Evolution and Human Culture

HERE'S THE PREFACE TO THE BOOK.

Why do some people get heated up when they hear the word evolution? Why are some people incensed about any hint of human evolution? Why do some people accept the evolution of other animals but not of human beings? Why do some people accept some version of physical human evolution but resist any suggestion that behaviors such as morality and art, or that the human mind, are evolved? In 2005 we began seeing articles reporting the results of surveys concerning the so-called public acceptance of evolution. Jerry Coyne and J. Miller discuss these trends. For example, in America alone in 1985 forty percent of the population did not believe in the veracity of evolution, and that percentage of non-believers has increased to forty-five percent in recent years. My book not only accepts the truth of evolution, but the truth that human behaviors, practices, beliefs, values, emotions, and reasoning are evolved adaptations, though expressed differently in various cultures. Taking the view of Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail, I argue for a full study of human prehistory utilizing various disciplines. Our mind is responsible for behavior and has many adaptations, says David Buss, especially in our interpersonal actions.

Evolution and Human Culture will be valuable to students and scholars of literature, the arts, and cultural studies, including moral philosophers, who would be interested in reading about key intellectual developments in their fields. Biologists and social scientists would benefit as well, since the book provides a window into how scientific research contributes to the arts and humanities. The book offers a comprehensive entry into evolutionary cultural studies. The take-home point is that culture does not transcend nature; culture is human nature with moral sensations at bottom.

Most professors and students are still spinning abstractions with post-modernist theories, but they need to consider a more empirical approach. For instance, how could moral philosophers ignore biology? Most do, and I suppose in some cases that is justifiable. How could scholars writing definitive papers on beauty ignore neuroscience? Many do, and I guess in some cases that is justifiable. But these are omissions of ignorance. As another instance, theorists think that culture is something separate, foisted upon us from elsewhere, indicating that we are born with nearly empty minds that need to be filled. The notion of social constructivism is for the most part incorrect.

Evolutionary psychologists do not ignore the impact of the complex function of environment, but to a greater degree we need to see that culture is an evolved behavior so that some of our cultural imperatives are inborn. While in our advanced state of civilization cultural practices have become runaway, at bottom their existence answered adaptive needs.

Broadly speaking there are several aims of this book:

• • To survey and concisely review some literature in various disciplines of evolutionary studies in order to collect it into one volume for a wider audience.

  • To demonstrate, especially for those working in the arts and humanities, how an evolutionary approach could dramatically enlighten and invigorate their studies.

  • To suggest that much of our cultural production stems from what in early hominins was a caring tendency – both the care to share and a self-care to challenge others.

  • To argue that cognition and feelings gave rise to cognitive emotions crucial for adaptations regarding individual well-being and strategizing in the context of group norms.

  • To argue that cultural artifacts as social expressions are physical examples of individual and shared moral sentiments.

  • To conclude that while culture is a controlling mechanism to set boundaries, at the same time it invites innovation to fire change.

The model of mind followed is that of Steven Mithen and cognitive fluidity. Mithen builds from Howard Gardner’s notion of intelligences and Leda Cosmides and John Tooby’s idea of modular flexibility. What many call our social brain is really a reflective mind adapted to sentiments. We think creatively through our emotions. Cognitive skills in monkeys and great apes evolved in terms of social pressures. With us, emotional cognition magnified to the point that our culture is highly protean. While nascent in apes, our mentality includes a flourishing ability to attribute mental states to others and to hypothesize social situations. So our culture and aesthetics come in line with what I term moral.

Our brains are clearly much less domain specific than those in monkeys and to some extent great apes, precisely because we are concerned about what others will think of our actions. This book does not, technically, deal with how the mind works. Rather, with the evolution of human culture there is less concern about a model and more about referencing chronology, artifacts, mental adaptations, and continuities with nonhuman primates. While culture consists of laws, codes are meant to be broken. Our ability to mold a letter of the law and to innovate over norms is the hallmark of our cultural behaviors.

The book is broken down into four main sections, asserting that essentially everything human is cultural, and everything cultural is cognitive or emotional. The sequence of the chapters mimics the argument about how artistic representations and cognitive culture challenge and yet enforce prehistoric and adaptive moral norms. The trajectory of the book builds to art and aesthetics, the culmination of what it means for us to be human. And yet, chapter two rightly focuses on a key tenet of the book and of humanity, our moral sentiments.

My more comprehensive and detailed study Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness, deals with the origin and evolution of individual consciousness as narration. In that book I address more topics more deeply, such as moral sensations and emotions, consciousness, free will, and individual/group selection. That book and this one complement each other and could be read together, since here I focus more on what is called artistic culture, which includes cultural practices and values as well as the arts. The term culture is too broad, and the word art is too narrow, so I combine the two. In the creation of and participation in artistic culture, I will refer to art behavior.

Content Copyright © Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved.

Subject headings applicable to the book, according to the publisher, include: 1. Philosophy>Ethics and Moral Philosophy; 2. Biology>Zoology; 3. Art History>Archaeology; 4. Philosophy>Philosophy of Mind; 5. Social Science>Sociology and Anthropology.