The Descent Of Man Darwin Analysis

 In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato somewhat flippantly defined “man” as an erect and featherless biped. Subsequently Diogenes the Cynic, in an equally flippant fashion, displayed a plucked chicken and declared, “Here is Plato's man.” Plato's student, Aristotle, also was concerned with verbal definitions and distinctions, but he went on to describe the natural world in a matter-of-fact fashion that has earned him recognition as the founder of the biological sciences. In his work on biology, he avoided the effort to treat biological entities by the use of rigid formal logic, and, though he made some inevitable errors in fact, his pragmatic approach has served as a model for biological observation ever since.

 From long before the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings were generally recognized as members of the animal world. Much later, in the middle of …show more content…
He further developed that view in his work The Descent of Man, in …show more content…
 This is the arena in which the survival of the human species is played out.  The occupants of the cultural ecological niche impose a series of selective pressures on each other as they use language and other aspects of culture to their advantage.  In general, those who have trouble learning the rudiments of language will have less chance for survival. The cultural ecological niche puts a premium on those portions of the brain associated with linguistic capability. One would expect, then, that the evidence for the increasing complexity of the prehistoric cultural record would be linked to an increase in brain size of the associated prehistoric hominids.