12. Biohistory: Can Biology
Contribute to the Study of History?
Sheraton, Constitution Ballroom B
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Chair: |
Carl N. Degler, |
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Panel: |
Robert S. McElvaine, |
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Comment: |
Bobbi S. Low, |
The
beings who constitute the subject matter of history are members of a biological
species called Homo sapiens. It would seem to be a fairly modest
proposition to assert that this fact has some
relevance for the study of history.
British philosopher Mary Midgley opened her 1978 book, Beast and Man, with this simple but
startling declaration: “We are not just
rather like animals; we are animals.”[1] Confronted with such a statement, most of us
would say, “Well, of course.” Under our
breaths, though, we would be likely to add, “What of it?” That we are animals is a proposition that
educated people, including historians, now generally accept, but one we still
tend to ignore when it comes to drawing conclusions from it.
Given the
historian’s concern with the influence of past developments on present
conditions, it would appear natural that she or he would employ an evolutionary
perspective. This seems to carry what
the study of history has always been concerned with back an additional and very
large, but entirely logical, step.
Evolutionary biology should provide historians with a means of assessing
how changes over much longer periods of “prehistory” affect the times that we
study. If we truly believe that “what
is past is prologue,” it would seem that the first step in the study of history
should be to take account of what Professor Wilson terms “deep history”[2]
—the evolution of the particular sort of animals we are. It would further seem that anyone who accepts
evolution must conclude that a historical approach that ignores biology and
human evolution is ahistorical, because it omits the events and effects of the
longest period of human existence.
But most
written history has ignored the
results of human evolution. Throughout
most of the last century historians have gone about their studies in blissful
ignorance of the findings of biology. So
have most other humanists and, until recently, social scientists.[3] In his 1991 book, In Search of Human Nature, Professor Degler wrote of numerous
psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and even a few political
scientists who have in the past few decades accepted the existence of innate
proclivities in humans. But he was
unable to point to a single practitioner in our discipline who has employed a recognition of innate human tendencies in his or her
work. The passage of another decade has
hardly altered that situation.[4]
This
preface leads me to the two basic issues that I would like to address this
morning:
On the face
of it, it would appear entirely reasonable for historians to see our role as
beginning where that of biologists leaves off, perhaps with archeologists and
anthropologists helping to bridge the gap.
The first essential question to ask, then, is: Why
have historians been so resistant to the idea that the biological makeup of the
creatures we study might have some influence on their behavior? Is the rejection of biology a well-founded
conclusion based on empirical evidence that human nature does not exist in any
meaningful way and so can be of no importance in the unfolding of history, or
has biology been dismissed for other reasons, without an examination of the
evidence?
The second
issue on which I shall focus is whether we in the historical discipline have
paid any price for our refusal to look at biology. The question, in other words, is: What’s in
it for us? Are there ways in which a
judicious use of knowledge about human biology can improve our understanding of
history?
* * *
“Judicious use”
points toward the answer to the first question.
The main reason that many historians panic at the very mention of human
nature or biology is not that they have carefully examined the potential
benefits of illuminating history in this way, but that they are all too
familiar with in the most injudicious misuse and abuse of biological claims in
the past. Connecting biology with
history is a practice that does not have a distinguished pedigree. As a result, attempting to speak of human
nature can be dangerous. An historian or
anyone else in the humanities or social sciences who becomes
interested in pursuing this concept through some acquaintance with evolutionary
biology is likely to be greeted by his or her colleagues with a shocked,
disgusted look and a muttered, “You haven
The form of most previous efforts at applying
Darwinian thinking to history has been analogy—to see historical developments
as part of a Darwinian struggle for survival in which the most “fit” (nations,
races, individuals, corporations, etc.) succeed and the less “fit” fall by the
wayside, resulting in historical “progress.”
This social Darwinism, which dominated American thought in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century, was used to justify extreme
nationalism, racism, war, gross economic inequality, and a total lack of
concern for those in need.[5] In recent years we have been reminded of
where an apparently biological approach can lead by the racist ideas contained
in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The
Bell Curve (1994)[6]
and by the argument put forth by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer in A Natural History of Rape (2000) that
rape is a behavior that evolution selected for.[7] Then there is the glee with which many men
have embraced such claims of evolutionary psychology as that men are naturally
inclined toward promiscuity (the “Darwin made me do it” defense[8])
and that younger women are naturally attracted to older, rich and prominent
men. (Michael Douglas is among those who
have found the latter thesis intellectually compelling.) In her 1999 book, Woman: An Intimate Geography, science
journalist Natalie Angier dubbed such evolutionary psychologists “evo psychos.” [9]
Small wonder, in view of these unhappy precedents, that the slightest suggestion of trying to ground an examination of history on an understanding of evolutionary biology raises alarms in so many quarters. The abuses that gave rise to the fears have been very real. The problem with some of the more recent sociobiology and evolutionary psychology is that it has often seemed to be biological determinism
Some
biological determinists are prone to making outrageous statements. Given the constraints of time, I’ll cite just
one, from Richard Dawkins’ famous book, The
Selfish Gene:
[W]e, and
all other animals, are machines created by our genes.
. . . To a survival machine, another survival machine (which is not its own
child or another close relative) is a part of its environment, like a rock or a
river or a lump of food. It is something
that gets in the way, or something that can be exploited. It differs from a rock or a river in one
important respect: it is inclined to hit back.
This is because it too is a machine which holds its immortal genes in
trust for the future, and it too will stop at nothing to preserve them.[10]
I, for one, believe that humans are
animals, not machines, and, moreover, that we are social animals. As such, we
look on other members of our species very differently from the way we view
rocks and rivers.
But we must
not let the shortcomings of the more extreme brands of sociobiology and
evolutionary psychology prevent us in the historical profession from realizing
that much recent work has quite convincingly shown that evolution left us with
a variety of proclivities (human nature) that were “designed” to adapt our
ancestors to live in an environment that is vastly different from the one in
which most of us live today—and in which people have lived throughout recorded
history.
While the
arguments based on the findings of evolutionary science cannot be ignored,
however, something very important has been missing from them: history.
Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have greatly underestimated the
power of cultural evolution, or, to put it another way, the extraordinary
degree of adaptability in Homo sapiens.[11] In jumping from evolution to the modern human
experience, many practitioners in these fields miss fundamentally important
developments during the period when human-made changes first created a social
environment for which some human characteristics were not well adapted. This includes the critical last 5000 years of
“prehistory,” which historians also conventionally shortchange, as well as most
of the 5000 years traditionally called “history.”
Some
biologists have begun to take account of history by emphasizing that the key to
reaching a proper understanding of behavior is not simply determining what
predispositions were selected for by the ancestral environment in which humans
evolved, but examining how those traits interact with various historical
environments in which humans live and have lived. Two important books that point toward this
conjunction of biology and history from the biological side have been published
in the past year: Professor Low’s Why Sex Matters: A
Darwinian Look at Human Behavior[12] and Paul
Ehrlich’s Human Natures: Genes, Cultures,
and the Human Prospect. I have tried
to make a small contribution to the dialogue between biology and history from
the historical side with my new book, Eve’s
Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History.[13] I believe that the bottom line that all of us
have emphasized is that biological determinism
is not the same thing as biological influence. The former must be rejected; the latter cannot
reasonably be denied.
* * *
In large
part because of the past misapplication of evolutionary science to society, a
curious dichotomy over “Darwinism” exists in the Western world today. Those who consider
themselves liberal or “of the left” accept biological evolution, but generally
reject the idea that it has any important implications for us today. Liberal humanists, including most historians,
tend to think that humans are the
consequence of evolution, but that evolution has no consequences for us.
Self-styled conservatives on the other hand, often reject evolutionary
biology, but usually accept the idea of human nature and the application of
Darwinian competition for survival to social issues.
The
accepted position in much of the academic world—in many quarters, the only position that will be
countenanced—is that all characteristics of people are culturally
“constructed,” which is to say that humans may be the consequence of biological evolution, but that
process no longer has any consequences for
us. The communicants of this faith can
accurately be classified as cultural creationists. To them, culture is as fundamental as the basis of human existence as the
Bible is to those who see it as the unerring source of knowledge. Much as the biblical fundamentalists believe
that God created people out of a formless lump of clay, cultural
fundamentalists believe that cultures create people from blank paper.
Neither of these groups bases its rejection of the idea that biology has shaped us on an analysis of the evidence supporting that argument. Rather, both groups start with the premise that evolution will undermine their objectives and so it must be rejected, irrespective of the evidence. Conservatives fear that evolution leaves no place for divine purpose; liberals fear that it leaves no place for human purpose. Both are afraid that evolution means that we are at the mercy of biological forces and can do nothing to improve ourselves or change conditions.
Conservatives
and fundamentalists reject evolution straightforwardly; they simply deny that
it happened. Liberal humanists are
generally too well-educated to deny that evolution occurred; they just insist
that it has no effect on us now. But to
insist that evolution has no effect on us is to put one’s head in the sand
almost as far as those who deny it happened.
Many
feminists have feared that admitting that evolutionary biology shaped us means
that we have no control over our destiny and cannot change such things as the
subordination of women. (A group of
evolutionary feminists has emerged in recent years, but the findings and ideas
of these women have yet to register with either historians or most more traditional feminists. [14]) Fundamentalists fear that admitting that
evolutionary biology shaped us means that we have no control over ourselves and
so are going to act “like animals.”[15]
The similar
fears of both groups are misplaced. To
say that evolution shaped us is not to say that we have no control over our
destiny. In fact, understanding how evolution shaped us is the starting
point for establishing some control over our destiny.
I
believe that the long-standing article of faith among liberal intellectuals
that there is no such thing as human nature is both wrong and highly
counterproductive. The idea of human
nature poses no threat to most liberal, humane, or feminist goals. On the contrary, it is essential to them.
To
argue that humans have no innate qualities but that other animals do is to say
that we are not really animals. This is an odd position to be taken by so
many intellectuals who claim to be believers in evolution. It says that humans are from nature; that we may still be in it; but that we are no longer of it. Here again
liberal-minded academics may find themselves uncomfortably close to biblical
fundamentalists. The latter also see
humans as outside of and above nature, the only difference being that in their
case it is said to be because God gave man “dominion over . . . every living
thing.”[16] For one group, humans seceded from nature;
for the other, God did it for us.
The
insistence that people are utterly plastic and shaped only by the particular
culture in which they find themselves negates many of the goals toward which
those who take this position aspire. If
all humanity had nothing in common beyond some basic physical characteristics
and the capability of interbreeding, but was otherwise blank paper upon which
vastly different scripts could be written by various cultures, what could bring
diverse cultures together? And what of
those who fear that accepting the existence of innate traits would promote
racism and xenophobia? Would not these
maladies be more difficult to deal with if there were no human nature? Under the crude behaviorist or tabula rasa assumptions, people brought
up in the ways of one society would have nothing
in common with those brought up differently in another society. For practical purposes they would be like
separate species.
Unless
there is something common—that is, innate—to all of humanity, it is difficult
to establish a basis on which people in one culture can assess the actions of
those in another. Where
the denial of human nature leads was shown clearly at the 1993 World Conference
on Human Rights in
If
we were actually blank paper, governments could make of us anything they
wanted.[18] Many of the horrors of the twentieth century
were perpetrated by people acting upon the assumption that there is no such
thing as human nature and therefore people can be reshaped into anything. The most notorious examples of ideologues who
thought they could make “new” people in an image that they chose are Mao Zedung
and Pol Pot. Each killed millions of his
own countrymen and -women trying to write a new script on what he took to be
the blank paper of humanity. Both proved
instead that there was something on the paper that could be removed only by an
erasure of such force that it destroys the paper itself.
Human
nature is essential to the possibility of freedom. Were there not something there that made a
person human in the first place, and gave her or him some tools with which to
work—a basis on which to act—there could be no way for the individual to resist
being made into anything those running society wished. If
there were nothing natural and sex roles, for instance, were entirely the result of conditioning,[*]
how would any woman, shaped by society to fit and accept her role, ever come to
question her status?
The
reason that so many academics have clung to their insistence that biology
should be ignored is, I believe, a fundamental misapprehension concerning the
implications of human nature. They have
feared that the admission of the existence of innate characteristics will lead
to findings on how people differ. In fact, the real meaning of human nature is
to be found in showing the ways in which people are alike. Humans are far more alike than different—and, as
ought to be obvious, it is their innate qualities (human nature) much more than
their learned behaviors that make them so.
None
of this is to deny for a moment that there are immense cultural variations in
human practices. But those variations
are quite plainly not without limits.
And it is our biology that imposes those limits.[19]
* * *
The
genuinely scientific evidence that we are not, in fact, blank slates at birth, wholly shaped by culture, has become
overwhelming. The time is past when
historians or the general public can afford to ignore the valid findings of
science because some researchers have abused this sort of investigation and
reached outrageous conclusions. We must
stop throwing out the Darwinian baby with the racist and sexist bathwater.[20] To do so is to cede the support of science to
those who misuse it. So far what we have
generally had is evolutionary science without the perspective of history and
history without the perspective of evolution.
Now the attempt must be made to bring together neo-Darwinian
evolutionary biology and history to form a new way of understanding the human
experience: biohistory.
Although I
don’t agree with him on all the implications, particularly when he seems to
suggest that all other disciplines should be subordinated to science and that
science itself is above cultural influences, I basically believe in the
ultimate unity of knowledge that Professor Wilson terms consilience: that for all the variety of explanations that can be
offered by different disciplines, all intersect and “there is intrinsically
only one class of explanation.”[21] The time has come to begin to try to blend
history with other branches of knowledge by combining biology (and other
disciplines) with history. If this is
done with proper caution, we can greatly enrich our discipline—and we will
reach conclusions vastly different from those of Herrnstein and Murray,
Thornhill and Palmer, or the social Darwinists before them.
The
approach to utilizing biology to enhance our understanding of history that I
advocate differs radically from social Darwinism. That discredited creed held that natural
selection is just “the way things are” and that we should—indeed, that we must—model society after its uncaring
brutality and intense competition. My
position is simply that the evolution of human nature should be seen as protohistory, the first history, the
starting point for subsequent history.
I believe
that history consists, to a considerable extent, of the interplay between the
human biological inheritance
(the biogram[22]of
Homo sapiens) that evolved to adapt
to life in small bands of hunter-gatherers (the
hominid and human way of life for at least 98 percent of our evolution) and the
radically different social environments in which the creatures with that biogram
have lived since the development of agriculture began to revolutionize human
circumstances.
Paradoxical
though it sounds, the most important innate characteristic of our species is
its extraordinary adaptability. It is
this quality that causes much of the confusion in the nature/nurture
debates. Cultural determinists recognize
this trait and mistakenly conclude that it completely supersedes all others,
leaving us blank slates on which culture can write any story. For their part,
evolutionary psychologists and others who emphasize the power of our biological
inheritance often fail to give this fundamental human characteristic its due
and so overestimate the degree to which other evolutionary legacies affect our
behavior. The adaptability of Homo sapiens is so much greater than
that of any other surviving species that it might well be considered the fundamental human trait. “Perhaps our greatest distinction as a
species,” as Jared Diamond has said, “is our capacity, unique among animals, to
make counter-evolutionary choices.”[23] *
But, even
with our great adaptability, our biological inheritance places limits on which
choices we can make. Among the portions
of human nature that have had a clear effect on history, as I see it, the
following are three that stand out:
Humans are social animals. This does not mean that we do not also have
selfish proclivities, but neither total selfishness nor total selflessness is compatible with
the human biogram. This helps to explain why communism has not been successful.
But it also suggests that a system, such as completely unfettered free market capitalism,
that is based upon the absolute supremacy of the self is no more compatible with our
nature than is one, such as communism, based upon total sacrifice of the self to the
community.
Identification with the band, a
predisposition to identify with a small group of
people. As the song
from the television show Cheers put
it, “sometimes you want to be
somewhere where everybody knows your name.” The social instincts that we certainly
possess are not directed toward humanity as a whole, but
toward a small group such as
those in which our distant ancestors lived. Our socially oriented traits are most readily
triggered by personal recognition. It was in troops or bands of from perhaps
thirty to a few hundred members that most of our progenitors lived and evolved.[24] Evolution “designed” us to live in personal societies of this size. This, not the unconnected individuals
imagined by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, is the actual “State of
Pseudospeciation, the
ability to convince ourselves that other groups of
fellow
human beings are not really humans. This innate capacity has played a major part
in
wars, racism, and genocide. It is only possible to kill
“brutally” if we have identified the
victim in the way a “brute,” (that is, another animal)
would: as a member of a different species.
Killing “Redskins,” “Niggers,” “Honkies,” or “Gooks” is compatible with
our biological natures; killing human beings is not.
Winston Churchill made one of
the baldest statements of pseudospeciation on
record in his account of the British machine-gun slaughter
of Muslim tribesmen in the
foreign figures . . . march up one by one from the darkness
of Barbarism to the
footlights of civilization . . . and their conquerors, taking
their possessions, forget even
their names. Nor will
history record such trash.”[25] In the same vein, social Darwinist
Theodore
Roosevelt hailed “the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world’s
waste space” (by which he meant territory occupied by
non-Anglo-Saxons).[26] Social
Darwinism
is, in fact, in large part an endorsement of pseudospeciation. This human
tendency can shed light on our understanding of many
historical episodes.
Like other
traits produced by evolution, the tendency to question the humanity of
outsiders can be ignored only at great peril.
But the existence of a proclivity for pseudospeciation emphatically does
not mean that racism, war, jingoism, xenophobia and occasional outbreaks of genocide
are the inevitable lot of humankind.
Like other innate predispositions, this one cannot be eliminated, but it
can be controlled. Admitting its
existence is a necessary first step toward controlling this portion of human
biological inheritance that has caused so many horrors throughout history.
Ironically,
historians have generally taken a view of the scope of the human story that is
similar to that of biblical fundamentalists, since the latter customarily date
“History from the bottom up” should be given a
new and broader meaning. What most of us
in the historical profession have been doing is like trying to examine and
understand the construction of the upper stories of a tall building without
looking at the structure’s foundation or its lower floors. To truly transform our conception of history,
we need now to go beyond the new carpenters and building materials (such as
women historians and historical women) that have come onto the construction
site in the past few decades. We need a
new blueprint, one that includes the lower stories, the foundation, and even an
analysis of the bedrock on which they rest.
That bedrock is the biogram that resulted from hominid and human
evolution.
If we are
wary and do not jump to unwarranted conclusions that see human nature as a
constant, unmediated by the varying historical environments in which it
operates, a careful examination of the biological bedrock on which history has
been constructed can contribute significantly to a better understanding of a
host of historical problems and issues.
Failure to
pursue such an understanding is to leave our discipline uninformed by the
greatest explanatory scheme in history.
It is, furthermore, to leave that explanatory scheme in the hands of
those who are uninformed about the significance of human history in channeling
and modifying the human products of evolution.
Darwinism,
in short, is too important to be left only to the Darwinists–that is,
biologists and evolutionary psychologists.
They need the insights of historians to mediate between the evolutionary
inheritance and modern behavior as much as historians need the insights of
biologists to understand better the motivations behind the historical behavior
we study. We historians are the ones who
explicate the changing historical environments with which innate human
characteristics interact. We are in a
position to determine just how far Darwinian analysis can lead us before it
misleads us.
As we
attempt to establish a beneficial dialogue between biology and history, we must
recognize that biology is appropriate only for helping us to establish
the skeletal framework beneath the history we study. What we seek to accomplish is something quite
different from the goal of practitioners in the natural sciences. They try to discover ultimate causes,
while we historians are usually much more interested in what scientists term proximate
causes.[28] Scientists utilize Occam’s razor[29] to cut
away the very complexity in which we revel.
Our complex explanations will be more accurate if they take into account
the basic models provided by biology. It
can be helpful to us to understand the basic underlying biological motivations
of the creatures we study, but when we have accomplished this, it is our task
to restore what Occam’s razor has removed: the rich detail and variety that are
the stuff of historical explanation.
Biology
should be used to inform our work as historians, but it should never be
allowed to dominate our analysis.
Let us,
then, proceed with great caution, but let us proceed.
[*] Of course sex roles are greatly influenced by cultural conditioning. But it is plain that they are not solely the creations of culture; there is a biological basis for many of them.
* Our extraordinary adaptability makes it possible for humans to make some counter-evolutionary choices, which gives us an enormous advantage that no other species has ever had. But this in no sense means that we do not have innate characteristics or can ignore evolution’s effects on us. In order to make counter-evolutionary choices, we have take account of what those natural proclivities in need of being countered are. And evolution still places constraints on how far we are able to go in countering its effects.
[1]. Mary Midgley, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (
University Press,
1978), p. xiii.
[3]. Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978),
p. 203.
[4]. Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and
Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991), p. 224 and passim.
[5]. The unfortunate relationship that developed
between some biologists and the promotion of racism, jingoism, and xenophobia
is suggested by the fact that a zoology professor, Henry F. Osborn, wrote the
preface for Madison Grant
[6]. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The
[7] . Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases
of Sexual Coercion (
8. Helen Fisher, The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and
How They Are Changing the World (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 267.
[9]. Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p.
328.
[11]. Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect (
[12] . Bobbi S. Low, Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human
Behavior (
[13] . Robert S. McElvaine, Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History (
[14]. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Woman That Never Evolved (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1981); Patricia Adair Gowaty, ed., Feminism
and Evolutionary Biology (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1997); Barbara Smuts,
“The Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy,” Human
Nature, vol. 6 (1995), pp. 1-32; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection
(New York: Pantheon, 1999).
[15]. ABC News,
evolution980617.html
[16]. Genesis 1:28.
[17]. New York
Times,
[18]. Margaret Mead understood this and accepted it
as an implication of her belief that
human nature is
“almost unbelievably malleable.” Margaret
Mead, Male and Female: A
Study of the Sexes in a
Changing World
(New York: William Morrow, 1949), p. 310;
Degler, In
Search of Human Nature, p. 135.
[19]. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate: On the Natural History of Behavior Patterns
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1972), p. 13;
[21]. Wilson, Consilience,
p. 266.
[22]. The term was coined by Earle W. Count. Count, “The Biological Basis of Human
Sociality,” American Anthropologist,
vol. 60 (1958), pp. 1049-1085; Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, The Imperial Animal (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p.
6.
[23]. Jared Diamond, Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of
Human Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 62.
[24]. Chimpanzees have been observed living in
groups of 30 to 80, with some troops perhaps ranging up to 150 members. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 539.
In itself, of course, this proves nothing about the size of hominid
bands. But most groups of
collector-hunters that survived into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
also live in bands in this size range.
[25]. Winston Churchill, as quoted in John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun
(New York: Pantheon, 1975), p. 101.
Emphasis added.
[26]. Theodore Roosevelt, as quoted in Richard
Hofstadter, The American Political
Traditionand the Men Who Made It (1948;
[28]. Low, Why Sex Matters, p. 9.
[29]. Wilson, Consilienece, p. 53.