From: Derek Gatherer (d.gatherer@vir.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 26 Oct 2005 - 09:51:56 GMT
At 10:18 26/10/2005, you wrote:
>Be careful. Darwin's "Lamarckism" is only "neo-Lamarckian" and not
>even that. He actually says that a trait that varies by chance is
>inherited more often or more strongly if it is used (the principle of
>Use and Disuse that he constantly refers to).
P37-38: “some intelligent actions – as when birds
on oceanic islands first learn to avoid man –
after being performed during many generations,
become converted into instincts and are
inherited.” Darwin then expresses the opinion
that reason and experience is thereby “degraded”
into instinct. However, he also thinks that
instincts are built up by natural selection from simpler reflexes (p38)
>And I dispute the claim that "it's all about superior mental
>faculties" - rather, I think Darwin failed, as many did then and many
>still do, to distinguish between culture and biology. When he is
>talking about the "British race" or the "Turkish race", he clearly
>could not mean what we would mean in biological terms that the former
>had better genes than the latter. I think that it is somewhat
>Whiggish to interpret him anachronistically as thinking that cultural
>attributes were biological; the distinction wasn't clearly made at
>that time, and probably not until the turn of the century.
I initially believed that, as I'd absorbed or
read it elsewhere probably years ago, but now on
actually reading the original, I'm not so
sure. p71. Darwin here gets down to the issue
of what is or is not instinctive in humans
(although maybe I am making a post-Pavlovian
Whiggism here... did he think of instincts in the
same way as we do?). His first suggestion is
“social instincts” quoting JS Mill who apparently
thought that social feelings are a “powerful
natural sentiment” (Utilitarianism 1869, p46) but
that moral were not such. Darwin’s second
suggestion is “moral sense of conscience” (p71) contra Mill.
P160 he carries his inter-tribal group
selectionist scenario as far as to include
colonial replacement: “civilised nations are
everywhere supplanting barbarous nations” –
supplanting is the same word he previously uses
to describe the Bronze Age transition in Europe,
so it is clear he really means replacement of
indigenous populations with ones of European
descent. This is attributed to natural selection
on the intellect, through which “their arts” are
produced. So, superior culture or "arts" is
taken to be a product of superior
intellect. Natural selection acts on the
underlying capacity to produce "arts", not the culture itself – very Pinkerian.
Now on p161 we come to “imitation”: a cultural
innovation is imitated by a whole tribe – they
then go out and “supplant” their rivals. Given
that they were better at cultural innovation,
they probably have more of a tendency to produce
more innovation in the future and so the process
snowballs. On p162-163 we have the same argument
for the “social and moral faculties” especially
relating to self-sacrifice, obedience, loyalty,
courage etc On p166 he makes it clear that
morality is also similarly group selected and
again repeats his Utopian conviction that it will
steadily increase over the world as a result of
the replacement of immoral tribes by moral ones.
On p169 he also sees social mobility in the
context of natural selection: “the able in body
and mind succeed best”. Even the habit of the
very rich to “able to select generation after
generation the more beautiful and charming women;
and these must generally be healthy in body and
active in mind” (p170), especially if they are
upwardly mobile heiresses of the self-improved
trade category who will have inherited their fathers’ acumen.
So he seems quite clear on the point, following
Galton, that mental capacities are inherited
rather than acquired, and that moral and social
attributes like self-sacrifice, obedience,
loyalty, courage etc are similarly heritable in
the same way that such traits are heritable in
dogs etc. Rival races cannot have better genes
(since they had not been discovered) but they
could have superior social instincts, mental
capacities etc. All very Galtonian.
>Can you point me to the statement that primitive culture was
>independently invented?
p183. Fire is regarded as a "probable exception" (why?).
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