Chapter 15 Supplement A "Natural" and "Anthropogenic"

A "natural" and "artificial" Existing scientific and philosophical terminology has been heavily influenced by the Aristotelian tradition, so that existing dichotomies and contrastive terms often not only fail to convey correctly the processes that underlie the issues discussed in Chapter 1, but in fact They also prevent understanding of the problems and difficulties themselves.In this section I shall comment on some of the difficulties of this division, in the hope that some familiarity with these obstacles to understanding will in fact facilitate understanding. We can start with the word "natural", which is the source of much controversy and many misunderstandings. Both the Latin root of the word "natural" and the root of its Greek synonym "physical" derive their original meaning from verbs describing various growth phenomena (nascor and physo, respectively; see Cofield, 1981: 111 -150), so anything that grows spontaneously and is not deliberately designed by some mind can reasonably be called "natural".In this sense, our traditional, spontaneously evolved moral codes are entirely natural rather than man-made, so there may be nothing wrong with calling these traditional rules "natural laws."

But idioms do not always contribute to the understanding of the laws of nature which I have just mentioned.Instead, it tends to limit what the word "natural" refers to (as we saw in Chapter 1) to innate habits or instincts that conflict with evolved rules of behavior.If only these internal reactions are called "natural," if—worse—only those necessary for the maintenance of the status quo, especially the order of small groups or communities in direct contact with each other, are called is "good", then we can only call "unnatural" or even "bad" the first step in obeying the rules to adapt to environmental changes, that is, the first step towards civilization. .

If "natural" can only be used to refer to the inner or instinctive, and "artificial" can only be used to refer to the product of design, then the result of cultural evolution (such as traditional rules) is clearly neither the former nor the latter— —Thus it is not only "between instinct and reason", but also between "natural" (that is, "instinctive") and "artificial" (that is, the product of rational design).This either/or dichotomy between "natural" and "artificial" and, for that matter, a similar division between "emotional" and "rational" has led to a massive neglect and misunderstanding of the crucial importance of cultural evolution. The exosomatic process that produces the traditions that determine the growth of civilizations.These dichotomies effectively drive the field and these processes into nothingness.

But if we move beyond these dichotomies, we see that the true opposite of emotion is not reason but traditional morality.The evolution of the tradition of behavioral rules—which lies between the evolutionary process of instinct and that of reason—is a unique process, and it would be quite wrong to regard it as a product of reason.These traditional rules apparently grew up naturally during evolution. Growth is not a property unique to biological organisms.From the well-known snowball to the accumulation of storms or the formation of crystals—or quicksand, or the uplift of mountains and the formation of complex molecules—nature is full of examples of growth in size or structure.We have only to think of the emergence of interrelational structures among organisms, and we can see that the word "growth" to describe them is entirely correct, both etymologically and logically; The meaning of the word, that is, it refers to the process of appearing in a self-sustaining structure.

It can be seen from this that, if we continue to oppose cultural evolution and natural evolution, we will fall into the trap mentioned above-the "artificial" development under conscious design and considered "natural" on the grounds that it exhibits unchanging instinctive characteristics. The either-or dichotomy made between phenomena.This interpretation of "natural phenomena" tends to lead people in the direction of constructivist rationalism.While the constructivist explanation is unquestionably superior to the organic one (which is now generally rejected as empty nonsense), because it simply replaces one unexplained process by another .But we should realize that there are two distinct evolutionary processes—both completely natural processes.Cultural evolution, although a distinct process, is still in many important respects more like genetic and biological evolution than development governed by receptivity or the prior knowledge of the consequences of decisions.

The similarity between the order of human intercourse and the order of biological organisms is, of course, a frequently noticed phenomenon.But as long as we cannot explain how the ordered structures of nature came to be, as long as we lack an account of evolutionary selection, our conscious similarities will not help us much.Thanks to the knowledge of evolutionary selection, we now hold the key to a general understanding of order formation in life, intelligence, and human interrelationships. Some of these orders, like those in the intellect, are sometimes capable of forming lower orders, but are not themselves products of higher orders.This drives us to realize that we are limited in our ability to explain or account for orders at lower levels in the order hierarchy, just as we are incapable of explaining or designing orders at higher levels.

Having addressed the general issues involving the explicit use of these traditional terms, we can simply point out, using the example of David Hume, that even one of the most important thinkers in our tradition has been consistently divided by these false dichotomies. Bewildered by misunderstandings caused by the law.Hume is a particularly good example because he unfortunately chose the term "artificial" for what I would prefer to call a "natural phenomenon" in the moral tradition borrowed from].Ironically, this actually makes him the founder of utilitarianism, although he has emphasized that "though the principles of justice are artificial, they are not arbitrary" and that "there is nothing wrong with calling them laws of nature." "(1739/1886: II, 258).He took pains to defend himself against constructivist misunderstandings, explaining that he "simply assumed that ideas were formed all at once, when in fact they arose gradually and unconsciously" (1739/1886: II, 274). (Hume here exploits what Scottish moral philosophers have called "conjectural history," see Stewart, 1829: VII, 90; Medic, 1973: 134-176. reconstruction"—in a potentially misleading manner, but which his younger contemporary Adam Ferguson learned to avoid systematically.) As these sentences show, Hume was already very close to the interpretation of evolution, He even realized that "no form can last long unless it has the necessary viability and organs: new orders and operations must be tried without interruption; until at last some order can support and maintain itself. Birth"; nor can man "consider himself an exception among all animals, (because) the ceaseless war among all creatures" will certainly continue (1779/1886: II, 429, 436).One man put it well when he actually recognized "a third category between the natural and the man-made, which has some features of both" (Hakkonson, 1981: 24).

The temptation to try to explain how this self-organizing structure is formed by a creative mind in order to explain its function is great; it is therefore understandable that some followers of Hume also explained it in this way His "artificial" term builds upon it a utilitarian ethics, according to which man consciously chooses moral norms according to their utility.It may seem absurd to attribute this view to a man who insists that "moral principles are not the result of reason" (1739/188: II, 235), but such misunderstandings occur in love. It is natural for a Cartesian rationalist such as Helvetia from whom Bentham deduced his conception explicitly (see Everett, 1931: 110).

Although we can see the gradual emergence of the concept of the formation of spontaneous order and selective evolution in the works of Hume and Mandeville (see Hayek, 1967/1978: 250, 1963/1967: 106-112, 1967 /1978a:249-266), but it was Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson who first made systematic use of this view.Smith's work marked a breakthrough in an evolutionary view that gradually replaced the static Aristotelian view. A nineteenth-century zealot who claimed that The Wealth of Nations was second only to the Bible in importance was often ridiculed, but perhaps his exaggeration was not exaggerated.Even Thomas Aquinas, a disciple of Aristotle, could not help saying that multae utilitates impedirentur si omnia peccata districte prohibite prohiberen- tur—by prohibiting all evil, many good things are hindered (Summa Theologica, II, n , q.78i).

Some authors have acknowledged Smith as the founder of cybernetics, and a recent study of Charles Darwin's notebooks shows that Darwin read Adam Smith in the crucial year 1838, leading to his decisive breakthrough (Vozzi Merle, 1977; Gruber, 1974). It can be seen that the main impetus for the establishment of a theory of evolution came from the moral philosophers of Scotland in the eighteenth century, and the different disciplinary variants of this theory are now known as cybernetics, general systems theory, synergy theory, autogenesis theory, etc. , in addition to an understanding of the superior self-generating order of the market system and of the evolution of language, ethics, and law (Ullmann-Magalit, 1978; Keller, 1982).

However, Adam Smith remains a laughing stock even among economists who have not yet discovered that the analysis must be brought into the process of generating order itself.As the main task of any science that studies market order.Another great economist, Carl Menger, who was more than a hundred years later than Adam Smith, clearly realized that "this genetic element (genetic element) and theoretical knowledge are inseparable" (Menger Geer, 1883/1933: II, pp. 183ff; for his early use of the word "becoming," see Menger, 1871/1934: I, 250).Primarily as a result of these efforts to understand human intercourse through evolution and the spontaneous formation of order, these perspectives have become major tools for the study of complex phenomena, since the "mechanical laws" of single causal relationships are no longer It is suitable to explain this phenomenon (see Supplement B). In recent years, the dissemination of this theory of evolution has had a great impact on the development of research, and even a report at the 1980 Congress of the German Association of Natural Scientists and Medical Workers said, “For modern science, things and The world of phenomena has become the world of structure and order". These recent advances in the natural sciences illustrate how right the American scholar Simon Patton was.He wrote nearly 90 years ago: "Just as Adam Smith was the last moralist and first economist, so Darwin was the last economist and first biologist."( 1899, XXIII) Adam Smith was much more than that: he provided a paradigm that later became a powerful tool in many branches of scientific work. Evolutionary views have their origins in the humanities, nowhere is the best example of biology borrowing words from the humanities. The word "genetic" (genetic; generated), which is now probably a basic technical term in the theory of biological evolution, was apparently originally in the German form (genetisch) before Thomas Carlyle introduced it into English (Schulz, 1913:I, 242) was used in the works of Herder (1767), Friedrich Scheele (1793) and Wieland (1800).It was adopted especially in linguistics after William Jones discovered a common ancestor of Indo-European languages ​​in 1787.By the time Franz Pope elaborated on it in 1816, the idea of ​​cultural evolution had become common knowledge.We find Humboldt using the term again in 1836 (1977: III, 389, 418), in the same work he also argues that "if one understands the formation of language as the most natural and continuous phenomenon, then he must would attribute it to an evolutionary system, as to all origins in nature” (I owe this sentence to Professor Keller of Düsseldorf).Is it by chance that Humboldt was also a great proponent of individual liberty?After the publication of Charles Darwin's work, we find many jurists and linguists (who knew their blood relatives in ancient Rome; see Stein, 1966: Chapter 3) protesting that they were "pre-Darwinian Darwinists" (Hayek, 1973: 153).It was not until the publication of William Bateson's "Problems of Genetics" (1913) that "genetics" quickly became a special name for the theory of biological evolution.Here we will defer to Bateson's modern usage for it, namely, biological inheritance via "genes," to distinguish it from cultural inheritance through learning.But this does not mean that this distinction can always be clearly enforced.These two forms of inheritance often interact, in particular by determining what can and cannot be passed on by learning (that is, through culture) (genetic inheritance).