A Biologist Looks at Anthropology

Abstract

This article sketclhes a scheme for liaison between the social scienices, psychology and biology. Three means to this end are discussed. First, to understand the development of individual behaviour it is necessary to recognize (a) the value of treating behavioural characteristics not as divided into inniate anid learned componients, but as fallinig on a continuum from stable to labile with regard to environmental inifluences; (b) the importanice of predispositions to learn some things rather than others; (c) the ubiquity of alterniative strategies of behaviour; anid (d) the complexity of interinidividual relationlships, evenI in nioni-lhumani species. Secondly, it is importar'. not only to distinguish between successive levels of comiiplexity (appropriate to plhysiological mechanisms, interactions, relationships, groups an-d societies), but also to recognize the dialectical relations between them. Thirdly, it is heuristically useful to idenltify human characteristics whlich, tlhough not universal, are relatively stable with respect to cenvironmenit and culture. The approach is illustrated with reference to the geniesis of fears and phobias, the niature of genider differences anid the institution of war.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 53 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.