By Yours truly, Charles Brown
My thesis that the Stone Age was more civilized than so-called Civilization is based on the theses of Eminent Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his essays “The Origin of Society”, “The Original Affluent Society” ; the critique of Darwin’s ideas on Human Evolution by Antoinette Blackwell that cooperation and balance were key in human progress , not competition and savage rivalry ( In Preface to _The Sexes Throughout Nature_; and my thesis ,the same as Blackwell’s, that human’s original ecological location determined that human original nature is social , not selfish ( my essays “ Is Human Nature Social or Selfish ?”; and “Survival of the Nice and Fertile”)
I Usually the term “Civilization” or Civilized is used to refer to human society that is superior morally and technologically to the Stone Age human societies. The popular image of “cavemen” and Neanderthals is of brutes, savages who drag women around by the hair and presumably force themselves on them. Cannibals who are in regular and frequent conflict with each other . This is a slanderous portrayal of Stone Age Peoples. Civilization is superior technologically in that it has an increasingly more productive social organization and technology. With Civilization population size begins to grow more and is more concentrated than in the Stone Age. So , in that regard , Civilization is superior to the Stone Age on the Darwinian Fitness/Adaptation test, moving further from potential extinction/zero population.
On the other hand, the total population of the Stone Age was growing and perpetuated for approximately 2.5 million years; and it was able to adapt to the full range of environmental types , from arctic to rain forest. Civilization has only existed for about 6,000 years, a tiny fraction of the 2.5 million years of the Stone Age . And , importantly, tragically, “civilized’ technology has gone so far as to invent NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Nuclear war at this stage would probably create a “nuclear winter’, similar to the “winter” created by the comet that hit the Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. So, by So-called Civilization originating War between members of the same species, and super-destructive war technology, weapons, it has created a potentially UNFIT /EXTINCTION/POPULATION LOSS , in the Darwinian sense, dynamic for the human species. Civilization has 100,000s of years to go before it equals the Stone Age longevity of the human species. Not only that: War with even less than nuclear destructive potential , with swords, knives, clubs, guns and other weapons USED ON MEMBERS OF OUR OWN SPECIES is morally inferior – real savagery/barbarism- to Stone Age largely peaceful society, in my opinion. Furthermore, “Civilization’s” slaves work harder at food production than foragers or hunters and gatherers . This claim is based in part on Marshall Sahlins’s thesis in “ The Original Affluent Society” essay with the inference that societies through the 2.5 million years of the Stone Age were basically the same in terms of work time and intensity as Stone Age/Hunter-gatherer societies in the last 500 years; societies that Europeans _observed_ as they conquered the globe in the era of Capitalist Civilization . Civilization has more toil than Stone Age Society ( See “Original Affluent Society “). A society with more leisure is superior , in my opinion.
“Civilized” society with masters exploiting production surpluses from slaves, greed; and oppressing and capturing slaves with armed force is inferior to Stone Age society where all adults are of equal status
Also, Stone Age society with equal status between women and men is morally superior to So-called Civilization’s Male Supremacist culture.
Along with the inference concerning the nature of Ancient Stone Age society from the thesis of “The Original Affluent Society”, I make the following inference concerning the superior morality of Stone Age Society ( from the Overview Lecture number 1):
Since the advent about 6,000 years ago of so-called civilization, as you have no doubt heard it referred to sometimes, it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture , stone tools or controlling fire made through culture or symbolic or imaginary thinking and communication, etc, raising our species fitness, the growth of our population . 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 named Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 95% or more. The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of a band of 25 to 100 people living in the ecological food chain location close to the one described in our textbook , Chapter 4, would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and integrity above individual bodies or selves. Ancient kinship /family/culture /symbolic communication systems from around 2.5 million years ago ( the beginning of the Truly Civilized Stone Age) were almost super-organic bodies; the human social group was a harmonious , multi-individual Body, quasi-organism. The Individual human bodies, Selves, were very frail and weak in contrast with the bodies of the field of predators they were prey for .
The dominance of the food chain that humans, ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies. could only be reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative, super-intra-species harmony . This was only possible with symbolic communication both within a living generation and across generations, It is clear to me that natural selection , in the classical Darwinian sense, elected hominin groups with policies and practices of of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any in the Stone Age before Civilization. Treating each other better was critical to survival and thriving for the ancient Stone Age
I I Stone Age was more civilized than so-called Civilization because it did not have War, Greed/Slavery nor Male Supremacy.
A) See Antoinette Blackwell’s claim that human evolutionary survival and thriving was due to cooperation and balance, not competition and savage rivalry. ( see essay below)
B) See my “ Is Human Nature Social or Selfish ?” where I argue that sociality and solidarity were selected for in the Stone Age (2.5 million years)
C) See Marshall Sahlins’s “ The Origin of Society” where he hypothesizes that " The decisive battle between early culture and human nature must have been waged on the field of primate sexuality…. Among subhuman primates sex had organized society; the customs of hunters and gatherers testify eloquently that now society was to organize sex…. In selective adaptation to the perils of the Stone Age, human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, indiscriminate sexuality, dominance and brute competition. It substituted kinship and co-operation for conflict, placed solidarity over sex, morality over might. In its earliest days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature, and thereby secured the evolutionary future of the species."
— Sahlins, M. D. 1960 The origin of society. Scientific American 203(3): 76–87.
III Life in the Stone Age has an original affluence; it was not nasty, miserable ,starving, brutish and short; therefore it was civilized in quality of life as well. See Sahlins Original Affluent Society The "original affluent society" is the proposition that argues that the lives of hunter-gatherers can be seen as embedding a sufficient degree of material comfort and security to be considered affluent. The theory was first put forward in a paper presented by Marshall Sahlins at a famous symposium in 1966 entitled 'Man the Hunter'. Sahlins observes that affluence is the satisfaction of wants, "which may be 'easily satisfied' either by producing much or desiring little."[1] Given a culture characterized by limited wants, Sahlins argued that hunter-gatherers were able to live 'affluently' through the relatively easy satisfaction of their material needs. At the time of the symposium new research by anthropologists, such as Richard B. Lee's work on the !Kung of southern Africa, challenged popular notions that hunter-gatherer societies were always near the brink of starvation and continuously engaged in a struggle for survival.[2] Sahlins gathered the data from these studies and used it to support a comprehensive argument that states that hunter-gatherers did not suffer from deprivation, but instead lived in a society in which "all the people's wants are easily satisfied."[3]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN8GYsCvyyA https://www.uvm.edu/~jdericks/EE/Sahlins-Original_Affluent_Society.pdf ((((
Our Mother Nature: Antoinette Blackwell Blackwell chose to highlight balance and cooperation rather than struggle and savage rivalry
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 an interesting historical character in light of today's debates between Creationists and Evolutionists !
Mother Blackwell was also a suffragette. In 1920, at age 95, she was the only participant of the 1850 Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts who lived long enough to vote when at last women had the vote, dammit. Reverend Blackwell was also an abolitionist against slavery. She was one of the few white feminists to support the 15th Amendment giving the vote to Black men, even as no women had the vote. She supported the famous African American leader, Frederick Douglass, in this debate within 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 The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Antoinette Blackwell wrote The Sexes Throughout Nature. I haven't actually read those books yet, but I have them on order. Future blogs will explore the issues in those books more.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia's items explains how Blackwell argued that there was natural selection for "cooperation and balance" among humans, al lof us members of the same species. Survival of the fittest does not mean survival of competition between humans, survival of the toughest individual "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 was republished 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 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 scientificallysubtracts from the female and Darwin as scientifically adds to the male.[6]
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 CB : 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 idealistic . It's MATERial , real , 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.
Male supremacy, greed and war are not in our genes The male supremacist family, private property (classes; greed), and the state ( special repressive apparatus ) arises as a complex together circa 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. They are still together in a complex that dominates the human species in 2018. Before that for the about 2.5 million years of the Stone Age ( true Civilization) there was gender equivalence, sharing and peace in the species; that's when we were substantially "hardwired " genetically . So, Male supremacy and class divided society and war are not in our genes. /// Ancestor veneration The difference between humans and all other species is that through symbolic communication , words and culture, dead generations have a certain immortality and are part of the society of living generations . Living generations share the experiences of dead generations . Thereby knowledge accumulates. All humans stand on the shoulders of giants , as the scientist Isaac Newton put it .
...-------------------------------- Darwin's theories of evolution by natural selection were used to show women's place in society was the result of nature.[14] One of the first women to critique Darwin, Antoinette Brown Blackwell published The Sexes Throughout Nature in 1875.[15] She was aware she would be considered presumptuous for criticising evolutionary theory but wrote that "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 workin g from inside the natural sciences, and could address Darwin's androcentricity.[ See definition of androcentricity below )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 hal f the species."[9] Hrdy added, "Evolutionary biology did eventually respond to these criticisms, yet in their lifetimes, the effect that these earl y Darwinian feminists—Eliot, Blackwell, Royer, and a few others—had on main stream 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 weapons over 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 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Sexes Throughout Nature is a book written by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1875. Overview and print history The book 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 was republished 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 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 female and 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] 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] Contemporary reviews
Antoinette Blackwell Popular Science said it is a "monograph, written to establish, on scientific grounds, the equality of the sexes throughout Nature". "Mrs. Blackwell seems to us quite oblivious of the difficulties of the task here undertaken". And, regarding maternity, "Denying, as we do, the equality of the sexes, and holding to the superiority of the female sex, we protest against the degradation of woman implied...".[11]
Publishers Weekly thought it was an "important contribution to the famous 'sex and education' controversy...".[12] The Unitarian Review said the "modesty of its preface, at the outset, ought to disarm of his prejudices any reader who can see only superficiality and pretense in the efforts of women after the higher sciences".[13]
The editor Percy M. Wallace made fun of the book in the notes of the 1897 edition of Tennyson's The Princess: "When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up,/And topples down the scales". Explained in a note by "when the man neglects the proper functions of his supremacy, the woman assumes them, and the result is a subversion of the order of nature" followed by a quote of pages 96 and 97 in which Blackwell notes that whenever brilliant-colored male birds acquire maternal instincts, the females acquire male characteristics.[14]
Contents
Sex and Evolution
The Statement
The Argument
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction
Sex and Work
The Building of a Brain
The Trial by Science
Notes
Rose, Hilary and Rose, Steven (Summer 2009). "The changing face of human nature". Daedalus. 138 (3): 11. doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.3.7. S2CID 57558382.
Blackwell, Antoinette (1875). The Sexes Throughout Nature. G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 234.
Darwin, Charles (November 8, 1869). "Letter 6976". Darwin Correspondence Project. Retrieved 2009-11-26.
Blackwell, Antoinette Brown (1875). "Sex and Work". The Sexes Throughout Nature. G. P. Putnam's Sons via Internet Archive. p. 149. Retrieved 2009-11-23.
Blackwell, Antoinette (1992) [1875]. The Sexes Throughout Nature. Hyperion Press [ G. P. Putnam's Sons ]. ISBN 978-0-88355-349-7.
Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey; Harvey, Joy Dorothy (November 23, 2000). The biographical dictionary of women in science: pioneering lives from ancient times to the mid-20th century. Taylor & Francis. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-415-92038-4. Retrieved 2009-11-23.
Leach, William (1981). True love and perfect union: the feminist reform of sex and society. ISBN 978-0-7100-0766-7. Retrieved 2009-11-20.
Vandermassen, Griet (2004). "
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (Fall 2008). "Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and the "Supreme Function" of Mothers" (PDF). AnthroNotes. 29 (2): 10–13. doi:10.5479/10088/22434. Schwartz, Douglas W. (Fall 2008). An Evolving Genius: The Extraordinary Early Life of Charles Darwin (PDF). Vol. 29. Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 2009-11-23. ""The Sexes Throughout Nature" in Literary Notices". The Popular Science Monthly. D. Appleton. 7: 370. 1875. Retrieved 2009-11-23. "Notes in Season". The Publishers Weekly. 7: 409. April 17, 1875. Retrieved 2009-11-23. Allen, Joseph Henry (1875). "Review of Current Literature". The Unitarian Review. 4: 543. Retrieved 2009-11-23. Percy M. Wallace (ed.), in Baron Alfred Tennyson (1897). The princess: a medley. Retrieved 2009-11-23. Bibliography Blackwell, Antoinette (1992) [1875]. The Sexes Throughout Nature. Hyperion Press. ISBN 978-0-88355-349-7. External links Blackwell, Antoinette (1875). The sexes throughout nature. G. P. Putnam via Internet Archive. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Wikipedia The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871, which applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection, a form of biological adaptation distinct from, yet interconnected with, natural selection. The book discusses many related issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary musicology, differences between human races, differences between sexes, the dominant role of women in mate choice, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society. Part II and III: Sexual selection See also: Sexual selection in human evolution and Sexual selection Darwin argued that the female peahen chose to mate with the male peacock who she believed had the most beautiful plumage. Part II of the book begins with a chapter outlining the basic principles of sexual selection, followed by a detailed review of many different taxa of the kingdom Animalia which surveys various classes such as molluscs and crustaceans. The tenth and eleventh chapters are both devoted to insects, the latter specifically focusing on the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. The remainder of the book shifts to the vertebrates, beginning with cold blooded vertebrates (fishes, amphibians and reptiles) followed by four chapters on birds. Two chapters on mammals precede those on humans. Darwin explained sexual selection as a combination of "female choosiness" and "direct competition between males".[32] Antoinette Blackwell, one of the first women to write a critique of Darwin Darwin's theories of evolution by natural selection were used to try to show women's place in society was the result of nature.[33] One of the first women to critique Darwin, Antoinette Brown Blackwell published The Sexes Throughout Nature in 1875.[34] She was aware she would be considered presumptuous for criticising evolutionary theory but wrote that "disadvantages under which we [women] are placed...will never be lessened by waiting".[35] Blackwell's book answered Darwin and Herbert Spencer, who she thought were the two most influential living men.[36] 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".[37]
In the Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that by choosing tools and weapons over the years, "man has ultimately become superior to woman",[38] but Blackwell's argument for women's equality went largely ignored until the 1970s when feminist scientists and historians began to explore Darwin.[39] 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.[34] But then the "opposite ongoing integration" was promoted by another faction as an alternative in 2007.[40] Nonetheless, Darwin's explanation of sexual selection continues to receive support from both social and biological scientists as "the best explanation to date".[41] Apparently non-adaptive features In Darwin's view, anything that could be expected to have some adaptive feature could be explained easily with his theory of natural selection. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote that to use natural selection to explain something as complicated as a human eye, "with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration" might at first appear "absurd in the highest possible degree," but nevertheless, if "numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist", then it seemed quite possible to account for within his theory. "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" More difficult for Darwin were highly evolved and complicated features that conveyed apparently no adaptive advantage to the organism. Writing to colleague Asa Gray in 1860, Darwin commented that he remembered well a "time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, & now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!"[42] Why should a bird like the peacock develop such an elaborate tail, which seemed at best to be a hindrance in its "struggle for existence"? To answer the question, Darwin had introduced in the Origin the theory of sexual selection, which outlined how different characteristics could be selected for if they conveyed a reproductive advantage to the individual. In this theory, male animals in particular showed heritable features acquired by sexual selection, such as "weapons" with which to fight over females with other males, or beautiful plumage with which to woo the female animals. Much of Descent is devoted to providing evidence for sexual selection in nature, which he also ties into the development of aesthetic instincts in human beings, as well as the differences in coloration between the human races.[43] Darwin had developed his ideas about sexual selection for this reason since at least the 1850s, and had originally intended to include a long section on the theory in his large, unpublished book on species. When it came to writing Origin (his "abstract" of the larger book), though, he did not feel he had sufficient space to engage in sexual selection to any strong degree, and included only three paragraphs devoted to the subject. Darwin considered sexual selection to be as much of a theoretical contribution of his as was his natural selection, and a substantial amount of Descent is devoted exclusively to this topic. ^^^^^^^^^************************************************************^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Androcentrism (Ancient Greek, ????, "man, male"[1]) is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the center of one's world view, culture, and history, thereby culturally marginalizing femininity, including use of “Man” to refer to the whole human species. The related adjective is androcentric, while the practice of placing the feminine point of view at the center is gynocentric. Androcentrism has been described as a pervasive form of sexism.[2][3] However, it has also been described as a movement centered on, emphasizing, or dominated by males or masculine interests.[4] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 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
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