1.13 – Human biologies

I copied the memorable phrase “indefinite but not infinite” listening to Webb Keane’s paper “Language and the Cognitive Turn: Reflections on the Work of Maurice Bloch” (2010), but the phrase is not in the written version of the paper.

People come to biological anthropology, primatology, and human evolution expecting to find human nature: determining structures, or a suite of genes and instincts programming human behavior. Instead we find our biology is a broad platform of possibility. Biology primes us for plasticity and incorporating learned behavior.

This does not mean human beings are infinitely malleable or the possibilities are infinite. The possibilities are “indefinite but not infinite.” Nevertheless, there are at least four dimensions of possibility that should always be kept in mind:


Matt Ridley attempts to claim genes for the nurture side, writing how it is “genes that allow the human mind to learn” (2004:6). However, genes are so associated with determinism that efforts to re-characterize the term gene are doomed.

a) Biology is remarkably plastic (see sections on Human Nature and Human skulls)

Human biology cannot be specified outside of a particular environment and the particular activities of development. Maternal environment, food, shelter, and activity shape body form and even head shape and skeletal development. Genes help set processes in motion and regulate the parameters of those processes, but they are not blueprints or programs, in the usual deterministic sense of those terms.

A good article to illustrate this plasticity is Barry Bogin (1998) “The Tall and Short of It” (see review of Applying Anthropology).

b) Organisms transform evolutionary conditions (see sections on Evolution and Stone tools)

Documented evidence for hominid stone tool use goes back to 2.5 million years ago. That’s a long time to be evolving with tools. This is especially true considering the findings that even recent adaptations, like agriculture, can result in genetic change. Even the usually staunch genetic-determinist Nicholas Wade had to report “culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection” (2010).


But evolution does not only occur at the genetic level. Humans have a uniquely long history of co-evolving with tools and durably transforming the landscape. Humans are not the only tool-using animals, nor the only organisms to transform the landscape, but humans have quite thoroughly altered the conditions of selection and evolutionary processes through learned behavior. “Through contributing to the environmental conditions of development for successor generations organisms–including human beings–actively participate in their own evolution” (Ingold 2000:292).

c) Learning becomes biology (see sections on Race becomes biology and Bipedalism)

Not everyone is ready to accept the claim that bipedalism demonstrates how learned behavior becomes biologically incorporated. However, it offers a glimpse into a time 6-8million-years ago when something humans learn–walking–became a defining characteristic of humanity.

Similarly, as children grow and learn in a particular environment, engaged in particular activities, those activities become part of their developing musculature. Whether this is weaving baskets or playing the piano, stalking game or riding bicycles, each organism grows in a specific way. “These skills, then, far from being added on to a preformed body, actually grow with it. In that regard they are fully part and parcel of the human organism, of its neurology, musculature, even anatomy, and so are as much biological as cultural” (Ingold 2000:360).

d) Social life is fundamental and primary

Anthropologists have long stressed how human beings are not individuals first who then enter into social relationships. We are social animals first, who then become individuals, but always in relationship to a fundamental sociality. In 2011, New York Times columnist David Brooks described this as part of “The New Humanism,” writing that “we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships.”

This apparently new insight to Brooks is an ancient truth for anthropology, emphasized by a host of anthropologists dating back over a hundred years. The linguist Lev Vygotsky, writing in the 1920s, put it nicely: “The social dimension of consciousness is primary in time and in fact. The individual dimension of consciousness is derivative and secondary” (cited in Lavenda and Schultz 2008:294).

Recent years have seen popular books emphasize social conditions and human possibility rather than determinism. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin emphasize social conditions and focused practice over talent and genetic destiny. However, these books keep the classic distinction between individual and society. They become self-help books: if only you put in your 10,000 hours of focused practice, you too could be an “outlier” or “world-class performer.”

Anthropology, in contrast, emphasizes biological potential as a social possibility, and how individual plasticity reinforces social influences. These possibilities are not always positive–capacity for cruelty and social systems of vast inequalities are also part of the suite of human possibility. Human nature contains neither altruism nor cruelty: it is rather up to us to fulfill human promise.

It is high time we recognised that our humanity, far from having been set for all time as an evolutionary legacy from our hunter-gatherer past, is something that we have continually to work at, and for which we alone must bear the responsibility.

–Tim Ingold, “Against Human Nature” (2006:280)
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To cite: Antrosio, Jason, 2011. Human biologies. Living Anthropologically, http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/human-biologies/. Last updated July 10, 2011.

Sources

Bogin, Barry, 1998. The Tall and Short of It. In Applying Anthropology: An Introductory Reader.

Brooks, David, 2011. The New Humanism. New York Times, March 7.

Colvin, Geoff, 2008. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.

Gladwell, Malcolm, 2008. Outliers: The Story of Success.

Ingold, Tim, 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill.

——, 2006. Against human nature. In Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist, Systems Theoretical Approach.

Keane, Webb. 2010. Language and the Cognitive Turn: Reflections on the Work of Maurice Bloch. Paper presented at the annual meeting for the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, November 17-21.

Lavenda, Robert H., and Emily A. Schultz, 2008. Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?.

Ridley, Matt, 2004. The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture.

Wade, Nicholas, 2010. Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force. New York Times, March 1.