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,
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.
Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning, National Best Selling book Guns, Germs and Steel, summarizes his book by saying the following: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Guns, Germs and Steel is historical literature that documents Jared Diamond's views on how the world as we know it developed. However, is his thesis that environmental factors contribute so greatly to the development of society and culture valid? Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History is the textbook used for this class and it poses several different accounts of how society and culture developed that differ from Diamond's claims. However, neither Diamond nor Traditions are incorrect. Each poses varying, yet true, accounts of the same historical events. Each text chose to analyze history in a different manner. Not without flaws, Jared Diamond makes many claims throughout his work, and provides numerous examples and evidence to support his theories. In this essay, I will summarize Jared Diamond's accounts of world history and evolution of culture, and compare and contrast it with what I have learned using the textbook for this class.
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.
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.
There were major shifts in human development over different times of human existence, two of
...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.
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
The final 19th century evolutionist that will be examined is Edward Burnett Tylor. Tylor, a classical cultural evolutionist of the 19th century provided the world of anthropology with a definition of culture that is still used in the field to this day. Throughout his work, he examined the ideas of culture and those that surround it. He has coined many terms and because of this, has created an everlasting impact on anthropologists. For the purposes of this paper, the introductory chapter to one of his most famous pieces of work, Primitive Culture, will be examined. According to Tylor, culture is something that, “includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law…” (1873:9) He created this statement, which encompasses many aspects that make up what
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...
animal with four toes on the front feet and three toes on the hind feet. This
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”.
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...
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.
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.