Intro To Psy 6: Darwin

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Erasmus Darwin.

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He had previously formulated a theory for evolution, but he did not had enough evidence to support it.

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Henslow

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(botany professor- who later in life indicated Darwin to accompany the trip on the Beagle)

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Sedgwick

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(geology professor-Darwin accompanied him on a summer geological tour on the north of Wales

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Lyell

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responsible for uniformitarianism, controversial theory, contrary the catastrophism,

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uniformitarianism

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the earth’s major features have results from gradual processes occurring over vast stretches of time and which continue in the present much as they have in the past

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catastrophism,

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geological features arose because of a few relatively sudden and massive cataclysm or catastrophes on the earth’s surface. Catastrophism theory went well with the church ideas of the time and the estimate age of the earth believed at the time (6000) that had been calculated by Ussher.

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Ussher

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6000 years

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darwin's lines of thought (2)

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-He habitually asked himself about the possible functions of all animal characterics.

-He began noticing the geographical distributions of species.

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the argument from design, created by William Paley

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the marvelously complicated organs of various species are so perfectly constructed and adapted that they must have been designed as finished products by some powerful and knowledgeable creator.

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Lamarck

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had proposed that species evolve and change owing to the inheritance of bodily changes produced by the voluntary exercise or disuse of particular organs.

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economic theory by Malthus

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stated most human beings are destined to live in poverty because their capacity to increase population greatly exceeds their capacity to increase food production. In a fertile region, good times may persist for a while, but Malthus argued that eventually population growth would outstrip food production, leading to a general state of scarcity and poverty. And then, disease, famine and the effects of poverty will act as a check on future population growth, so a stable population living at a bare subsistence level becomes established as the “normal” outcome of human social and economic existence.

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Natural selection

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that is disproportionately favoring certain kinds of individuals to survive and propagate their kind. The selective effects of nature go on for countless generations leading to the creation of stable species rather than to ephemeral breeds or varieties. The natural selection provided the necessary theory to support evolutionary process.

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Wallace

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who had thought of a new theory of evolution. Darwin was shocked to read that his theory was the same as Wallace, and rushed to published both (his and Wallace's).

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Huxley

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wrote Darwin. Huxley was an expert on primates and was convinced by Darwin’s theory, enough to defend natural selection in a debate with the bishop of Oxford.

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Darwin and Psychology

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At the end of Origin’s, he suggested that human mental qualities would eventually be understood as the result of evolution.

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The Descent of Man

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Darwin tried to show “that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties”. He cited cases of animals demonstrating courage and kindness. Furthermore, he argued that dogs manifestly experience many of the same emotions as humans (jealously, pride, shame and rudimentary sense of humor). Animals obviously demonstrate memory, attention and curiosity (dogs have dreams as well, therefore they must have the capacity for imagination). Darwin further augmented that animals show the rudiments of reason- the only faculty of soul that Descartes had reserved exclusively for human beings. In his conclusion, Darwin stated that “the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not kind”.

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Darwin entered on the discussion of race

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in Britain, it was the victorian era, there was a notable for extreme differences in attitudes and beliefs about race and the causes of ethnic differences. At one extreme there was the polygenists,On the other hand, there were the monogenism, that darwin agreed with:

-Furthermore, he had no doubt that environmental and educational variables were extremely important in producing human individual differences.

-Darwin also believed that the widely varying environmental condition in which differing groups were exposed would inevitably create differing selection pressures among them. Differences in skin color, for example, were natural adaptation to differing exposures to direct sunlight.

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polygenists

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that argued that non-european savages people represented a distinctly different species of being.

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monogenism (Darwin agreed with this one)

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that believed in a common ancestry and relatedness of all human groups, although they also entertained widely varying theories to try to explain the differences among them.

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Darwin and the discussion of gender

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-He hypothesized a variant of natural selection that he called sexual selection,

-Within a species, females and males come to prefer certain qualities in their mates and select their partner based on that, creating a pressure to a particular type of “beauty” to evolve.

-Darwin also believed sexual selection has influenced human evolution, resulting in some characteristics mental as well as physical between the sexes. He simply assumed a general masculine intellectual superiority (like others in the victorian era).

-complementarity hypothesis.

-variation hypothesis.

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sexual selection

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that is the gradual selection and evolution of characteristics that are specifically favorable for reproductive success. Therefore, to pass their genetic material individuals must not only survive, but mate and procreate.

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complementarity hypothesis.

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men and women have evolved so as to manifest separate psychological characteristics that - in the victorian stereotypes- “complement each other

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variation hypothesis

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across all species males have been more modified by evolution than females and consequently tend to show more variability among themselves.

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The expression of the emotions

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-Darwin argued that human emotional expressions are inherited and evolved characteristics, best understood as the direct or indirect consequences of reactions that had adaptive or survival value.

-The functional origins and purposes of many emotional expressions seemed straightforward, while some others obviously “adaptive” emotional expressions presumably arose because they were antitheses of directly serviceable reactions.

- Darwin thought that emotions occur as side effects from the general activation of the nervous system that accompanies emotional arousal. For example, in states of danger, general arousal of the body into an active, excited state has adaptive value.

-Darwin concluded that these three general principles- direct serviceability of the expression, antithesis and direct activation of the nervous system- could account for all emotional expression in animals and human beings alike.

-In the end, he noted that human emotional expressions tend to be similar throughout all known human groups. He argued that the similarity of expression points to the common descent of all human groups from the same ancestor.

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“A Biographical Sketch of an Infant”

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He observed that this sequence- understanding words and interpreting them as signal before making them up and using them “is what might have been expected, as we know that the lower animals easily learn to understand spoken words. With this, he was suggesting that an individual's development proceeds along toughly the same lines as the previous evolution of the species to which it belongs.

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Social Darwinism (by spencer)

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the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform.

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Comparative psychology (Romanes)

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:refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior.

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Human psychology (Darwin)

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Within human psychology, Darwin’s theory demanded that the brain, the mind and behavior in general to be understood both as “functional” entities aiding the adaptation of the individual to the environment and as potentially transmutable phenomena that may be modified or replaced with future evolution. After Darwin, human psychology inevitably became more “functional” and “differential”.

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Sociobiology

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the scientific study of the biological (especially ecological and evolutionary) aspects of social behaviour in animals and humans.

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Evolutionary psychology

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is a theoretical approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological structure from a modern evolutionary perspective.