Chapter 7 Chapter Four Perspectives on Human and Nature Change-1

If much of eighteenth-century evolutionary thinking failed to carry on, it was new values ​​and new attitudes that, in less direct ways, paved the way for a Darwinian revolution.Questions were asked about the essential nature of man himself, and the answers to these questions framed much of nineteenth-century thought.How close is the relationship between humans and their close relatives, the apes, that is, is the human position in or above nature?How did the different races of humans originate?This question is again related to our relationship with apes.What is the nature of the human mind?To what extent can the human mind be studied scientifically?Finally, what is the nature of human society?Do human societies really have the ability to change or develop over time?Eighteenth-century thinkers offered some radical answers to these questions, but they did not actively embrace the idea of ​​human origins that we view as evolution.By overcoming some difficulties, they advanced the concept of human society being more advanced than the original; however, they did not attempt to see progress as a continuation of earlier developments in the history of life on Earth. ## However, among the intellectual constituents of the era of the French Revolution, the idea of ​​progress seemed more plausible and established itself as a standard constituent of nineteenth-century thought.The basic idea of ​​progress can be approached from many different angles.The industrial progress advocated by the economics of free competition in Britain was a far cry from the almost miraculously perfect view of the universe itself expressed by the German idealists.It is also important to note that, before the biological evolutionary perspective of progress as an explanation of human origin prevailed, there were different schools of thought developing the idea of ​​social progress.The idea of ​​human social progress inspired the theory of biological evolution rather than being a product of it.Only in the late nineteenth century, after the success of Darwin's revolution in biology, did the two levels of progress synthesize into a comprehensive view of the development of the universe. ## We will tease these questions out in two phases, first exploring the development of these views of progress in biology and anthropology, fields that give rise to the question of the relationship between humans and apes.Such an inquiry would reveal the extent to which thinkers of the Enlightenment and early nineteenth century failed to grasp the implications of human evolution.We should then move on to the sociological and ideological debates that paved the way for the intellectual framework of the nineteenth century.Seen in relation to complex and highly divergent processes, these developments can be seen as three major national styles of thought: French, British, and German.

man's place in nature Around 1700, speculation about human origins abounded, and some scholars began to suggest that our distant ancestors were no better off than livestock (Rossi, 1984).In this atmosphere the naturalist is bound to think of the relationship between man and his nearest animal relatives.As travelers traveled the world, they encountered new races of humans, some living in conditions so primitive that these travelers could not help but wonder if they were truly human.Collected specimens of great apes confirm that the creatures represent the closest relatives of humans in the animal kingdom.How close is this relationship, and to what extent does it clearly separate the lowest human beings from the most intelligent apes?These questions lead to other debates among materialists, but these debates are still on the level of facts.Instead of abstract questions about the nature of thinking, there arise the practical questions taxonomists must answer in order to complete divisions of natural systems. ## It had always been thought that man was different from animals in that he possessed an immortal soul, but by this time it became clear that at least man was physically very similar to the ape (Greene, 1959a).The numerous travelers' tales of apes show that apes too can manifest many human abilities, and even like women.Naturalists presumably analyzed the stories, trying to get more detailed information, most notably collecting better specimens of great apes.Edward Tyson described the anatomy of a chimpanzee as early as 1699.This helps to suggest that apes may not be quite like humans.When Linnaeus classified the animal kingdom, he included both humans and apes in the order Primates.When confronted with the criticism of linking man and beast, he defended himself by asking if any naturalist could show him how the [HTH] constitution [HTSS] of man and ape could be more clearly distinguished feature.Although Linnaeus was prepared to admit that man was morally and intellectually superior to apes, he insisted that the naturalist must also specialize in distinguishing physical similarities, and it is from this point of view that the relationship between man and ape is clearly put on. ## Even the most radical materialists have made little surprising effort to explore the implications of Linnaeus' classification of man.Apparently they were not inspired to suggest that humans might have evolved gradually from animal ancestors.Buffon did take the question of apes seriously in Volume Fourteen of his Natural History (1766).He admitted that there were physical similarities between man and ape, and since he was developing his "regression" theory at the time, it was possible to think that there might indeed be an evolutionary relationship between man and ape.However, Buffon did not come to this conclusion, but suggested that the similarity between man and ape was only physical; he believed that the stories about the intelligence of apes were fictional, and in fact the intelligence of dogs was closer to that of humans.In Buffon's view, it is our mental abilities that separate us from the animal kingdom and cannot be explained in physical terms.It was Lamarck who really proposed the close connection between man and ape from a materialist point of view. His theory of development naturally meant that man evolved from a lower type, but before Lamarck made this point, he The materialism possessed by the theory itself is outdated. ## In fact, the idea of ​​a close relationship between humans and gorillas has long been challenged.Petru Camper (Camper, 1779) found that chimpanzees cannot speak through the study of chimpanzee vocal organs.Camper points out that there are other differences between humans and chimpanzees, including the inability of chimpanzees to walk upright on two feet.Based on this point, Cuvier clearly pointed out that Linnaeus' point of view cannot be established.Cuvier distinguished man from the apes by creating two distinct orders: the bichids and the tetrachids.He proposed that apes are "four-handed", that is, the structures of the feet and hands are indistinguishable.Only humans have distinctly adapted feet for upright walking.In Darwin's day, this standard of clean separation of man from his closest animal relatives became an argument against the idea of ​​human evolution. ## Camper also studied different human races.To measure the shape of the bones, he determined the "face line" that connects the jaw, nose, and forehead, and the "face angle," which is the angle between the face line and the horizontal.Using the ancient Greeks as the standard to represent the most perfect human features, the angles of the face are about 90 degrees.In apes, the corners of the face are much smaller.When Camper applied this technique to different human races, he found that the angles of the faces of Europeans were close to the ideal classic type, while the angles of the faces of other races were lower than those of Europeans, especially blacks. Low.As a result, he proposed that blacks have facial angles intermediate between those of Europeans and apes.Meanwhile, the anthropologist J. F. Blumenbach achieved the same result using a different technique from his collection of skeletons of world renown (English translation, 1865).Camper has expressed the need to interpret the results with caution: apes are distinct from humans, so there is no reason to see blacks as hybrids between humans and apes.Yet it is evident to many that the negro is the most ape-like type of human being.To secure their racial superiority, Europeans began to use naturalist arguments to justify their conquest of "inferior" races (Snyder, 1962; Montagu, 1963, 1974; Barzun, 1965; Stant on, 1966; Mead et al. eds. 1968; Haller, 1975; Stepan, 1982; Banton, 1987).

Figure 12. Petru Camper's "Face Line" and "Face Corner" The face line connects the jaw, nose and forehead.The angle between this line and the horizontal line connecting the nose and ears is called the corner of the face.Note that the angle of the face of the classical figure on the right is 90 degrees, while the angle of the face of the ape is about 60 degrees.Many of Camper's later followers claimed that the black's face was halfway between that of a European and that of an ape.Far from accepting the idea of ​​evolution, these early advocates of racism insisted on the idea of ​​a vast divide between humans and animals, and suggested that the inferior shape of some races was the result of a regression from the most perfect shape.Brumenbach, like Maupertius and Buffon, believed that Europeans were the prototype of human beings, while other races degenerated from the prototype to their current form because they lived in some parts of the world where the environmental conditions were not suitable.In fact, the view that the shape of the inferior race is thus ape-like is obviously easily reminiscent of the view of human race, which is also influenced by the traditional view that the chain of existence is a single line.Thinking that lower races are similar to apes is certainly not the same as thinking that humans have an evolutionary connection to the animal kingdom.The solution of this problem was only possible after Darwin, when inferior races had been regarded as relics of an intermediate stage, and European man had advanced far beyond his animal ancestors to what was considered a stage of perfection.

France: From the Enlightenment to Positivism Enlightenment thinkers could not have believed that man had evolved from apes, but they were determined to create the basis of a new morality and social hierarchy (Willey, 1940; Cassirer, 1951; Hazard, 1963; Gay, 1966-69; Hampson, 1968).Their skepticism of Christianity ensured that they no longer viewed the moral law as an absolute truth revealed by God.Instead, the study of human nature may show what behaviors are likely to be most successful in moving society forward.Since human beings no longer expect to be rewarded or punished after death, the main purpose must be to live well in this life. The "Practical Principle" states that all actions are aimed at increasing happiness and alleviating pain.The goal of new social policy is to take into account the natural nature of different people and ensure that the majority of people live a very happy life.There is always a danger that this purely pragmatic approach may degenerate into personal hedonism.Why should the individual worry about the well-being of others, since quoting God's judgment is eliminated?How can some moralist, such as the moral nihilist Marc de Sade, persuade people that the search for personal happiness is not based on pursuing one's own interests while violating the interests of others (Crocker, 1963)?

Moralists have to come up with a set of laws to convince people that they are better off because they live in an ordered society governed by these laws rather than in anarchy.Such laws can only be successfully formulated if human nature is fully understood.However, there are two paths to study human thinking.The most radical path is outright materialism, supported by the atheists of the Enlightenment, a philosophy whose purpose is to subsume man completely within nature.It is possible that this philosophy prefigured some of the problems raised by the later theory of evolution.Although materialism all but disappeared in the late 18th century, followed by the social upheavals of the French Revolution, politically radical thinkers continued to advocate it in the early 19th century.The less radical "sensationalist" philosophy, derived from the writings of John Locke, did not intend to regard thinking as merely a product of matter.This philosophy recognizes the existence of purely functional templates of the mind and attempts to resolve them into a system of rules through how thoughts and feelings are formed in the mind.This philosophical psychology, expanded by the French Enlightenment, proved to be more flexible than abrupt materialism, and became the basis for much of nineteenth-century British thinking about human nature.It is from this intellectual framework that Darwinism ultimately derives.

Materialism comes from an extension of Descartes' view that humans are animal machines.Few people believe that animals have no feelings, and once people believe that their bodies are nothing more than a certain level of consciousness, it is obviously natural to suggest that the higher mental and physical conditions that humans have are obtained through the same conditions that animals experience. produced by means (Hastings, 1936; Rosenfield, 1968; Young, 1967).In his book Man Is Machine (1960 edition), published in 1748, Lamertri first proposed the removal of the old idea of ​​a "soul" and its replacement by a body driven by life force.At this time, people regarded the body as an organized material product of the body. This view seems to be supported by some scientific discoveries.Lamertley mentions in particular the regenerative capacity of hydra discovered by Abraham Trembley (Trembley, English translation, 1973; V artanian, 1950; Bader, 1952) and von Haller's observations on the "excitability" of organic tissue. " study (Haller, 1755, 1786).Matter is no longer seen as a passive reality like the Cartesian mechanism, but as a functional principle in its own right, as in the thought of Spinoza and Leibniz (Verniere, 1954; Barber, 1955), in Newtonian physics (Hall.1968; Heimann and McGuire, 1971; ), in Stahl's animistic philosophy of chemistry (Metzger, 1930; King, 1964; Callot, 1965; Naville, 1967 ), have this view.All these developments lead the materialists to believe that thinking is only a product of the physical activity of the body.Based on this view of man, Holbach developed a social philosophy that was entirely pragmatic, and Pierre Caban followed the same lines in his 1802 work (Cabanis, English translation, 1981; Staum, 1974, 1980), the group he belonged to was the "ideological" group (Picavet, 1891).Of course, the development of materialism at that time was not unlimited, and this limitation was the biological technology at that time.So the solution to materialism is to degenerate into a new kind of animism, because man can only be reduced to a machine by attributing the nature of life to matter itself (King, 1967; Hall, 1969; Schiller, 1974; Moravi a, 1978).

John Locke, in his classic An Essay on the Understanding of Man (Locke, 1690), laid down another scientific approach to man, according to which the mind is viewed as a system whose function is to integrate the The sensation produced by the interaction with the outside world.The question of how the body produces the sensations of thought is set aside in order to concentrate on the question of the laws governing thought.Both Condillac (English translation, 1756; Knight, 1968) and Helvetius (English translation, 1810) developed this research further, suggesting that, through the use of educational means to control sensory input, growing The thinking of people will be designed according to people's wishes.This belief in thinking was precisely exploited by utilitarian philosophers in the nineteenth century, led by the Englishman Jeremy Bentham.This philosophy holds that determining the opportunities of people through the justice of society ensures that they interact in the most efficient manner.This point of view still focuses on persuading people to be complex in behavior, rather than reducing people to heartless machine cogs.

In the absence of an evolutionary view of human origins, Enlightenment philosophers believed that human nature remained unchanged throughout history.Since it was well known at the time that human beings arose at some point in the earth's past, it was possible to imagine a time in history when human beings formed societies.Archaeological science did not yet exist to provide accurate knowledge of prehistory, but it was thought that conjectures drawn from an understanding of human nature might help to explain how societies came to be and to gain It lays out the path that other societies must follow in order to perform their functions.What was the behavior of primitive man in his original "state of nature"?Why did human beings combine with each other to form a society in the first place? In 1651, Thomas Hobbes argued in his Leviathan that the state of nature is a state of constant strife, when men accept kingly rule in order to escape the misfortune of strife .Most Enlightenment thinkers subscribed to Locke's view of human nature, which does not require one to characterize the state of nature as a state of struggle (Locke, 1960).Locke believed that our reason naturally makes us recognize the power of other people.The earliest people who were able to enter into a "social contract" only ensured that the laws of nature enforced human behavior.Rousseau later proposed that the state of nature is a state of happiness.Man is a self-improving creature, but the civilization that human beings strive to create imposes restrictions on human behavior, making human behavior less free than in the primitive state. This view of human nature was reinforced by the "noble savage" disciples who emerged in the late eighteenth century.The idea that society arose from a state of nature is not necessarily a theory of historical progress.

The social contract is an appropriate way to demonstrate the inherent purpose of human interaction, but in many societies this contract is violated by the ruling class.Reformation is possible in the light of new human knowledge, but it must be clearly recognized that society has been so corrupted that injustice prevails.Here historical research can play a role, the kind that reveals how early civilizations collapsed.The growing human sense of history has undoubtedly helped to create an atmosphere conducive to the flourishing of evolutionary thought (Toulmin and Goodfield, 1965; Rossi, 1984).Enlightenment historians, however, had difficulty breaking away from the notion of cumulative development or progress.Traditional Christianity does not accept progressive ideas, and Christianity portrays man as a fallen creature.Interested in classical thought, Renaissance historians added a new dimension to the past, but their exuberant admiration for ancient Greece and Rome may have created the impression that later civilizations were regression, not progress .At best, the people of the Renaissance could have hoped to climb the heights already occupied by the people of the past.Only with a new confidence in the future will it be possible to see social history as the record of earlier progressive processes.

The social philosophers of the Enlightenment certainly believed that they had reached a new level of knowledge about humans, but because they believed that human history was essentially constant, they tended to think that all societies obeyed fundamental laws. G. Vico hopes to establish a historical "new science" as credible as the material science (Vico, English translation, 1948; Rossi, 1984).For those races not recorded in biblical stories, he posited a fixed law governing the rise, prosperity, and decline of every civilization.This view of the cycle of history is at odds with the theory of progress, but the fate of ancient Greece and Rome makes it difficult to believe that any society has ever progressed.The most celebrated social thinker of the Enlightenment, de Montesquieu, studied the fall and fall of the Roman Empire (Montesquieu, English translation, 1900). Montesquieu used historical material to analyze the forces at work in any society.Despite the breadth of his views, modern commentators have found that he does not propose a theory of progress, yet Montesquieu's purpose was not to discuss historical trends.If the various societies are arranged in the order of progress, it means that in different historical periods, the power of control is different.For Montesquieu, the historian's job is to discover the general forces that govern any society.By assuming that human nature is constant, a static view of history is thus established, according to which the same forces are always at work, producing and destroying civilizations.

In Montesquieu's system, societies differ not because of historical progress, but because each civilization contains a specific mix of human and material elements.He felt that climate and geography had a considerable influence on society.In the tropics, for example, the tendency of any large society to become a dictatorship was morally repugnant to him, but sociologically inevitable.Montesquieu's efforts to show that external conditions can make human social behavior an interesting echo of Buffon's and other naturalists' view of the emergence of the human race, and even of different animal species, as the result of new archetypes of environmental action. Because the historians of the Enlightenment did not believe in Christianity, they were convinced that the Middle Ages were a regression to ignorance.To believe that progress is possible, one must accept the idea that modern society has reached a level of civilization which at least exceeds that of ancient civilizations.At the end of the seventeenth century there was a famous debate in scholarship over the merits of "modern" literature and "ancient" scholarship.It is difficult to determine the merits of ancient art and modern art; only in the field of technology and natural philosophy can clearly show that the modern is more advanced than the ancient.Because human nature is believed to be fixed, it is only in those areas where the accumulation of achievements suggests that progress is possible, since each generation adds new discoveries to the ones that preceded it. Enlightenment philosophers were profoundly influenced by seventeenth-century thinkers such as Francis Bacon, who expressed hope for future progress based on the invention of gunpowder and printing (Bury, 1932; Zilsel, 1945; Jones, 1965; Pollard, 1968; Van Doren, 1967). Hopes for the future have gradually induced historians to believe that the past exhibited an irregular but ultimately cumulative progress from the past to the present.But the connection between them is not easy to sort out.Voltaire's suggestion that cultural achievement reached its peak in the age of Louis XIV (Voltaire, English translation, 1961; 1965) does not make one feel a general tendency towards progress.He believed that such an achievement could be achieved once reason overcame the rebellious forces of superstition, but he was well aware of the power of superstition, so he believed that development was progressive.Others also recognize that future progress is possible, but do not connect this progress with past trends, such as Sebastian Messier (Mercier, 1770) who first proposed〖HTH〗The future〖HT SS〗will be in A "utopia" will appear in a distant geographical location.In Messier's view, the improvement of society is not a progressive process connected with the past, but the result of deliberately imposing a new organizational form on the basis of the existing society.During the Enlightenment, people generally pinned their hopes not on the inner processes of society but on the role of the "enlightened monarch." In France, it was Turgot, in his lectures of 1750 (Turgot, English translation, 1973), who made the first effort to present a comprehensive theory of progress, but it was Turgot's friend and biographer Condorcet Expressing a famous new spirit after the French Revolution had finally defeated the forces of the ancien regime (Bader, 1975).Condorcet wrote his Compendium of Human Progress (Condorcet, English translation, 1955), which was published in 1795, while fleeing from Robespierre.Although Condorcet himself had many troubles during the French Revolution, he still saw the revolution as an unstoppable sign of progress.Progress is not a matter of intellectual improvement, but is entirely a matter of the operation of necessary social forces.Humanity can progress both through science and technology, and through the movement to advance moral science to ensure the happiness of all.In the earliest period of history, human beings made basic inventions such as agriculture, and the state of nature became history.At first, progress was slow because no one had time to think about human problems, and the first monks created superstitions to bolster their power.Similar forces determined the achievements of ancient Greece and Rome, and it was only in the Middle Ages that slavery was eliminated from Western society.In contemporary times, advances in technology have strengthened the status of advanced societies, and inventions such as printing necessarily facilitated the diffusion of knowledge.Through such accumulation, although somewhat irregular, the rationality of the past has improved, and we can still foresee that in the future, with the deepening of understanding of the material world and the moral world, it will lead to a series of undoubted social improvements . Condorcet's optimistic view of progress laid the foundation for the mainstream ideology in the 19th century.At the turn of the century, Marquis de Saint-Simon emphasized the need for a scientific study of human problems, and he advocated social justice based on equality of opportunity (de Saint-Simon, English translation, 1952; Manuel, 1956).His disciple Auguste Comte made the law of progress the driving force in his new philosophy "Positivism".In his "Course of Positivism" (Comte, English translation, 1952), published between 1830 and 1842, he argued that human nature is acquired and that progressive improvements in our understanding must therefore occur.In the earliest stages of human progress, knowledge formed the basis of theology, and it was believed that all phenomena were the result of divine action.In the next stage, the metaphysical stage, nature itself is endowed with magical powers.Finally, science has entered a period of rapid development, in which it is only necessary to describe the laws of nature without exploring deeper causes.But when this method is applied to the study of man, it will produce a true sociology, which can also abandon the moral rewards and punishments of religion.Comte recognized that each period can influence the development of the next, but he could not avoid believing, like the Enlightenment men, that human nature is essentially fixed.Cuvier's opposition to Lamarck's theory of biological evolution made it impossible to link biological evolution with social progress.Comte thus lost the opportunity to integrate the two periods of evolution, which the British philosopher Herbert Spencer soon seized with the same grand ideas about a new system (Green, 1959b ).