Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Degler, Carl N

Titel

IN SEARCH OF HUMAN NATURE: THE DECLINE AND REVIVAL OF DARWINISM IN AMERICAN SOCIAL THOUGHT

Erscheinungsjahr

1991

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Sociological Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• An examination of the earlier shift in US thought from the belief that biology explains human nature to acknowledgement that culture is the overriding explanation, & the recent shift back to belief in the importance of biology, presented in III PARTS containing 13 Chpts, with a Preface & an Epilogue. PART I - BIOLOGY ACKNOWLEDGED - opens the vol with (1) Invoking the Darwinian Imperative -- explains how Charles Darwin's argument that there was a developmental link between animals & human beings, but that animals were highly unequal to humans, led to the proposition that there was predetermined biological inequality among human beings; & (2) Beyond the Darwinian Imperative -- describes the influence of Darwin's ideas on the works of other scholars, eg, William James, Charles Ellwood, & William McDougall, & how the ideas of eugenics (a term coined from the Greek words for "well-born" in 1883 by Francis Galton) & hereditary intelligence were influenced by Darwin's work & eventually came to shape social policy. PART II - THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CULTURE - continues with (3) Laying the Foundation -- traces the change in the thought of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's partner in the formation of natural selection, who later came to believe that all races were equal in intelligence, & in the elaboration of anthropologist Franz Boas on this idea, which in the twentieth century became a counterargument to racial explanations for human differences; (4) In the Wake of Boas -- describes the spread of Boas's beliefs into academic disciplines other than anthropology, & details the arrival on the scene of anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, who successfully assumed Boas's fight to make the concept of culture dominant over the racial explanation; (5) Does Sex Tell Us Anything? -- details how the concept of cultural differences overtook in the late nineteenth century the idea that sexual differences, like racial differences, defined human nature; (6) Decoupling Behavior from Nature -- traces the undermining of eugenics & of the belief that certain behaviors, notably feeblemindedness & human instinct, were biological rather than cultural; (7) Decoupling Intelligence from Race -- discusses the link between race & mental ability that dominated the field of psychology in the 1920s, which once again demonstrated that biology or heredity did not influence human behavior; & (8) Why Did Culture Triumph? -- considers the forces that influenced the shift in social scientists' thought from the importance of biology to that of culture; eg, the denial of equal opportunity, predicted on biological differences, conflicted with guilty feelings concerning the treatment of blacks in the US, & the Nazi implementation of eugenics & race purity offended the morals of most people. PART III - REMEMBERING DARWIN - concludes the vol with (9) Biology Redivivus -- describes the post-WWII trend back to the consideration of biology & heredity as explanations for human behavior, which became integral to social science research in the 1960s & 1970s, as evidenced by the work of Jane Goodall, George Schaller, & others; (10) The Case of the Origin of the Incest Taboo -- tells of how the revival of the importance of biology influenced many scholars, notably anthropologist William Arens (The Original Sin: Incest and Its Meaning, New York: Oxford U Press, 1986) to cite incest as a behavior humans have in common with animals, & society's taboo against it as humans' ability to defy nature; (11) The Uses of Biology -- surveys the broad manner in which social scientists from varying disciplines have, since the 1960s, utilized Darwinian evolution & sociobiology to explain human nature; (12) Biology and the Nature of Females -- considers post-WWII research on how the physiological differences between men & women affect behavior, including the 1977 article by feminist Alice Rossi (see SA 26:1/78J1170), in which she argues that, while being equal socially, economically, & politically, men & women nonetheless differ biologically in parental abilities; & (13) The Uses and Misuses of Evolutionary Theory in Social Science -- examines the opportunities that evolutionary theory provided for scholars in the 1970s & early 1980s, & considers the position of those academicians who have found no scholarly use for the evolutionary theory of sociobiology. Epilogue: Beyond Social Science -- briefly discusses past scholarly uses of Darwinism & considers their implications for future scholarship. References are included in Chpt Notes. R. Logsdon