Morgan’s idea of developmental stages of evolution were a bit more complicated than they may at first sight seem. Savagery, barbarism, and civilization were the core of the theory, though with further classifications within each category there did exist a reflection somewhat of scientific methodology at work within this system of classification. Barbarism, for instance, had three subdivisions; lower, middle, and upper. Unveiled in 1877 in his book Ancient Society, Morgan characterized human culture as something that evolves. Morgan reflects on his theory stating to the effect that he declared he had evidence proving savagery, his earliest theoretical stage, preceded barbarism in all societies, and barbarism so too preceded civilization. Morgan …show more content…
Morgan thought these stages were pervasive throughout humanity and all society’s went through the same stages in the same order. This is what is meant within the term unilineal evolution. By this he meant that all societies travel through these stages, though at different rates. Morgan theorized all societies could be discussed in this way and that all societies were operating at different rates of evolutionary complexity. This idea of unilinearity is another aspect refuted soon after by Franz Boas. Important however, was the link Morgan identified between social progress and technological progress. Despite the reality that these ideas are generally obsolete in today’s world, it is realizations such a this link between social and technological progress that mark Morgan’s importance (Hersey 1993, …show more content…
The theory of diffusion in itself became so important in its representation of the growth of societies and civilizations that there remains little to be debated in relevant discussion regarding this specific area. The diffusionist proposition is so strong in its argument for a lack of defined laws by which civilizations arise that it essentially renders Morgan’s ideas involving cultural evolution, through his stages of savagery, barbarism, and eventually civilization, invalid (White 1945,
In this book review I will be discussing chapters twelve, thirteen, and fourteen from the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamonds. Chapter 12 “Blueprints and Borrowed Letters” talks about the evolution of writing, whereas chapter 13 “Necessity's Mother” talks about the evolution of technology, and chapter 14 “From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy” talks about the evolution of government religion. Jared Diamond believed that societies developed due to environmental differences. He suggested that some societies and cultures had advantages due to their geography. I will give a summary of the three chapters in this book and then I will give my opinion on Jared Diamond’s ideas.
Around 3500 B.C.E to 3000 B.C.E., civilizations emerged in many places. Egypt and Mesoamerica are distinctive two of them. Considering the different aspects of civilization, historians can find some same characteristics and differences which are valuable for historians to understand civilization in-depth.
Coffin, Judith G., and Robert C. Stacey. "CHAPTER 18 PAGES 668-669." Western Civilizations: Their History & Their Culture. 16TH ed. Vol. 2. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &, 2008. N. pag. Print.
Keith Henson a writer in evolutionary psychology once said that “Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environment.” Evolution was first introduced by a naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. Darwin had written an autobiography, at the age of 50, On the Origin of Species (1859) explaining how species evolve through time by natural selection; this theory became known as Darwinism. “Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes editorials and vignettes on science and nature for the “New York Times”” (Muller 706) questions Darwin’s theory in one of his essays he wrote called Darwin at 200: The Ongoing Force of His Unconventional Idea. Both articles talk about the theory of Darwinism, but the authors’ use different writing techniques and were written in different time periods. Darwin himself writes to inform us on what the theory is, where as Klinkenborg goes on to explain why Darwinism is just a theory. Today, evolution is still a very controversial topic among many. It comes up in several topics that are discussed everyday such as in politics, religion and education.
...empt to impute the difficulty of imagining evolutionary pathways to the critic. The only difference is that Dawkins' version is more aggressively ad hominem. However, the fault does not lie in the critic but in the Continuum Argument. It is not the critic's job to imagine evolutionary pathways; it is the believer's job to demonstrate them without resorting to just-so stories. The philosopher David Hume once argued that we can imagine rabbits coming into existence out of nowhere, and he concluded from this that there is nothing contradictory in the notion that something can come from nothing. Now we certainly can form a mental image of rabbits coming from nowhere, as we can for the transformation of a lensless eye to a lensed eye or a steam engine to a warp engine, but we are not obliged to accept a necessary connection between our mental images and external reality.
Boas also adds in some criticism on Freud’s psychoanalytical theory in regards to symbols, which makes it evident that anthropologists were not the only people being critiqued in regards to theory, and that he also did not agree with the psychological theories put forward by Sigmund Freud. Overall, it is incredibly clear that Boas’s reactions to the evolutionists of the 19th century were not positive, and that the points in which he presented throughout this paper seemed to be more widely accepted in regards to culture and the evolution of
Herbert Spencer made many astute assessments of the way societies work. He created theories to explain the way they grow and change and interact with one another. Spencer viewed society as an organism, and he referred to society as a super-organic system. He believed that, in both organic and super-organic systems, evolution was the result of the system becoming more differentiated. He emphasized three developmental tendencies shared by societies and organisms: 1) growth in size, 2) an increase in structure, and 3) an increase in functions. So, the more differentiated a society becomes, the harder it must work to integrate all of its parts. Spencer identified five basic stages of societal evolution: simple headless, simple headed, compound, doubly compound, and trebly compound. Then he said that each of these five stages has a regulatory system, an operative system, and a distributive system. Social control becomes an issue as a population and its functions grow. Thus, the society must put in place a regulatory system, which is usually in the form of a policing agency or a government. The operative system is the next to emerge. This is the management part of the society, which handles the production of goods and keeps all of the parts moving together smoothly. Finally, the distributive system forms. The distributive system handles all of the trade and travel issues; in other words, this system figures out how to get goods/people from one unit to another. Spencer had many complicated ways of classifying societies. Most simply, however, Spencer divided societies into two broad categories: militant and industrial. An industrial society is organized around the well being of its members, and decentralized authority help...
In his 1857 work, Progress: Its Law And Course, Spencer sought to understand Progress by cleaving it from its accomplishments and laying bare its essentials. Central to this task was dispassion as Spencer set aside consideration of the moral and ethical consequences of Progress and sought only to observe and describe its nature and effect. Such observation, he declared, showed that the nature of biological Progress had been revealed. To him biological progress was indisputably an evolution from homogeneity to heterogeneity. This “law of organic progress” he took to be the “law of all progress”.
There were major shifts in human development over different times of human existence, two of
animal with four toes on the front feet and three toes on the hind feet. This
In large part, the theory of degeneration draws its roots from Darwin and Spencer’s theories of evolution during the mid and late 1800s. Darwin proposed that animals evolved through natural selection from a more primitive ancestor, and that this evolution did not have a direction (Darwin). Meanwhile, Spencer’s theories used
Convergent evolution is the process in which organisms which are not closely related derive akin traits separately due to the need for adaptation to similar environments or ecological niches. According to the neo-Darwinian view, species with similar environmental living settings experience similar selection pressures. Natural selection then acts on the arbitrary changes or current genetic variability leading to identical phenotypic solutions. There may be resemblances at a phylogenetic level, but the basic DNA sequences are different. Convergent evolution gives rise to characteristics which are referred to as “analogous structures”. They are often contradicted with “homologous structures” which have the same ancestors. Convergent evolution
This course took me on a thought-provoking learning journey beginning with the development of humans from hunters and gatherers to the rise of civilizations and empires in the 16th century. A great emphasis was placed on the origins, development, and accomplishments of the world’s major civilizations. In addition, the comparative study of societies and contacts among different civilizations was focused upon.
Thoeries of Evolution Evolution is the process by which living organisms originated on earth and have changed their forms to adapt to the changing environment. The earliest known fossil organisms are the single-celled forms resembling modern bacteria; they date from about 3.4 billion years ago. Evolution has resulted in successive radiations of new types of organisms, many of which have become extinct, but some of which have developed into the present fauna and flora of the world (Wilson 17). Evolution has been studied for nearly two centuries. One of the earliest evolutionists was Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, who argued that the patterns of resemblance found in various creatures arose through evolutionary modifications of a common lineage.
Herbert Spencer was born in 1820 at the height of the British industrial revolution. His book entitled Social Statics achieved great acclaim when it was published in 1851. He looked at evolution as a change from being unstable (homogeneous), to one that was more stable (heterogeneous). In fact, it was Spencer who initially coined the term “evolution” and “survival of the fittest” many years before Darwin. Herbert Spen...