding light for the development of psychology by writing 1 : [I]n the distant future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. By using the phrase ‘the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation’, Darwin was suggesting that, in addition to our physical adaptations, our mental attributes have also been shaped by natural and sexual selection over the millennia. Moreover, acceptance of this fact would lead to the development of an evolutionary psychology. Despite this suggestion, as we have seen, due to the rise of behavior- ism, cultural anthropology and the unfortunate development of social Darwinism, most psychologists shied away from incorporating Darwin into explanations of human behaviour – leaving this to the behavioural biologists such as the ethologists we considered in Chapter 5. By the late 1980s, however, on the back of the momentum caused by sociobiology and behavioural ecology, Darwin’s prediction was finally fulfilled as a new field that came to be called ‘evolutionary psychology’ began to emerge. In this penultimate chapter we bring Darwin’s role as a mindshaper up to date by examining the development of evolutionary psychology through the ideas of individuals that referred back to his three great evolution- ary works. In order to achieve this we consider the work of those who developed evolutionary psychology. Whilst building on the theoretical developments of the 1960s and 1970s, these researchers also went back to 7 Evolutionary Psychology – Darwin’s Science of Behaviour Realised? 130 Charles Darwin the original writings of Darwin to develop their models of behaviour and internal states.

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  A History of Modern Psychology

  • C. James Goodwin(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  When visiting the zoo, for instance, William enjoyed looking at all the animals which were like those that he knew, such as deer . . . and all the birds, . . . but [he] was much alarmed at the various larger animals in cages. He often said afterwards that he wished to go again, but not to see ‘beasts in houses’; and we could in no manner account for this fear. May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independ- ent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers . . . during ancient savage times? (p. 288) Darwin’s main contribution to psychology was his theory of evolution, which promoted a way of thinking among American psychologists that eventually became known as functionalism. This school of thought will be examined in Chapter 7; for now, it is enough to say that the functionalists were interested in studying human behaviors and mental processes in terms of how they served to adapt the individual to an ever-changing environment (Green, 2009). Consciousness, for instance, was said to serve the adaptive function of enabling the individual to assess a problem and solve it quickly. Similarly, habits served to free the individual’s limited consciousness to concentrate on unsolved problems. Two specific aspects of the theory also have had a strong impact on psychology’s history (Boring, 1963c). First, an obvious implication of the theory, which Darwin made explicit in The Descent of Man (1871), was that a continuity of mental processes existed between humans and other species. This led to an increased interest in what came to be called comparative psychology, the study of similarities and differences among animal species. Second, the emphasis on individual variation within a species prompted the study of individual differences, a research tradition that eventually led to the measure- ment of these differences via intelligence and personality tests.

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  Evolutionary Psychology

  An Introduction

  • Lance Workman, Will Reader(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Darwin did make some forays into psychology. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal (1872; see Chapter 11), Darwin theorises on the evolutionary origins of emotions and their expressions. In 1877 Darwin wrote A Biographical Sketch of the Infant based on his obser- vations of his infant son. This last work, however, is largely descriptive and although it speculates on the instinctual basis of early crying and sucking behaviours, it makes no mention of the role of evolution and natural selection in shaping such behaviours. Early Attempts at an Evolutionary Psychology FRANCIS GALTON Darwin’s cousin (also a grandson of Erasmus Darwin) Francis Galton (1822– 1911) was much influenced by the theory of natural selection: Figure 1.3 Charles Darwin. 8 Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of re- bellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science. (Galton, 1908, 287) Galton was a very important figure in the history of psychology; he proposed that character and intelligence were inherited traits and developed some of the first intelligence tests to explore these issues. He was, in many respects, the father of what is now known as psychometrics. He also antici- pated the method of experimental psychology by emphasising the need to use quantitative data from large samples of individuals. Galton also proposed that traits that may have been useful in ancestral times might be less useful in modern (in this case, Victorian) society. For instance, he suggested that during ancestral times evolution had favoured humans who were group-minded or gregarious.

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  Contributions to a History of Developmental Psychology

  International William T. Preyer Symposium

  • Georg Eckardt, Wolfgang G. Bringmann, Lothar Sprung, Georg Eckardt, Wolfgang G. Bringmann, Lothar Sprung(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Rather, a more modest claim is advanced; viz., the intellectual climate of historicity that both preceded Darwin and gained impetus from him—and which in some ways was epitomized by him— is one of the originative intellectual cores of contemporary de-velopmental psychologies. It is also not proposed that all present versions of developmental psychology embrace a Darwinian evolutionism, for this is simply not the case. Indeed, some versions of contemporary developmental psychology may in fact reject major portions of Darwin's evolutionary theory, or the neo-Darwinian versions of contemporary biology. Nevertheless, the developmental tradition, propagated in part by Darwin, is still present in these systems, and their intellectual heritage may, at least indirectly, be traced to (or through) Darwin. Among early evolutionists, it is Darwin whose contributions have been both lasting and most finely tuned to be the concerns of the human sciences in general and the developmental human sciences in particular. A general sociology of knowledge perspective An abiding principle of a general sociology of knowledge is that in any society characterized by a succession of generations, social and intellectual change is effected by the fresh contact of new generations with the existing cultural milieu. 12 Intellectual discoveries influence the ideologies, ethics, and intellectual commitments of each generation commensurate to its duration in that system. 13 To understand the emer-gence of a new mode of thought (such as developmental psychology), or the intellectual shift of an extant one, the observer must attend to its sociohistorical and intellectual context. 14 Thus, prior to a consideration of the present state of developmental theory, 15 some characterization of the context of the emergence of the developmental approach to human psychological study in the nineteenth century is in order.

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  Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology

  Volume III

  • Gregory A. Kimble, Michael Wertheimer(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  After realizing that his theory was so godless in its implications, Darwin experienced an intense approach-avoidance conflict (personal ambition vs. social fear). He suffered from frequent episodes of serious illness. These periodic bouts of illness, which persisted throughout Darwin’s life, have been interpreted by Freudians as manifestations of a psychosomatic disorder. However, more sympathetic sources assign causes related to his travels (e.g., a bite by a particularly ugly beetle while hiking in the Andes). His severe personal conflict, extending at least 20 years, came to an abrupt end only after he received a friendly and modest letter from Malaya by Alfred Wallace, indicating that he, too, had discovered natural selection.

  DARWIN’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO PSYCHOLOGY

  Darwin’s contributions to psychology were of two kinds: direct and indirect. The direct contributions are in his books, The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) and The Descent of Man (1871), and in the chapter on instinct in The Origin of Species (1858). In The Descent of Man , he takes up the evolution of the “higher faculties of human mental life” and traces them from animals through savage and barbarian stages inferred from his observations of the aborigines in Tierra del Fuego and the slaves, masters, and natives in South America. In both books, Darwin used the anecdotal method that was standard at his time, but only after he had recited the homologous anatomical structures among humans and animals. His underlying argument was that, given clearly homologous structures (facial muscles or brains), their use must be at least analogous.

  It can be argued, however, that the most important contributions to psychology of the theory of natural selection were not those that can be found in Darwin’s own writings or in those of his contemporaries. Instead, these lasting contributions were indirect. They came through the impact of the theory on Darwin’s contemporaries: Spencer, Gaiton (chap. 1 , Pioneers I ), Romanes, and their intellectual progeny, who were pioneers in the functionalist and behavioristic schools of psychology, such as William James, Edward L. Thorndike, John B. Watson (chap. 2 , 10 , and 12 , Pioneers I ), Robert Yerkes (chap. 7 , Pioneers I

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  Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century

  • A. Gillette(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Part II The Birth of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology 3 The Animal Nature of Humans Thanks to recent researches in the United States, it was now certain that the races of man act in exactly the same way as the races of animals. Giuffrida Ruggeri, “Our Work in Eugenics,” p. 4 The question arises, therefore, whether sociology should take account of animal groups as well as of human groups. If we assume the evolution of the human from the subhuman there can be only one answer to this question:sociology must take animal societies into account. Charles A. Ellwood, Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects, p. 18 Occasionally the question is raised whether it is permissible to speak of such a thing as animal sociology . . . . It appears to me that this view is based—to put it crudely—upon an overestimate of mankind and an underestimate of animals. Friedrich Alverdes, The Psychology of Animals, p. 115 The change from monkey to man might well seem a change for the worse to a monkey. J.B.S. Haldane, The Causes of Evolution, p. 153 Human Instinctual Behavior Charles Darwin is undoubtedly the most influential thinker in the history of biology. The constellation of ideas that composed his theory of evolu- tion seem to lead inevitably to new discoveries in biology whenever they have been applied. What is perhaps even more astounding is that some of his most logical ideas were to a great extent eventually dismissed and forgotten. In the mid-nineteenth century, Darwin quite reasonably A. Gillette, Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century © Aaron Gillette 2007 assumed that, since humans were animals, behavior patterns observed in the higher mammals must have some presence in human behavior as well. This includes instinctual behaviors. Essentially, instincts were thought to be inheritable behavior patterns that manifested themselves under certain conditions, and generally increased the animal’s adaptation to its environ- ment.

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  Evolutionary Psychology

  The New Science of the Mind

  • David M Buss, David M. Buss(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part 1 Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology

  Two chapters introduce the foundations of evolutionary psychology. Chapter 1 traces the scientific movements leading to evolutionary psychology. First, we describe the landmarks in the history of evolutionary theory, starting with theories of evolution developed before Charles Darwin and ending with modern formulations of evolutionary theory widely accepted in the biological sciences today. Next, we examine three common misunderstandings about evolutionary theory. Finally, we trace landmarks in the field of psychology, starting with the influence Darwin had on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and ending with modern formulations of cognitive psychology.

  Chapter 2 provides the conceptual foundations of modern evolutionary psychology and introduces the scientific tools used to test evolutionary psychological hypotheses. The first section examines theories about the origins of human nature. Then we turn to a definition of the core concept of an evolved psychological mechanism and outline the properties of these mechanisms. The middle portion of Chapter 2 describes the major methods used to test evolutionary psychological hypotheses and the sources of evidence on which these tests are based. Because the remainder of the book is organized around human adaptive problems, the end of Chapter 2 focuses on the tools evolutionary psychologists use to identify adaptive problems, starting with survival and ending with the problems of group living.

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  Chapter 1 The Scientific Movements Leading to Evolutionary Psychology

  Learning Objectives After studying this chapter, the reader will be able to:

  • Identify the three essential ingredients of natural selection.
  • Define particulate inheritance.
  • List three common misunderstandings about evolutionary theory.
  • Identify when Neanderthals went extinct.
  • Explain why radical behaviorism went into scientific decline.

  In the distant future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.

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  Adaptive Individuals In Evolving Populations

  Models And Algorithms

  • Richard K. Belew, Melanie Mitchell(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 17 255 Certainly, James's emphasis on Darwinian interpretations of evolution is not outdated, notwithstanding misgivings of many of his now-dated contemporaries and successors who saw greater promise in Lamarckian or mechanistic analyses of evolution. Darwin's theory is the core idea in biology, and its preeminence has in no way been reduced by the complementary molecular biological discoveries which have followed. With regard to cultural evolution and the evolution of ideas, James is recognized as a progenitor of contemporary evolutionary epistemology (see Campbell, 1974), but he is rarely credited for one of the first sophisticated Darwinian accounts of cultural and social evolution. Some of the most exciting theoretical work in these areas today is due to the application of modern theory to the ground James broke over a hundred years ago. Dawkins's (1976) selfish meme account of cultural evolution is a population-genetic rewrite of James's pragmatism, which was itself an application of selectionist theory to the idea of truth. However, while cultural evolutionists and sociobiologists may have relatively little to learn from James about how to model social evolution, they still have a great deal to learn from James about the possible character of the systems under study. This lesson applies even more so, of course, to the understanding of individual organisms, as the recent demise of radical behaviorism attests. Nonetheless, the behaviorist emphasis on the notion of selection (albeit extended to mental selection as well) is something even thoroughly modern mentalists recognize as a permanent theoretical fixture (see Dennett, 1978). Furthermore, with regard to the explanation of individual behavior and intelligence, it is precisely by adopting the idea of within-individual heirarchical organization that the limitations of simplistic reductionism and reinforcement theories are being transcended.

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