Changes in behavior, due to cultural evolution, made the species Homo sapiens the dominant species on the planet, allowed the creation of civilization.
Why do you need to write a book that popularizes biological tools for dealing with social problems of society?
The fact is that now the problems of society are considered from the standpoint of philosophy, humanitarian concepts, and so on. Such a traditional approach was developed in the course of the historical development of man, and this seems to indicate the validity of its application.
Traditions are an important element of the mechanisms of inheritance in cultural evolution, but they cannot be the basis of modern scientific ideas.
The time has passed when I. Newton called his great book with an exposition of mechanics «Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy» (1684—1686). This name is a tradition of deep antiquity. There is no longer any philosophy in his book. Newton combined separate information about mechanical phenomena, partially revealed before him («I stood on the shoulders of giants» wrote Newton) into one integral theory, held together not by philosophical language, but by mathematical one. Later, many naturalists followed this path, refusing to philosophical verbal descriptions of reality.
However, 200 years after Newton, two «wise men» published the «Communist Manifesto» calling, on the basis of some philosophical ideas, to take up the modernization of social relations in human society.
Their philosophical ideas had nothing to do with biological concepts. They believed that human societies resemble plasticine, from which you can sculpt anything. A similar idea of the possibility of constructing social relations according to the wishes of the elite has survived in Russia to this day. These ideas became widespread in different societies, led to bloody revolutions and numerous victims.
The book shows that there is a big difference in biological and engineering design. In biological engineering, there are no drawings or sketches of the final result. Structures are created, but nobody knows the end result. Structures are alive from the moment they appear and remain so during ontogenesis. Responsibility for biological design rests with everyone involved, not with the manager, as in the case of engineering projects.
The process of creating a human body is controlled not by some separate parts of the embryo, but by the system as a whole. A living system must remain alive all the time, without shutdowns for repair or reconstruction. The systems of a multicellular organism have a certain autonomy, they are not controlled from a single center.
States and individual societies, consisting of living people, themselves should be considered as living organisms with their own needs and capabilities. Social life is linked by many successive chains, and breaks in some of them lead to the destruction of parts of the system, which can be fatal for the entire system as a whole. Still, social systems are more resilient than a house of cards. They have some plasticity, adaptability to external influences.
The ruling elites sometimes propose solutions, ostensibly for the benefit of society, to replace individual building blocks with others, believing that social systems can be rebuilt in this way.
But since the systems are alive, even the noble aspirations of reformers who do not take this fact into account can lead to an undesirable result. Specific examples of such unreasonable behavior are considered in the last chapters on the examples of reformatting the Russian Empire.
1. Human, brain, mind
The emergence of Homo sapiens
Somewhere in southern Africa, about 160—180 thousand years ago, another species appeared in the hominid family of a large order of primates, which biologists gave the name Homo sapiens. This species, not distinguished by any physical qualities, as a result of its unusual evolution, became the dominant species on the Planet. The appearance of new species, as well as their disappearance, are ordinary events in the long evolution of living nature, which has been going on for 3.8 billion years. But in this case, a species arose that turned into a person, became the dominant species, affecting the entire ecosystem. In his development, man went beyond the Earth and acquired the ability to destroy all life on Earth with one careless movement.
The uniqueness of the evolution of this species lies in the fact that it began to evolve differently from all other species, adapting to environmental conditions due to morphological changes, i.e. by changing the structure of individual organs. He didn’t grow hair to keep warm in cold climates, he didn’t grow strong claws like those of predators, his legs didn’t become too fast to flee from predators.
In order not to freeze, he built housing and acquired clothing from skins, created tools for labor and hunting, used fire, which was used even before the appearance of this species, by his distant ancestors. He lived in small, friendly collectives, connected by social relations, where he had to communicate a lot, make primitive tools of labor, develop tactics of collective action, thereby ensuring greater security for himself.
As a result of evolutionary development, he acquired a developed language of communication and an advanced mind, which helped him to survive in difficult and hostile conditions. Language and reason, have a common basis, influence each other and determine the direction of evolutionary development.
This evolution of Homo sapiens, evolution through adaptation of behavior, not morphology, has been called human cultural evolution.
The exit from Africa of Homo sapiens and the development of other continents in time is shown on the map:
(http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey)
Homo sapiens originally lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes. Life in tribes requires constant communication. In the presence of a large brain potential, this led to the development of a fairly informative language of communication. Not being endowed with special physical qualities, representatives of the species Homo sapiens were forced to make tools for hunting and everyday life. The genetically determined feature of the brain morphology of this species has created a great potential for the development of the mind. The ancestor’s brain of this species has grown 3 times in 2 million years.
Economic activity contributed to the realization of this potential, and the development of reason increased the effectiveness of all activities.
There is a positive feedback (PIC) between the result of work and the increase in intelligence. The mind increases the efficiency of work, and creative work develops the mind. Such positive feedback processes lead to rapid evolution in this direction.
You can read more about the origin and evolution of man in the book by A. Markov (Evolution of man. In 2 books. 2011). This book is based on research in anthropology, genetics, and evolutionary psychology.
We are not interested in genetics, not biological evolution, but in the unique path of human cultural evolution, which made it possible to create civilization.
Brain and Mind
The ancestral brains of Homo sapiens grew enormously over a relatively short period of evolutionary time. Three million years ago, the volume of the skull of an adult Australopithecus was 400—500 cubic meters. cm. Two million years later, his supposed descendant, Homo erectus, had a brain with a volume of about 1000 cubic meters. cm.
Over the next million years, it increased to 900—2000 cubic meters. cm. in modern Homo sapiens.
But the brain is not yet the mind. Brain architecture and environmental pressures work together to create intelligence.
The most important factor that made human cultural evolution extremely