Insights of Darwin…
About Humans that underpin the renewed Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior
Largely Selected from The Descent of Man
1. Adaptation and Survival: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.”
2. Human Adaptive Advantage: “The small strength and speed of man, his want of natural weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced by his social qualities which lead him to give and receive aid from his fellow-men.” Descent p. 65.
3. Sexual (Mate) Selection: “Preference on the part of the women steadily acting in any one direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe …Women would generally choose mates best able to defend and support them.” Descent, p. 621.
4. Group Selection: “With strictly social animals, natural selection sometime acts on the individual, through the preservation of variations which are beneficial to the community. A community which includes a large number of [such] individuals increases in number, and is victorious over other less favored ones; even though each separate member gains no advantage over the others of the same community. ” Descent, p. 108.
5. Drive to Bond: “Every one will admit that man is a social being. We see this in his dislike of solitude and in his wish for society beyond that of his own family. Solitary confinement is one of the severest punishments which can be inflicted” Descent, p. 108.
6. Drive to Comprehend: “As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally crave to understand what was passing around him, and could have vaguely speculated on his own existence.” Descent, p. 97.
7. Drives dB, dD, and dA: “[There] is no reason why he [man] should not have retained from an extremely remote period some degree of instinctive love and sympathy for his fellows… It is almost certain that he would inherit a tendency to be faithful to his comrades… be willing to defend, in concert with others, his fellow-men; and would be ready to aid them in any way [dB] which did not too greatly interfere with his own welfare [dD] or his own strong desires [dA].” Descent. p. 112.
8. Conflict of Drives: “A struggle may often be observed in animals between different instincts.” Descent, p. 110.
9. Morality: “The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatsoever, endowed with well-marked social instincts…would inevitably acquire a moral sense of conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them… Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very enduring impression.” Descent p. 101
“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others, and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lesser animals.” Descent p. 633
9. Conscience: “I fully subscribe to those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important.” Descent, p. 100.
“At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men. But after their gratification when past and weaker impressions are judged by the ever-enduring social instinct, and by his deep regard for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution will surely come. He will then feel remorse, repentance, regret, or shame; this latter feeling, however, relates almost exclusively to the judgment of others. He will consequently resolve more or less firmly to act differently for the future; and this is conscience; for conscience looks backwards, and serves as a guide for the future.” Descent, p. 117.
10. Bonding and Psychopathy: “Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us,–of their imagined approbation or disapprobation; and this all follows from sympathy, a fundamental element of the social instincts. A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster.” Descent, p. 116.
11. Bonding to Collectives: “As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts, and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated form him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shows us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures.” Descent, p. 126-127.
Posted on: Sunday, August 26, 2007 - Tags: Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior.
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Dear Professor Lawrence
Under “4. Group selection” the second and third sentences are identical, I imagine a slip of the keyboard.
Sincerely,
December 28th, 2007 at 4:45 pm