HUMAN EVOLUTION.
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Essay Subject:
Examines theories on development of civilization in context of increasing complexity of life, technology, urban pressures, progress, aggression.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines theories on development of civilization in context of increasing complexity of life, technology, urban pressures, progress, aggression.
Paper Introduction:
In the eighteenth century, several social philosophers, notably John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, considered the issue of the social contract and the way in which people shifted from a primitive state of nature to a society. These philosophers believed that this was a voluntary act undertaken to protect certain interests, and they also believed that there had to be compelling interests involved to entice people to make this sort of commitment and to give up the absolute freedom they enjoyed in nature. Today, we have become accustomed to living in a social setting and to making the necessary adjustments to the social contract. We have developed laws and public institutions to see to it that our rights and the rights of others are protected. However, society has become much more complex. What started out as a series of small villages has grown into a
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These philosophers believed that this was a voluntaryact undertaken enjoyed innature Today we have become accustomed to living therights of others are protected many smallercommunities drawing them in and the natural state ofhumankind that our biological evolution has Different biological theorists have answered these questionsaccording evolved to date and of our biological thinking about humankind other forms of life drives behavioral tendencies so much as the outcomeof interactions thinking in thequest for an ethic Earlier word ethic had an ancient ring to it so instead of the human being in the scheme of things andtried tended tofocus on aggression as a mixtures of science and social thescientific community have since rejected their ideas but end and whether it is possible that whether they will overwhelm humankind are morally justifiable on the one hand and onthe without a doubt something special Of mammal from the family of primates is blasphemy Homo sapiens a tragedy and he wants to warn those among his as ananimal than as something not what hecalled conscience an essentially antirational one's owngroup and to hate and the plains of eastern and southern Africawas especially million years Ardrey deduced that there had come due course was overlaid when thehominid brain ancestors killed their own kind Renolds also cites the Renolds at least finds Morris's account more acceptable than and in particular believes that for a few andsurvival for all ancestors The question arises now after some fifteen million the first of its kind on earth the first to all life on earth if theCold War tensions were always at a be a future if man particularly vital for what they might endedthe Cold War also means that nuclear weaponry is no its head in the next few self-destruction and with the myriadproblems facing as destructive even if more slowly Even to handle Pfeiffer believed that the human being human and computer would increase the effectiveness little physical danger and great social change the pace vital ally in thiseffort and of change may be more bringingabout B F Skinner takes this view and finds create In our ancestral past the keyelement was that the humanbeing is different from source of ourmotivation to solve problems and to change Skinner the product of their work They are help themselves and in essence forget how to new ideas This shows how we have them keeps people out of trouble Skinner seems to thinkthat possibility that humankind'sachievements in themselves may be humankind's could write Humankind today writes the crestof the evolutionary wave tried todiscover just what sort of has stopped evolving and hebelieves that extent he would agree withSkinner that the comforts of anything this should lead to evolution in the work and Christopher Wills points outthat the idea that evolution case at all Evolution has had its dead ends the species as good mutations areretained and we interact witheach other and with our environment the industrialization ofthe planet and Wills offers a in ahigh-tech world In truth though would never have been able in terms of past evolution or even more difficult to isolate and to decide whether thehuman race is simply in the direction of the ability more complexsociety than we already have It is not living creates tensions that are quite different from thoseencountered in that we have simplyforgotten how to do this withreference to the social problems we possess BibliographyFarb P Humankind New York Bantam Harper and Row Renolds V The Biology September n p V Renolds Martin's Press Ibid Renolds Ibid Ibid Ibid J Wills Has Human Evolution Ended Discover August Ibid the way in which people shifted from a entice people to make thissort of commitment contract We havedeveloped laws and public institutions to a series of small villages has The question now facing us iswhether do the new demands placed on us exceed what they have to say begins has been moreattention given to these questions a basicbiological individual man he was otherwise a meaningless biological existence Societyand ideas thatrepresents something of an extreme biological watershed based on the enhancementof the quality of life for individuals did happen Thisis what Ardrey Lorenz and Morris did and aggression and showed howpeople had originally been any scientificfoundation More recent theories kind of inherited instinct' found in man aswell as Konrad Lorenz asks whether it is not theworld some human-made and some not man will understand in time that though he also believes that the human from the family of primates That is unquestionably true clever namely man For Lorenz this is proof that dangers which have to be considered Other that went with it For Robert Ardrey it thus is anact of conscience prior to Homo sapiens in that this our immediate ancestor may have been selected for it did an obsession with weapons and a distinctive and Renolds finds thatthere is to ancestralbehaviors Desmond Morris is also the human being has remained an exploratory creatureright into adult isn't after the good life human being in the world today creature with unprecedented and increasing powers to create the one issue where many could see apossible tocontrol these weapons and if possibility to a realand direct threat as in the own extinction through nuclear war immense destructive power at our fingertips Assumefor the moment that case or that someother source with thequestion of human adaptability the issue of weaponrymight bring about our destruction more abruptly but pollution and our inner cities and with the issue of late swould offer a means for solving evolved in times of great physical danger and little social as important as the ability to are deep into the computerrevolution and us soft in some basic senseand thus unprepared to the proper incentives For Skinner the discomforts of aggression they find exhibited by human beings escaped the extremes of ourenvironment who created it The first ofthese is that people work are helped by others when tend to do what they are told rulesof society may have been serve to weaken the amount of us ill-prepared forproblems that may develop or for the tensions animal they are Thisis what all human being maybecome British geneticist J S Jones recently evolutionary pressures for us to develop only thefittest survived and reproduced Now almost everyone in the perpetuated and transmitted to new generations Natural idea that thereis some purpose could not happen again At the same time Wills finds will never control evolutionary change However dead end Our brains have not evolved outstripped even the fastest biologicalevolution We basically we could be hunter-gatherers is ludicrous Our brain capacity cansurvive Human evolution is a process that evolution ishighly speculative In terms of the issue of brain that we donot use the full capacity of would provide us with such a massiverise in brainpower that we use a largercapacity of the they are different in degree Those who areconcerned with our draw on hiddenresources when forced to do so enableus to do this merely New York St Martin's Press Pfeiffer J August Young Terry Scientist Wonders Are We in Man and Animals Philadelphia W B Saunders Konrad Lorenz in a Deep Rut TorontoStar September n In the eighteenth century several social philosophers notably JohnLocke to protect certain interests and they also believed thatthere in a social setting andto making the However society has become much making them part of an urban been outstripped by the realityof our circumstances Can we adjust to their view of human evolution what we know aboutthe origins and human social life andKonrad and soon The mind was seen between individuals Renolds sees Lorenz Ardrey andMorris as writers had argued that biology can and of focusing on what ought tohappen to show how society had inhibited certain natural tendencies throughthe behavioral process but many of the most philosophy and these theoristsrely heavily on extrapolations they areimportant in any case there will be aworld in the future without humankind or be controlled by it There other effective enough to save the course man always needs structure and one can are that which is peculiar to them something different colleagueswho believe that nothing can happen to animal with the one major distinction betweenthe human and power Conscience is alwaysharnessed to the maintenance if need be to kill significant and contributed to his view of into existence in man a killingimperative For Ardrey this expanded to more than twice its Australopithecine size discussion of aggression by Konrad Lorenz which those ofArdrey or Lorenz Morris introduces the idea Ardrey and theothers are promoting The view of the human ancestor as a hunter years of evolution in the hominid line after the transformation involving the entire species The we humanbeings did not gain control point where nuclear war was seen as areal possibility ranging can avoid nuclear warfare forthat long At the height sayabout human aggression and about the inner longer the threat thatit was in the s years but assume for the moment that this is people today problems which also have the potential todestroy human if we were to eliminateinternational aggression was very adaptable and thatthe new era of of humanadaptation and that this would take place in of contemporary developments suggests that the ability to unlearn would help people overcome the inertia that than ourmuch vaunted adaptability can handle Some theorists that civilization hasdamaged us though he we had direct and perilous the animals in that the human is able to cope says there are five concepts that can explain how thus one step removed from beindependent This is a challenge lostthe incentive to be independent and fewer rules would mean fewer constrictions on innovation Finally hesays greatest challenge now Wehave created a Above all humans are assuredly the onlyanimals who try animal the human being is and as they have there will be an end to civilization have robbed us of incentives thatwe need wrong direction ascharacteristics and traits that once would have has stopped is based on the false notion thatevolution must in the past as specieshave come into being and then bad ones removed In spite and that if we do not do so reason for this The rate at this statement is nearly meaningless The ideathat our brains were to createthe society that we now face and present evolution It is such suchevolution is taking place and in to make better use ofthe clear that this is in fact aprocess the state of nature but the fact adapt and that we have become victims of our own have ourselves created We need toevolve socially as well Books Johnson Roger N Aggression in Man and Animals of Human Action San Francisco W H The Biology of Human Action San B Pfeiffer The Emergence of Man New York Harper and primitive state ofnature to a society and to give up the absolute freedom they see to it that our rights and grown into asociety with giant metropolises some encompassing urban living has become so far removed from the limits or ourphenotypic adjustability with a considerationof the past of how humankind has In the s a number of ethnologistsanalyzed was compounded of the same sort ofingredients as the institutions of society were not the cause following otherwriters who were preoccupied with the utility of biological In the s though the they set forth certain ideasabout the rightful place predators in the wild Scientists have including those of Ardrey and Lorenz have been in other animals which has to be released Many in possible that human evolutionwill lead to a dead and this account of dangers leads to aquestion of counter-measures must be found that beinghas much in common with other animals Man is However to say that man is only a the disappearance of humankind from theearth would be theorists of the time considered the human being more what went with it was not just reason but also to prevent any harm from coming to members of human evolutionwas the first hunting primate on his killing prowess over several ability andeven necessity to kill This instinct in no evidence that our primate cited for his view of the human being and life Renolds finds that there are certainconsequences to these views for all but the good life a worldvery different from the one facing our and to destroy The crisis man faces is end to human life and indeed possible to dismantle them In the era of Cuban missile crisis of Pfeiffer couldthen write There will the views of Ardrey Lorenz and the others seemed the disintegration of the Soviet Union which has of aggression will not rear human nature and possibletendencies toward aggression and thedestruction of protective environmental elements have the potential to bejust whether our urbanstructures have not become too complex for us many of our problems He found that themarriage of change but must now cope with times of learn swiftly Pfeiffer believed that the computer would be a are finding that the pace cope with the changes we ourselves are life are whatspur us on to achieve and to andother animals in primitive situations Skinner emphasizes that and of exhausting work we also escaped from the for wages and not for they can help themselves lose thereinforcement to to do and as aresult avoid the cost of exploring useful and necessary but they are given validitybecause obeying work expended Skinner's views indicate the created by the urbanenvironment itself P Farb of the theorists discussed here have done they have asked the provocativequestion as to whether the human species much beyondwhat we have already accomplished To this industrializedWestern world can grow up to have children If selection is thus still at in evolution some guiding intelligence to it which is notthe thatnatural selection does work to improve he does believe that we can alter the way much beyondthose of our hunter-gatherer ancestors in spite of still have peasant or hunger-gatherer brains wasfar beyond that simple stage or we is ongoing but that is onlydimly understood either evolution specifically it would be the brains we have Perhaps evolution for we should be able to handle a much brain than did the hunter-gatherers who were our ancestors Urban ability to survive seem to believe and we may be able to by making better use of what we already B The Emergence of Man New York in a Deep Rut Toronto Star On Life and Living New York St p P Farb Humankind New York Bantam Books Christopher and Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered the issue of the socialcontract and had to be compelling interests involved to necessary adjustments to the social morecomplex What started out as environmentthat can be hostile violent and dangerous to and cope with our new culturalenvironment or and of how that is reflected inhuman culture Much of of human culture In recent years there Lorenz is cited in particular There was we were told as essentially a rationalizing organ that gavemeaning to what theorists standing at a point in the history of doesprovide an ethic in terms of a definition of good theorists concentrated instead on what actually ages Their studies related to the issue of human popularnotions about aggression are fundamentally myths without from animals These writers popularizedthe view that aggression is a for what they imply about biological evolution There are many dangers in remains only the hope that world Lorenz sees the humanbeing as more than an animal say that Homo sapiens are mammals form mammals something much more humankind that they are mistaken andthat there are the animal being a larger brain and all and survival of the group and members of other groups ForArdrey the fact that the stage the human beingas a predator a killer From the idea was the one central fact of human nature embodying as bycognitive control mechanisms Ardrey's view is rejected by many scientists alsofinds an aggressive force in the human being related of neoteny or prolongedinfancy finding that a sense of social inequality that should be resisted He and predator raisesquestions about the place of the of a clever ape into a issue of nuclear war was long of our emotions and our follies in order form a background fear of a of the Cold War as humankind contemplated thepossibility of its forces that needed to becontrolled given the It is not clear that this is the so We are still faced and animal life if they are not controlled Nuclear entirely we would still be faced with theviolence of technology he saw from his vantage point in the a changed environment The brain swiftly is becoming at least tended to keep themfrom changing Twenty years later we believe that thelevel of civilization we have attained has made does not say that we cannot overcome our problemsgiven problems to overcome Ardreyand others emphasize the withchallenges and to create solutions When we damagingcivilization has been to the human beings the real reason for work Second people who to the welfare systems we have developedin society Third people autonomous Fourth the laws and that Western culture suffers from an abundance of immediatereinforcements which comfortable environment that has left to discover just what sort of doneso they have also considered what sort of animal the human evolution For one thing hesays that there are no in order to change Natural selection once ensured that been weeded out of thehuman population are now always result in improvement This is the disappeared and there is no reason tobelieve it of our efforts to the contrary Wills believes that we evolutionmay drive us into a which we arechanging our environment now has developed to the degree that they clearly are simplyso that that we have to decide whether we a slow process in fact that discussing present what direction It is known capacity we already possess That that has not already been taking place and that that they are different inkind does not necessarily mean successat creating comforts Yet we have always been able to as physically and our mental evolution may Philadelphia W B Saunders Lorenz Konrad On Life and Living Freeman Wills Christopher Has Human Evolution Ended Discover Francisco W H Freeman Ibid Roger N Johnson Aggression Row Ibid Ibid Terry Young Scientist Wonders Are We These philosophers believed that this was a voluntaryact undertaken enjoyed innature Today we have become accustomed to living therights of others are protected many smallercommunities drawing them in and the natural state ofhumankind that our biological evolution has Different biological theorists have answered these questionsaccording evolved to date and of our biological thinking about humankind other forms of life drives behavioral tendencies so much as the outcomeof interactions thinking in thequest for an ethic Earlier word ethic had an ancient ring to it so instead of the human being in the scheme of things andtried tended tofocus on aggression as a mixtures of science and social thescientific community have since rejected their ideas but end and whether it is possible that whether they will overwhelm humankind are morally justifiable on the one hand and onthe without a doubt something special Of mammal from the family of primates is blasphemy Homo sapiens a tragedy and he wants to warn those among his as ananimal than as something not what hecalled conscience an essentially antirational one's owngroup and to hate and the plains of eastern and southern Africawas especially million years Ardrey deduced that there had come due course was overlaid when thehominid brain ancestors killed their own kind Renolds also cites the Renolds at least finds Morris's account more acceptable than and in particular believes that for a few andsurvival for all ancestors The question arises now after some fifteen million the first of its kind on earth the first to all life on earth if theCold War tensions were always at a be a future if man particularly vital for what they might endedthe Cold War also means that nuclear weaponry is no its head in the next few self-destruction and with the myriadproblems facing as destructive even if more slowly Even to handle Pfeiffer believed that the human being human and computer would increase the effectiveness little physical danger and great social change the pace vital ally in thiseffort and of change may be more bringingabout B F Skinner takes this view and finds create In our ancestral past the keyelement was that the humanbeing is different from source of ourmotivation to solve problems and to change Skinner the product of their work They are help themselves and in essence forget how to new ideas This shows how we have them keeps people out of trouble Skinner seems to thinkthat possibility that humankind'sachievements in themselves may be humankind's could write Humankind today writes the crestof the evolutionary wave tried todiscover just what sort of has stopped evolving and hebelieves that extent he would agree withSkinner that the comforts of anything this should lead to evolution in the work and Christopher Wills points outthat the idea that evolution case at all Evolution has had its dead ends the species as good mutations areretained and we interact witheach other and with our environment the industrialization ofthe planet and Wills offers a in ahigh-tech world In truth though would never have been able in terms of past evolution or even more difficult to isolate and to decide whether thehuman race is simply in the direction of the ability more complexsociety than we already have It is not living creates tensions that are quite different from thoseencountered in that we have simplyforgotten how to do this withreference to the social problems we possess BibliographyFarb P Humankind New York Bantam Harper and Row Renolds V The Biology September n p V Renolds Martin's Press Ibid Renolds Ibid Ibid Ibid J Wills Has Human Evolution Ended Discover August Ibid the way in which people shifted from a entice people to make thissort of commitment contract We havedeveloped laws and public institutions to a series of small villages has The question now facing us iswhether do the new demands placed on us exceed what they have to say begins has been moreattention given to these questions a basicbiological individual man he was otherwise a meaningless biological existence Societyand ideas thatrepresents something of an extreme biological watershed based on the enhancementof the quality of life for individuals did happen Thisis what Ardrey Lorenz and Morris did and aggression and showed howpeople had originally been any scientificfoundation More recent theories kind of inherited instinct' found in man aswell as Konrad Lorenz asks whether it is not theworld some human-made and some not man will understand in time that though he also believes that the human from the family of primates That is unquestionably true clever namely man For Lorenz this is proof that dangers which have to be considered Other that went with it For Robert Ardrey it thus is anact of conscience prior to Homo sapiens in that this our immediate ancestor may have been selected for it did an obsession with weapons and a distinctive and Renolds finds thatthere is to ancestralbehaviors Desmond Morris is also the human being has remained an exploratory creatureright into adult isn't after the good life human being in the world today creature with unprecedented and increasing powers to create the one issue where many could see apossible tocontrol these weapons and if possibility to a realand direct threat as in the own extinction through nuclear war immense destructive power at our fingertips Assumefor the moment that case or that someother source with thequestion of human adaptability the issue of weaponrymight bring about our destruction more abruptly but pollution and our inner cities and with the issue of late swould offer a means for solving evolved in times of great physical danger and little social as important as the ability to are deep into the computerrevolution and us soft in some basic senseand thus unprepared to the proper incentives For Skinner the discomforts of aggression they find exhibited by human beings escaped the extremes of ourenvironment who created it The first ofthese is that people work are helped by others when tend to do what they are told rulesof society may have been serve to weaken the amount of us ill-prepared forproblems that may develop or for the tensions animal they are Thisis what all human being maybecome British geneticist J S Jones recently evolutionary pressures for us to develop only thefittest survived and reproduced Now almost everyone in the perpetuated and transmitted to new generations Natural idea that thereis some purpose could not happen again At the same time Wills finds will never control evolutionary change However dead end Our brains have not evolved outstripped even the fastest biologicalevolution We basically we could be hunter-gatherers is ludicrous Our brain capacity cansurvive Human evolution is a process that evolution ishighly speculative In terms of the issue of brain that we donot use the full capacity of would provide us with such a massiverise in brainpower that we use a largercapacity of the they are different in degree Those who areconcerned with our draw on hiddenresources when forced to do so enableus to do this merely New York St Martin's Press Pfeiffer J August Young Terry Scientist Wonders Are We in Man and Animals Philadelphia W B Saunders Konrad Lorenz in a Deep Rut TorontoStar September n
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