Anthropology 152 Lecture 14 Symbolic Inheritance

October 31, 2022 Anthropology 152 Lecture 14 Symbolic Inheritance By CHARLES BROWN For anthropology, culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is the unique species characteristic of_homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance is another word for "wisdom",from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans’ socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality , sciences, theories myths , legends that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. Since the advent of civilization, sometimes it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Greed, slavery, war, male supremacy, Egoism originate with Civilization ! It is better termed Savagery and Barbarism. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture-language-Symbolic Inheritance was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools made according to design , scientific knowledge in the stone age (!) standing on the shoulders of dead generations , raising our species fitness. This is evidenced by _homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth , out of what is now Africa to the other continents ( but not vacating Africa ) . Stone Age foraging and kinship organized , peaceful and sharing societies were the mode of life forthe vast majority of time of human species existence, 99% or more.

ANTOINETTE BLACKWELL’S critique of Darwin supports my argument that Human Nature is social ,not selfish, She argues that in human evolution ( what we now call the Stone Age), our nature and culture were inclined to” cooperation” with other humans, not “competition and savage rivalry”.

Furthermore, the Stone Age had sex-gender equity. ****

Darwin’s claim of superiority of men over women is refuted by his own theory that fitness is measured by population growth of a type ; _women play a superior role in perpetuation of the human species_

by CHARLES BROWN Darwin’s claim of superiority of men over women is refuted by his own theory that fitness is measured by population growth of a type ; women play a superior role in perpetuation of the human species. Here’s the direct refutation of Darwin’s claim * that human males are superior to human females . Superior in what sense ? For Darwin the most important superiority would be playing a superior role in raising our species’s fitness , playing a superior role in our being selected for , no ?

Secondly , for Darwin , the ultimate measure of fitness is size and trend of the _population_ **. If it’s increasing , the species is fit; if decreasing toward extinction, unfit or selected against . Women play a superior role to men in reproducing our species population , pregnancy , birth , childcare . Therefore , women are superior to men in Darwin’s own theory of natural selection as applied to the human race; women are more important than men in increasing population; the logic of Darwin’s theory refutes his statement that men are somehow superior to women.

Over 100,000’s of years , our species population has been increasing as compared with other primates and mammals . That’s our claim to Darwinian fame . Women can claim more than half of the credit.

In _The Descent of Man_, Darwin argued that evolution made man “superior” to woman. For Darwin, that superiority largely played out in the intellectual and artistic realm. He wrote: “If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music—comprising composition and performance, history science and philosophy … the two lists would not bear comparison.” Spencer echoed Darwin’s sentiments and went further, postulating that in order for the human race to flourish, women must devote their lives to reproduction.“

Ironically, Spencer states the fact that makes women superior to men in raising the Darwinian fitness of Homo sapiens.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/woman-who-tried-take-down-darwin-180967146/

Blackwell made a successful critique of Darwin and Spencer. She asserted that balance and cooperation within the human species played a more important role than competition and savage rivalry in humans successful perpetuation and growth of the human population.

Blackwell chose to highlight balance and cooperation rather than struggle and savage rivalry. She criticized Darwin for basing his theory of evolution on "time-honored assumption that the male is the normal type of his species".[7] She wrote that Spencer scientifically subtracts from the femaleand Darwin as scientifically adds to the male.[6] It was not until one century later[8] that feminists were working from inside the natural sciences, and could address Darwin's androcentricity.[1]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexes_Throughout_Nature

Darwin concludes in his book, The Descent of Man, saying that men attain "a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands."[2]“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_and_women

Charles Brown : However, women attain a higher imminence in _reproduction_ , the key practice for perpetuating and increasing the population size of our species - the Darwinian test of fitness. @@@

Some discussions of Darwinian fitness focus on individuals passing on genes . However , Darwin’s theory concerns the increase or decrease in the population of a _type_ or species , a phenotype, not an individual's success . Darwin did not know about the modern concept of genes , but extending his theory to genes , it concerns perpetuation or extinction of geno-TYPES .

That's not philosophically idealistic . It's MATERial , Realism, fact; Females pregnate, birth and childcare the males and the females, both . Those are the key projects

for perpetuation of the species. Perpetuation of the species is the Darwinian test of fitness , being selected for.



Our Mother Nature: Antoinette Blackwell

Blackwell chose to highlight "balance and cooperation "rather than "competition and savage rivalry"; she captures the essence of True Civility.

By Charlie Brown

Antoinette Blackwell was both an Evolutionist and a Creationist ! Shewas the first woman ordained as a Christian minister in the US , and she wrote a General Science textbook agreeing with Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. What aninteresting historical character in light of today's debates between Creationists and Evolutionists !

Mother Blackwell was also a suffragette. In 1920, at age 95, she wasthe only participant of the 1850 Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts who lived long enough to vote when at lastwomen had the vote, dammit.

Reverend Blackwell was also an abolitionist against slavery. She wasone of the few white feminists to support the 15th Amendment givingthe vote to Black men, even as no women had the vote. She supported the famous African American leader, Frederick Douglass, in this debatewithin American feminism in the mid-1900's.

A regular Force of Nature was she. I came across Blackwell in reading about Charles Darwin's book TheDescent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Antoinette Blackwell wrote The Sexes Throughout Nature.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia's items explains how Blackwell argued that therewas natural selection for "cooperation and balance" among humans, all of us members of the same species. Survival of the fittest does not mean survival of competition between humans, survival of the toughestindividual "men". The fittest are those who successfully reproduce ! Reproduction requires , in the first place, cooperation (smiles).

On the primacy of cooperation in natural origins , See Labor Power's Is Human Nature Social or Selfish ? blog http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-human-nature-social-or-selfish-i.html

Antoinette Blackwell's book, The Sexes Throughout Nature, critiques Charles Darwin four years after he published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871,[1] and Herbert Spencer, whom the author thought were the most influential men of her day.[2] Darwin had written a letter to her in 1869, thanking her for a copy of her book, Studies in General Science.[3] She also answers Dr. E. H. Clarke and his book Sex and Education which she deplored.[4] Blackwell's book wasrepublished by Hyperion Press in 1976, 1985 and 1992.[5] Parts of the book were first published in Woman's Journal and Popular Science Monthly.[6]Blackwell chose to highlight balance and cooperation rather thanstruggle and savage rivalry. She criticized Darwin for basing histheory of evolution on "time-honored assumption that the male is thenormal type of his species".[7] She wrote that Spencer scientifically subtracts from the female and Darwin as scientifically adds to the male.[6]

Darwin's theories of evolution by natural selection were used to showwomen's place in society was the result of nature.[14] One of the first women to critique Darwin, Antoinette Brown Blackwell publishedThe Sexes Throughout Nature in 1875.[15] She was aware she would beconsidered presumptuous for criticising evolutionary theory but wrotethat "disadvantages under which we [women] are placed...will never be lessened by waiting".[16] Blackwell's book answered Darwin and Herbert Spencer, who she thought were the two most influential living men.[17]She wrote of "defrauded womanhood" and her fears that "the human race,forever retarding its own advancement...could not recognize and promote a genuine, broad, and healthful equilibrium of the sexes".[18]

It was not until one century later[8] that feminists were workingfrom inside the natural sciences, and could address Darwin's androcentricity.[1]Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote in her book Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection (quoting from an excerpt of pages 12–25 in AnthroNotes for educators published by the National Museum of Natural History),

"For a handful of nineteenth-century women intellectuals, however,evolutionary theory was just too important to ignore. Instead of turning away, they stepped forward to tap Darwin and Spencer on the shoulder to express their support for this revolutionary view of human nature, and also to politely remind them that they had left out half the species."[9]


Hrdy added, "Evolutionary biology did eventually respond to these criticisms, yet in their lifetimes, the effect that these early Darwinian feminists—Eliot, Blackwell, Royer, and a few others—had on mainstream evolutionary theory can be summed up with one phrase: the road not taken."[10]

In the Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that by choosing tools and weaponsover the years, "man has ultimately become superior to woman"[19] but Blackwell's argument for women's equality went largely ignored until the 1970s when feminist scientists and historians began to explore Darwin.[20] As recently as 2004, Griet Vandermassen, aligned with other Darwinian feminists of the 1990s and early 2000s (decade), wrote that a unifying theory of human nature should include sexual selection.[15] But then the "opposite ongoing integration" was promoted by another faction as an alternative in 2007.[21]

Nonetheless, Darwin's explanation of sexual selection continues to receive support from both social and biological scientists as "the best explanation to date".[22]v

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexes_Throughout_Nature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man,_and_Selection_in_Relation_to_Sex#Part_II_and_III:_Sexual_selection

Perhaps Antoinette Blackwell's ideas are a basis for cooperation between Creationists and Evolutionists today !

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?

"South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction." http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/

How Right-Wingers Are Amping Up Their War on Science and Reality

Republicans are taking their science denialism to striking new levels.

AlterNet http://www.alternet.org/belief/how-right-wingers-are-amping-their-war-science-and-reality