Papers & Series | Jeremiah Stanghini. Is there such a thing as human nature? People often make claims about "human nature. " For example -- "It is a part of human nature to be egoistic. " "Human beings are naturally acquisitive. " "Cooperation is a natural human instinct. " "Human nature defines the way we learn language. " "Violence is natural. " What would human nature look like? To start with a preliminary definition, we might say that human nature is a relatively fixed set of characteristics of psychology, motivation, and cognition that are not the product of learning. When people have identified some psychological characteristics as being part of human nature, they usually have had one of three things in mind.
The logical contrary to the idea that there is a human nature, is the idea that human beings are simply general-purpose "learning machines," equipped with a pretty impressive inference engine and neurophysiological computer; so all our beliefs, emotions, and dispositions to behavior are learned through experience. . . Brain Pickings. Homo sapiens: A species torn between love and war | Carole Jahme introduces a series of short films from the Leakey Foundation | Science. In 1968 – four years before he died – the infamous, maverick palaeoanthropologist Louis Seymour Bassett Leakey set up the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. Its mission then, as now, was to investigate the origins and evolution of humankind, our behaviour and our survival, and to promote the public understanding of human evolution.
Like Charles Darwin, Leakey was a highly creative and independent thinker. Indeed, during his own lifetime he was known as "the Darwin of prehistory". In 1926, aged 23, Leakey left Cambridge University with the intention of proving that Africa, not Asia, was the cradle of humanity. The orthodox view at the time was that modern humans originated in Asia. Leakey chose to dig for the fossilised remains of our ancestors in East Africa – in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. These are just a few of the significant fossils the Leakeys have presented to the world.
Apes in their natural habitat This process of reassessing our position in the natural order of things is ongoing. Friends to count on | Science. Evolution is, at best, a Heath Robinson affair: we accumulate novel adaptations that seemed like good ideas at the time but that, millennia later, turn out to be hostages to fortune. Our long evolutionary history since we last shared a common ancestor with the chimpanzees has left us with many such scars of evolution.
Walking upright produced many benefits, not least the capacity to invade novel habitats, eventually making possible the long series of migrations out of Africa that resulted in our peopling every habitable corner of the planet. But bipedalism put added strain on the spine, and so back problems remain the most common cause of lost days at work. Bipedalism had other unexpected side-effects. It necessitated the reshaping of the pelvis to provide a stable platform on which to balance the trunk. Our pelvis became more rounded and bowl-shaped, causing the bones that form the birth canal to close in. The Hutterites illustrate rather clearly just what's involved. Understanding Society. Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason . Perspectives . Myths and Sacred Tales. DOES MAN NEED MYTHS? — ARE MYTHS TRUE — MYTHS FOR THE 21st CENTURY IT TAKES A VILLAGE — 150 FLOODS In 1988 Bill Moyers' THE POWER OF MYTH debuted on PBS.
This six-part series of conversations with renowned scholar Joseph Campbell explored the enduring, universal themes expressed in mankind's oldest stories and examined their relevance for the modern world. Far from being lifeless, timeworn tales, Campbell told viewers, the ancient myths remain "clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life. " Eighteen years later, with FAITH & REASON, Moyers and his guests continue to mine those potentialities, turning a fresh eye to the illuminative and transformative power of myths, biblical tales, and other literature of faith. It depends on who you ask. Still, many fiction writers will tell you, man is rarely a reasonable creature. Anne Provoost: "Through mythology we are trying to define ourselves as humans next to this big concept-call it "God"-that we don't understand.
(back to top) Helen’s Lament and the Origins of Forbidden Love – The Primate Diaries. Classical literature has judged Helen of Troy harshly. Because she chose Paris after having children with Menelaus, her chroniclers condemn her for the destruction of a great society. In Homer’s Odyssey the bard writes: Helen would never have yielded herself to a man from a foreign country, if she had known that the sons of Achaeans would come after her and bring her back. Heaven put it in her heart to do wrong, and she gave no thought to that sin, which has been the source of all our sorrows.
This has been the tradition in Western society. An open female sexuality has been viewed as something deviant or sinful and is so ingrained that it’s nearly impossible to imagine it could be any other way. This is mirrored among the Australian Aborigines of the Darwin Hinterland. This flexibility of monogamy and the sexual freedom among many indigenous women today was likely a condition for indigenous groups in the past. References: Ali, A.Y. (2003). Bodley, J.H. (2003). Leacock, E. (1981). Cognition | Estats de viure.
Group Size and Cognitive Limitations. Dunbar and others established an important relationship between brain and cohesive group size. The basic idea is that the cohesion of primate groups is limited by the information-processing capacity of the neocortex. One human can only maintain social and working relationships a limited number of individuals by meaningful personal contact. In simple terms, you can only know a small number of people well enough to understand their individual characteristics, to evaluate what they are likely to do and to develop cooperative work habits. You can only form intimate contacts with a few select individuals. Each human has a people sphere around them with a central region of intimates and a peripheral region of acquaintances. Just as there is a range of human cognitive ability, there is a range of human social ability.
Humans can recognize more than 150 faces, but the faces are often nameless and meaningful associations are obscure or absent. Sorkin A. Paul Krugman. About Sociology - Articles on Sociology Topic.