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The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson’s human sociobiology and Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin’s theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes.
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Keywords
- anthropology
- Biology, Life Sciences
- Evolution
- history of science
- Life sciences: general issues
- Mathematics & science
- Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography
- Social and cultural anthropology
- Society & Social Sciences
- Sociology & anthropology
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology::JHMC Social and cultural anthropology
- thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PS Biology, life sciences::PSA Life sciences: general issues::PSAJ Evolution
Links
DOI: 10.7298/vr7v-1c65Editions