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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. Wallace’s Controversy with Darwin on Man’s Mental Evolution, on the Position of the Natives in Human Evolution, and His Anticipation of Cultural Evolution, as Distinct from Biological Evolution

Author : Joseph Neumann

Published in: Human Paleontology and Prehistory

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Darwin argued that man, including his mental faculties, developed from his sub-human ancestors by natural selection, sexual selection, and the use and disuse of organs (in the Lamarckian mode). He rejected any non-natural involvement in this process, and described a large number of behavioral and mental properties, including language, which can be found in rudimentary form in some animals. However, he assumed this, prior of the discovery of the crucial differences between the instinctive and specific calls of animals, and the symbolic language of humans. His major conclusion was that although the gap in the mental properties between humans and their closest relatives is enormous, it is quantitative rather than qualitative. With regard to the different human races, Darwin suggested that they differ in their inherited mental properties, but belong to a single species. In contrast to Darwin, Wallace did not regard modern human “primitives” as candidates that could fill the gap between humans and apes. He envisioned two steps in human evolution: first, the development of upright posture and freeing of the hands, brought about by natural selection, and then a second step that involved mainly the evolution of the brain and the mind. Wallace subsequently argued that some of the higher human mental abilities (mathematics, art, or the use of abstract concepts) were not the result of natural selection, since they are beyond utility. He claimed that these properties developed as a result of the action of a “higher intelligence”, which guides human intelligence and morality, and the whole evolutionary process, purposefully. There is some disagreement as to whether Wallace’s belief in the action of a “higher intelligence”, and his descent from Darwin on this issue, were the result of his support of spiritualism or was based on purely scientific arguments. Darwin, on his part, forcefully rejected Wallace’s support of the involvement of non-natural causes in evolution of human mental faculties and provided arguments that they were the result of the same mechanisms that acted in the formation of the body, and generally in species evolution. Later, S.J. Gould pointed out that the rapid rate of the development of several mental functions, which Wallace had regarded as an indication of a lack of role in the struggle of life are actually the result of cultural evolution. Both Darwin and Wallace did not pay sufficient attention to the large diversity in human mentality, and the rare and unique existence of individuals with outstanding achievements (“geniuses”). The latter’s unusual and unique creativity in various artistic, philosophical and related activities apparently developed intrinsically, from some “inner resources”, unrelated to the Darwinian “struggle for life”.

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Darwin noted that since an organism is an integrated whole, an adaptive change in one part of the organism, may entail non-adaptive changes in other parts (Darwin 2009: 44).

Note that here Darwin drew conclusions about the existence of feelings and emotions, like fear, anger and pleasure, which are subjective, from the observation of behavior – an objective property. Still, it should be mentioned that Darwin did speculate about the relation between the brain and the mind – “The brain, for example, might secrete thoughts as the liver secreted bile” (quoted by Richards 2005: 169).

Modern support for the evolutionary origin of language was discussed in Pinker (1994). Pinker regards language as an ability unique to humans, formed during evolution, in order to solve the specific problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He compared language to other species’ adaptations, such as spiders’ web-weaving or beavers’ dam-building behavior, designating all three “instincts”.

Unlike human language, which is based on a large vocabulary, that can still be enlarged, animals possess a limited number of sounds, each one directed to a specific aim. Animals are unable to increase the number of their sounds, or transform their emotional cries into sounds with different meanings. Human language, on the other hand, is composed of symbols (Cassirer 1944), with a wide range of meanings, including the capacity to refer to past and future events. A symbol is not an element of reality, like mass or energy; it is a sign that a humans refer to an entity, by arbitrary convention.

According to the philosopher Karl Popper (1972), “Human languages share with animal languages the two lower functions: (1) self-expression and (2) signaling. Animal language is symptomatic of the state of the organism; whereas the signaling or release function can cause a response in another organism”.

On the other hand, human languages have in addition, many other functions. And the two most important according to Popper (1972) are: the descriptive function and the argumentative function. “It is to the development of these higher functions that we owe our human reason. They are also a condition for acquiring knowledge”.

One should add, that humans use language for many other functions, like asking questions, giving promises or giving orders; it is also a prerequisite for the development of a complex human culture (see below).

Finally, today we know that the sounds of animals depend on the activity of an evolutionary older part of the brain, the “limbic system”, whereas human language is based on the activity of the neo-cortex.

In modern times, some anthropologists (e.g., Alland 1973) have claimed that the term “race” should be restricted to sociological analyses, since according to this view, it is not a valid taxonomic unit in biology.

Since Darwin’s and Wallace’s time, a number of highly important “proto-human” fossils were discovered. Some of these could be arranged (in hindsight!) as a series of “missing links” leading to modern humans. Based on these discoveries, it is indeed by now agreed, that human bipedal posture and the freeing of the hands preceded the large end very fast rate (on an “evolutionary time scale”) expansion of the brain.

Unlike Wallace’s supposition, that this process took perhaps 10 million years, there is now substantial evidence that the brain increased over the last 2 million years from about 500 cc (a size only slightly over that of non-human primates) to about almost 1400 cc. This fast rate of change was probably not the result of ecological change, but of fierce social competition (e.g., Foley 1995).

The social competition was expressed by Richard Dawkins as the dictate “to be smart and outsmart the other”, a type of competition which led to an “arms race”, i.e., a process of “evolutionary interactions, within a species or between two species, in which each player becomes adapted as a result of interaction with the other player” (Sterelny 2007: 199).

Thomas Henry Huxley responded to Wallace’s challenge by pointing out, that the life of primitive people actually required extraordinary mental feats. “The intellectual labor of a good hunter or warrior considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman” (Shanahan 2004: 253).

Newton and Shakespeare are regarded as “geniuses”, a quality defined by Rubens as “evincing of exceptional range of vision, and exceptional technique for conveying that vision”. All the epithets used here imply that genius is extremely rare (Rubens 2012: 78–85).

More important and relevant to Darwin’s conclusion, in regarding Newton or Shakespeare as indicating “degrees” of human mental evolution, is the fact he is referring to their phenotype (and not their genotype, concepts unknown to Darwin, and other biologists at his time), and therefore irrelevant to evolution.

See footnote 10. In addition, it should be noted, that both Darwin and Wallace did not address the problem of the existence of the enormous mental differences among men. In a book published about 60 years after the Wallace-Darwin dispute, the anthropologist Alexander Alland J. wrote: “Acceptance of the problem of [the mental] differences [should be searched] in historical, rather than genetic terms … [in] the importance of contact between people as stimulant to creative thinking. It is an exchange of ideas, not of genes [that matters] … The accomplishments of Greek philosophers and scientist, Elizabethan writers, Flemish painters, German musicians, are understandable not in terms of biological changes that occurred antecedent to their periods of intense activity, but in light of peculiar conjunctions of outlooks and juxtapositions of contrasting world views” (Alland 1973: 167).

Today, such a separation between the body (or the brain) and the mental systems, as is implied by Wallace’s description, would be rejected by most philosophers and neuroscientist. For example, the philosopher John Searle wrote: “We know that human and some animal brains are conscious. Those living systems with certain sorts of nervous systems are the only systems in the world that we know for a fact are conscious” (Searle 1997: 170).

The psychologist Charles Rycroft wrote: “As both religious and political history show, men who in their private life may be kind and tolerant are prepared to kill, persecute and engage in heresy-hunting at the behest of abstract nouns, whether these be God, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the Fatherland or the Party.” (Rycorft 1985: 293). Note also that here once again, Wallace disregards the extreme diversity among men with respect to the above mentioned properties.

Spiritualism is the name applied to a belief in a series of abnormal phenomena, including the possibility to communicate with the dead, through mediums. Spiritualists claim that their beliefs are founded on evidence and proven beyond any reasonable doubt. In addition spiritualism is based on the belief that the whole material universe exists for the purpose of spiritual development, and that death is simply a transition from material existence to spirit life.

It is of some interest to note that the distinguished American Philosopher, Thomas Nagel, has recently published a book – “Mind and Cosmos”, (2012), in which he claimed that Neo-Darwinism is probably unable to explain the formation of life and the appearance of mind; he proffered to believe in the existence of some hitherto unknown, teleological laws acting in evolution.

“The whole case for sexual selection is in fact an enormous appendage to Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1870),” quoted in Howard (1982: 55).

“In the Descent of Man, sexual competition and sexual choice were invoked to explain some of the physical attributes of man that did not seem to contribute directly to the general biological advantage. The general lack of body hair compared with man’s ape-like relatives and its different distribution in males and females, Darwin attributed to sexual preference” (Howard 1982, p. 69).

See, for example “Social Darwinism in American Thought”. R. Hofstadter. Beacon Press, Boston (1944).

According to Medawar 1981, “cultural evolution is not a very good description of this process, because it could be taken to connote evolution of culture, instead of evolution mediated through culture”, thus he prefers “exogenetic” or “exosomatic” evolution. Separating these two aspect seems to be rather important; they can be lucidly exemplified for example by “The Great Transition” from nomadic life to permanent settlement that took place same 15,000 years ago. This transition produced a profoundly altered social environment: among other changes, society became more hierarchical with all the consequences.

Julian Huxley (1955: 17) preferred the term “psycho-social evolution”.

According to the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1924), culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.

This does not mean, that humans are independent of the action of genes. According to Ernest Gellner, “humans are still subject to genetic control, but “Humans are the way they are, because their genes do no determine their behaviour, but rather permit great variation and flexibility” (quoted in Foley 1995: 197).

Another major difference is the fact that biological evolution is irreversible, whereas cultural change is reversible.

Learning involves the capacity to respond to stimuli with appropriate behavior (it is an example of phenotypic plasticity). In man this capacity has been highly developed, including the capacity to learn a language and a culture.

A common sense definition of consciousness is given by Searle: ‘consciousness’ refers to those state of sentience or awareness that typically began when we wake from a dreamless sleep and continue through the day, until we fall asleep again, die, go into a come or otherwise become ‘unconscious’ (Searle 2002: 21).

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Title: Wallace’s Controversy with Darwin on Man’s Mental Evolution, on the Position of the Natives in Human Evolution, and His Anticipation of Cultural Evolution, as Distinct from Biological Evolution
Author: Joseph Neumann
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Human Paleontology and Prehistory
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46644-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-46646-0

Copyright Year: 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46646-0_2