El comportamiento humano con su ambiente a la luz de las teorías biológicas de la evolución

Resumen

Human behavior with his environment in the light of biological evolution theories

This paper demonstrates that the modern phenogenetic theory of evolution offers a fertile ground on which to establish the relation between biological and social sciences.

The paper criticizes hegemonic Neo-Darwinism, pointing out that its theoretical tools do not allow moving from the behavior of living beings as a whole to that of human beings in particular without “somersaults” that lead, unwittingly, to idealistic postures. These are apparent in Ultradarwinism, which explains human culture or its institutions in terms of the virtue, courage, boldness, willingness, and so forth of the victors. They can likewise be seen in the traditional dichotomy nature-culture, where the latter term arises from a biological evolution but, as soon as it does, is explained by its ideal expressions (shared mental construction, articulate language, symbology, and so on).

We argue that the rationale for such limitation lies in Neo-Darwinism’s contempt towards the role of the phenotype in evolution. For Neodarwinism, evolution is an almost exclusively genetic issue. In this paper we recall that, to formulate his theory on natural selection, Darwin himself was inspired on another form of evolutionary selection, the artificial one carried out by breeders. It is precisely this latter form that Homo sapiens has favored by subjecting all evolution, both wittingly and unwittingly, to his own destiny.

The core argument in the paper is that such artificial selection is possible inasmuch as man relates with his surroundings in an increasingly mediatic way, through things produced and stored. This modality is part of the phenotype’s activity in the transformation of the surroundings, which sets a kind of ecological inheritance for oncoming generations, and it may be traced to other living creatures, as the phenogenetical theory of evolution states. On the contrary, if evolution is considered as an exclusively genetic issue, there is no space for artificial selection.

However, Homo sapiens presents a qualitative difference regarding the rest of living beings, since the manufactured things that increasingly interpose between the organism and its environment become accumulated throughout time, which involves a growing mediatization, a higher complexity and the possibility of a monopoly over them. Thus, the behavior of man towards his environment should be analyzed according to the varying control, dominion or availability of social classes over the means of production which are, ultimately, what makes it possible to manufacture the rest of things.