The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its ScopeCrampton, Henry Edward
Science
The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope
Crampton, Henry Edward
Evolution
Despite the growing appreciation of the fundamental relation between
biology and sociology, it is still far from universal. That the latter
science is in a sense a division of the former is more often recognized by
the biologist than by the average well-informed student of human social
phenomena. The layman in sociology too often concerns himself solely with
the complexities of the human problems, and he remains unaware of the
manifold products in the way of communal organisms far lower in the scale
of life firmly established as primitive biological associations ages
before the first human beings so advanced in mental stature that tribal
unions were found good. Among insects especially the biologist finds many
types of organized living things, ranging widely from the solitary
individual--a counterpart of something even more primitive than the most
unsocial savage now existing--up to communities that rival human
civilization, as regards the concerted effect of the diversified lives of
the component units. The student of the whole of living nature is favored
still more in that he learns how the make-up of such a simple organism as
a jellyfish displays principles underlying the structure of the whole and
the interplay of the parts that are identical with principles of
organization everywhere else. And all of these things can be dealt with in
a purely impersonal way which is impossible when attention is restricted
to the human case alone. Thus it becomes the biologist's privilege and his
duty as well to place his findings before those who wish to understand the
constitution of human society in order that evils may be lessened and
benefits may be extended. He does this so far as he may be able in full
confidence that the elements and basic principles are discoverable in
lower nature, just as they are in the case of the material make-up and
mental constitution of the single human individual.
A more explicit preliminary statement must now be given of the grounds for
the belief that social evolution is but a part of organic evolution in
general. Some of these reasons are not far to seek, but their cogency can
scarcely be appreciated until we have examined the concrete facts of the
whole biological series. Any human society selected for examination--be it
a tribe, a village community, or a nation--is in last analysis an
aggregate of human units and nothing besides. Its life consists of the
combined activities of such components--and nothing else. Could we
subtract the members one by one, there would be no intangible residuum
after all the people and their lives had been taken away. When these
simple facts are recognized, it is clear at once that the concerted
activities performed by biological units cannot be anything but organic in
their ultimate basis and nature; the evolution of such activities thus
takes its place as a part of organic evolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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