Philosophy of Science Association

Darwin and Social Theory Author(s): Kenneth E. Bock Source: Philosophy of Science, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1955), pp. 123-134 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/185548 Accessed: 09/10/2009 18:44
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KENNETH E. BOCK 1. The Alleged Influence of Darwin. It has been argued repeatedly that the modern study of social and cultural evolution took its inspiration and form from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man. In 1920, Robert H. Lowie (27; pp. 55-56) observed that it was after evolutionary principles had been accepted in biology that they were applied to social phenomena, and that Lewis Henry Morgan was among the first to make the application. Sir James George Frazer (16; p. 581), at about the same time, dated the birth of anthropology from the promulgation of the evolution theory of Darwin and Wallace in 1859 and maintained that "this conception of evolution . . . supplies a basis for the modern science of anthropology." Harry Elmer Barnes (1; pp. 25-26) similarly traced the development of anthropology from the theory of organic evolution and advised the student that he "need not concern himself with the history of method in sociology before the entry of Darwinian concepts." A decade later Stuart A. Rice (32; p. 9) went so far as to say that "cultural anthropologists would not have discovered 'stages' of social evolution had it not been for Darwinian theory." The historian of anthropology, T. K. Penniman (30; p. 92), dated the constructive period of his discipline from Darwin, whom he regarded as having "brought order out of chaos" in social as well as biological studies. In like vein, Howard Becker (2; pp. 498-99) has seen the "theory of organismic evolution" as the most potent influence on historical sociology and the classical anthropology of Tylor, Frazer, and Morgan; while Ashley Montagu (28; pp. 211-12) has tied the historical method in ethnology to a misconception of the Darwinian study of evolution. 2. The Argument. There can be no doubt that the startling success of Darwin's theory had repercussions in the social sciences. But there is some point in observing the extent to which its effect might have been simply a reenforcement of ideas long current and already exploited in the study of man. The point arises when we seek to escape some of the influences of "biologism" in social theory and thus stand in need of discriminating between perspectives that are blatantly Darwinian and others that have subtler and more elusive roots. If the doctrines of social and cultural evolutionism derive from influences other than Darwin, then we shall make little progress towards the alteration or eradication of such doctrines, or even an understanding of them, if we identify and analyze them as Darwinian concepts. The argument will be made here that the study of social or cultural evolution long precedes Darwin and has been illuminated mainly by ideas that both antedate Darwin and have little direct relation to his theory of the origin of species. It will be maintained, consequently, that we delude ourselves if we measure the extent of our escape from organicism in social theory by the degree of our departure from Darwinism.
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3. Darwin's Suppoqed Contribution. It is necessary, at the outset, to acknowledge that Darwin had some direct impact on social theory. Though often grossly distorted in the transfer, his concepts of chance variation, struggle for existence, adaptation, natural selection, and survival of the fittest were made the basis for a wide variety of schools of "social Darwinism."' While this brand of social philosophy has had extended and serious effects upon social policy and action, it has never attracted a sustained following among social scientists and can no longer be regarded as a major theme of speculation. It is not to this phase of Darwin's influence, therefore, that reference is made when he is credited with revolutionizing anthropology and sociology. In what respect, then, is Darwin supposed to stand as a turning point in the course of modern social science? According to the kind of testimony cited above, Darwin's principal effect on the study of society and culture is to be traced not so much through the specific mechanisms of biological evolution which he isolated as through his broadly evolutionary perspective for the study of change. This would suggest that he guided or encouraged scholars to a study of change as a way of reaching explanations of existing diversity in social and cultural forms; that he led them to picture change as a slow, gradual, and continuous process whereby things are altered from one state or condition to another through a finely graduated series of steps or stages; and that he discouraged any tendency to regard change as "supernaturally" or miraculously induced, or as consequent upon "leaps" or catastrophes. It also suggests, if post-Darwinian social evolutionism is to be credited to Darwin's influence, that he stimulated the quest for social and cultural origins, promoted a search for the form of change in the nature or inner dynamics of the thing changing, indicated that the "lower" or simpler were earlier in the process of change while the "higher" or more complex were later, and launched investigators on a new career of cataloguing different societies and cultures and arranging them in an order that could be taken to represent stages in a process of change. Now, again, it is unquestionable that Darwin provided an indirect stimulus to this sort of social evolutionism. Natural science had apparently demonstrated the reality and mode of evolution among life forms, and social science, more assured now of being on the right track, rushed with renewed vigor to an exposition of evolution in social and cultural forms. But just as it would be inaccurate to say that all these aspects of social evolutionism could properly be derived from Darwin's writings, so it would be incorrect to say that any of them depended on Darwin for innovation. 4. Pre-Darwinian Evolutionism: Internal Evidence. Apart from the historical evidence on this point, we might be warned by the quick and widespread acceptance of The Origin of Species that the ideas contained in it were not entirely new to Europeans. Even within the realm of biology, and on a quite specific
1 Some of these concepts, of course, were current in social theory before they were used by Darwin. But the tremendous resurgence of their use and their much more elaborate application after 1859 must clearly be associated with Darwin's work.

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level, Darwin had his predecessors.2 Wallace's simultaneous formulation of substantially the same thesis suggests that evolutionary theory was a part of the intellectual "climate" of the time.3 We must recall, too, that a basic postulate of the evolutionary theory-the idea that change is gradual and continuous, that it proceeds by minute stepswas not forced upon Darwin by the weight of evidence, but was instead stoutly maintained by him against the overwhelming bulk of the geological record he examined.4This is not to say that Darwin was "wrong" or that available evidence refutes his contention that natura non facit saltum. That is a question for biologists to explore, as they have with considerable energy since 1859. But it does suggest that a cautious investigator like Darwin worked in the presence of a powerful idea when he chose to adhere to that idea even when, on his own testimony, the evidence contradicted it. It suggests, too, that the idea was a respectable one, an old and compelling idea-an idea entertained by most men and one that Darwin did not have to call to their first attention. Finally, it should be noted that internal evidence reveals little specific connection between theories of social evolution and the Darwinian picture of organic evolution.5 Lewis Henry Morgan's account, for example, of a unilinear succession of social and cultural items can hardly be reconciled with Darwin's representation of divergent and re-divergent paths in the formation of species. The common observation, even by those who attest to Darwin's great influence, that he was misinterpreted by social theorists, leaves unexplained the reasons for the misinterpretation. So it may be suggested again that the "misinterpretation" consisted in large measure in a mere identification with Darwin of ideas already extant in social theory. 5. Historical Evidence of Pre-Darwinian Social Evolutionism. It is in the history of social theory, however, that clear evidence is to be found of vigorous and sustained adherence to and exploitation of all the basic tenets of social and cultural evolutionism prior to Darwin. The chronology of this matter is apparently confused by the fact that several classics of evolutionary ethnology and sociology were written immediately subsequent to the publication of The Origin of Species. Basic works of Tylor,
2 See his belated recognition of these in "An Historical Sketch" introductory to the 6th ed. of The Origin of Species. 3 Darwin specifically denied this (12; I: 71). But here Darwin apparently had reference to his particular view of evolution and not generally to what Huxley properly called the "oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution" (12; I: 534). 4 See 11; Chap. x, "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record," where Darwin admits that "Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain" as apparently demanded by his theory, but proceeds to attack this objection on the grounds that the geological evidence of such a chain has either been destroyed or not yet discovered. Cf. 35; pp. 137-140. 5 Robert H. Lowie (26; Chap. III), despite his high estimate of the Darwinian influence, has recognized the differences between the idea of evolution of species and traditional views of cultural evolution.

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Lubbock, McLennan, Morgan, Bastian, and Bachofen appeared in the 1860's and 1870's. Not only did these studies follow too closely on Darwin's really to have been an application of his theory, but there is little evidence in their arguments of any actual dependence. As Teggart (35; p. 111) has pointed out, Tylor and McLennan specifically claimed to be working in another tradition, while Bastian, as Lowie (26; p. 29) remarks, was a strong critic of Darwin. The case of Herbert Spencer is similar. Although a full statement of his evolutionary sociology was made only in the last third of the nineteenth century, the essential principles were set down long before, notably in his essay on "Progress; Its Law and Cause," in 1857 (34; I: 8-62). There is no need, however, to debate the nice point of the chronological relationship of a Spencer or a Tylor to Darwin. Even if it be granted, as is commonly done, that Darwin was not entirely responsible for the study of social evolution, what remains to be emphasized is that social evolutionists were following, in the second half of the nineteenth century, a pattern of inquiry as old as recorded Western thought itself. The lines of its descent are numerous and diverse, and only some of the strands can be mentioned here. In the preceding half century the towering figure of Auguste Comte immediately claims attention. A staunch believer in the fixity of species, Comte nevertheless was convinced that the present condition of Western European society was the result of a slow, gradual, and continuous process of change from a relatively simple to a relatively complex organization. He proposed to trace that process through a "necessary chain of successive transformation" revealed by a "rational comparison of the different coexisting states of human society scattered over the surface of the earth" (9; IV: 559; 8; IV: 317). In 1822, he advanced the view, as an "elementary conception of social dynamics," that there had been an uninterrupted progress in civilization, that this progress had been constant, inevitable, and in accordance with natural laws that made for a strictly determined order of succession "which manifests an essentially exact similitude as between parallel developments" (9; IV: 555-56; 8; IV: 265-66). In constructing his stages of development, moreover, Comte specifically excluded the historian's point of view since it involved attention to individuals, events, and dates, and, in general, tended to "make this world a scene of miracles" (9; IV: 557). Comte's acknowledged "intellectual father" was Condorcet, who also argued that the course of "true" history runs smooth and that this would be apparent if we but adopted the proper philosophical outlook. This outlook involved, for Condorcet, acceptance of the proposition that necessary and constant laws guided human history through a slow, gradual progress towards la verite ou le bonheur. He sought to demonstrate this progress by taking different peoples in widely separated places and times as representatives of stages in the development of the most advanced nation. These stages became his ten great epochs in human history (10; VIII: 3-4, 11-13, 314, 319). Condorcet may be regarded as having given the final, most eloquent expression to the aims of the eighteenth century science of man. As the late Gladys

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Bryson (6) showed in her study of the Scottish moral philosophers, it was the principal objective of these humanists to construct a scientific account of the development or evolution of society and its institutions. Thus Lord Kames (Henry Home) found the dynamics of society in the similar powers of understanding with which all men were endowed and then sketched out uniform stages of development in commerce, writing, religion, economic organization, etc. (21; I: 51-54, II: 82-84). William Robertson sought the origin and early development of society in the example offered by the contemporary American Indian, whom he saw as a document to "complete the history of the human mind" (33; I: 281, 286). Cornelius de Pauw, discerning a "germ of perfectibility" that all peoples carried within them, constructed from existing cultural differences a developmental cultural series, including an economic series rising from the hunting stage through fishing, food-gathering, and pasturing phases to the agricultural era (13; I: 94-101; cf. 37). Adam Ferguson, however, was the most thorough evolutionist of his century. As was customary at that time, Ferguson found the dynamics of society in human nature. Not only did he discover a propensity in man's make-up to advance, but also a tendency to progress slowly and gradually, by small steps. When he turned, therefore, to the voyage literature, which pictured "almost every situation in which mankind is placed," it was his object to build a graduated series of stages that would depict social evolution. This he did for society as a whole, and especially for economic institutions (14; pp. 11-12, 37, 147-49, 178-79, Part II, Sec. II. Cf. 29). Although a reader might well be struck with the "modern" tone of these eighteenth century studies, a strong impression is conveyed at the same time that their writers were already on familiar ground. They spoke with the assurance of men who were presenting an accepted idea; they proposed only that procedures be carried out for documenting their thesis and filling in details. An immediate background is furnished by the voyage literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The European age of discovery had confronted scholars with the serious problem of cultural differences. At first, this diversity was explained simply by means of the familiar notion that God in His omnipotence had filled the world with a magnificent profusion of societies or cultures, just as he had created a bewildering variety of plants and animals. (See, e.g., 23; p. 145.) This "creationist" theory was later questioned in more sophisticated efforts to account for differences by reference to multiple racial origins, climate or terrain, the various historical experiences of peoples, and modifications incident to a diffusion of culture from one or more centers.6 But these ideas soon gave way to a more attractive argument that different cultures throughout the world could be regarded as vestiges representative of earlier conditions in the development of European culture. Thus, in 1651, Thomas Hobbes (20;
6 The extensive literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries asserting the creation of other races before Adam or with Adam presented an argument, in part, to account for present differences. See 3; I: 352-360. For remarkable examples of attempts to explain differences in diffusionist and environmental terms, see 15, 19.

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Part I, Chap. 13) suggested that the state of nature out of which politically organized societies hypothetically had risen was still observable among American savages. John Locke (24; Bk. II, Chap. 8, Sec. 108), saw the American Indian as a surviving example of earlier ages in the Old World. Lafitau (22; I: 1-26), in 1724, held that an examination of contemporary Indians could help us reconstruct the history of the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. This perspective was fully stated by Turgot, in the middle of the eighteenth century, when he envisioned the possibility of utilizing the present array of "every shade of barbarism and civilization" to document the unilinear development of mankind through hunting, pastoral, agricultural, and political stages (36; I: 216-17, 278-79, 284). This later handling of the problem of cultural differences immediately diverted attention to cultural similarities, for the obvious task now was to confirm the developmental thesis by demonstrating the uniform evolution of all peoples and by identifying the antique in European culture with the contemporary in savage or barbaric culture. Yet it is misleading to say with Boas (5; pp. 174-81) and Goldenweiser (18; V: 657) that the evolutionary point of view arose out of the observation of similarities or that similarities noted between the cultures of savage contemporaries and historically remote ancestors produced the notion of stages of development. It should be borne in mind that the cultural richness of the world to which Europeans were exposed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was viewed by them in the light of specific ideas already firmly entrenched in their thinking. Just as the American savage was often given the features and raiment of his European brothers in artistic portrayals of the day, so his culture was interpreted in the light of a pre-existing philosophy of culture history.7 An immediate source of this philosophy of history is apparent in the idea of progress formulated in the late seventeenth century. This theory, that mankind had advanced and would continue to advance slowly and gradually from a state of rudeness to one of polish and refinement, served as a comprehensive framework for the depiction of social or cultural evolution. But it must be noted further that the idea of progress, stripped of its particular criteria of advance and its postulation of infinite improvement, differed little from classical theories of change. The manner in which Pascal and Fontenelle likened the history of mankind to the growth of an individual finds a striking parallel in the theme around which Polybius constructed his history of Rome. Thucydides' recovery of early stages in Athens' national growth by references to contemporary features of barbaric and backward Greek cultures appears to reveal not only the modern idea of gradual development through stages but also the modern
7Cf. Gilbert Chinard (7; p. xvi): "Au lieu de chercher a 6tudier les Indiens en eux-memes et pour eux-m8mes on voudra des le debut trouver dans leurs moeurs la confirmation ou la r6futation de theories d6jAexistantes. Peu importe au fond, pour un homme du XVI siecle, de savoir comment vivent les sauvages de la Floride et du Br6sil; il est bien plus int6ressant de rechercher si l'on peut retrouver chez eux des analogies avec la civilisation de la Grece, de Rome et meme de la Jud6e d'une part, et la l6gende du Paradis terrestre ou le tableau de l'age d'or d'autre part."

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method for documenting such stages. Aristotle's account of the growth of society through the stages of family, village, and state again has a modern theoretical ring. The concept of origins and the importance of discovering them is evident in Aristotle's material cause. The need for determining an inner dynamic is proclaimed by his emphasis on the efficient cause. The notion of stages of development is manifest in his description of the formal cause. The teleology characteristic of modern theories of social evolution is clearly involved in the stress he laid on the final cause. Given these ideas in antiquity, it is not surprising to find that "cultural anthropologists" "discovered 'stages' of social evolution" some time prior to the advent of Darwinian theory. The point need not be labored. A glance through Lovejoy and Boas' splendid Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity8 should supply convincing evidence that the delineation of evolutionary stages in all phases of man's cultural and social life is one of the oldest occupations of humanists. In this lengthy tradition Darwin appears, indeed, as an incidental figure. The point can be made, of course, that while a kind of evolutionism has long been evident in Western thought, strictly modern evolutionary ideas are distinguishable from their predecessors.9 This is obviously the case. Ideas of cultural evolution differ from ideas of social evolution. The amount and kind of evidence brought to bear in support of evolutionary schemes has varied greatly. The greater intricacy and sophistication of more recent constructions are apparent. The candid value judgments associated with earlier schemes are commonly eliminated-or, at least, hidden-in later examples. Ideas of the evolution of a universal Society or Culture as wholes must be distinguished from concepts of the parallel evolutions of particular societies or cultures. Such distinctions, and many more, can properly be made within the evolutionary fold. But it remains that all these variants have a substantial and a specific basis in common. The classical view of change as growth, the seventeenth century idea of progress, eighteenth century conjectural or hypothetical histories, and nineteenth century evolutionism all share in the perspective that change is natural, inevitable, slow, gradual, and continuous. All depict change in terms of successive, finely graded stages of development. All seek in the original from which change begins the potential of what the changing thing is to become and the form which the process of change will take. All exclude consideration of specific events as effective factors in the process. All identify stages of evolution
8 A typical example may be cited from Varro, De re rustica (37 B.C.): "Therefore, I say, that since it is necessary in the nature of things that men and flocks have long existed . . . it must be true that step by step from the most remote period human life has come down to this age, as Dicaearchus writes, and that the earliest stage was a state of nature, when men lived on those things which the virgin earth bore; from this life they passed into a second, a pastoral life.... Finally in the third stage, from the pastoral life they attained the agricultural . . . from which they continued for a long time into the condition which they had reached until that in which we live was attained" (25; pp. 368-69). 9 See, for example: 17, p. 21; 21, pp. 78-83. Cf. 4, pp. 526-27.

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by reference to existing social or cultural forms that are arranged in a series according to a preconception of what the evolution has actually been. 6. Social Evolutionism Derived from the Biological Analogy. This effort to demonstrate the pervasiveness of ideas usually associated with the work of a nineteenth century biologist is not undertaken with any perverse desire to show that all ideas are old ideas. Rather, the manifest persistence of a certain clearly defined orientation in the study of change poses a problem. How can we account for the stability of this theme with all its variations? If this question can be answered in terms of more basic patterns of thought, then we are in a position better to assess what is involved in an evolutionist outlook and to escape some of its aspects that we might judge misleading in a study of social change. It may be suggested now that what is called the evolutionary point of view in social science rests not so much upon the Darwinian thesis as upon an analogy between change in society or culture and organic growth. The point to be made rests upon recognizing a distinction between the process of growth in an individual organism and the process of change whereby different species of organisms come to be. We commonly think of an organism as having been produced by one of its own kind and having been thereby endowed with characteristics that determine its normal growth through a series of stages like those traversed by its progenitors. Our view of this process is supported by observation of the life cycle in repeated individual instances of a given kind of organism. Furthermore, we can, after observation has established what the life cycle is, look about us in the present and see that every stage in the growth of such an organism is represented by its contemporaries. Thus we could make an exhibit of the life cycle of, say, the Holstein cow, by arranging available calves, heifers, and cows in the proper order. The ordinary conception of organic growth also includes the notion that it is slow, gradual, and continuous and that it is inevitable, at least up to maturity, in all normal organisms. We regard growth as "natural" in the sense that it does not proceed by leaps and bounds in miraculous fashion, does not normally reverse itself or go by stops and starts-although the rate of growth does vary from time to time. Thus we conceive of growth as regularly passing through certain stages rather than certain happenings; adolescence in the human organism is a stage of growth rather than an event in the organic life. We see growth in the larger sense as a becoming, the end of which is determined by the beginning or origin. To put it crudely, olive trees are what they are, and not peach trees, by virtue of having been olive seeds and not peach seeds. Or to reverse it, an olive seed has the potential to grow into an olive tree, so that the "nature" of an olive tree is to be found in its origin as an olive seed. We account for a given organism in the present in terms of its origin and an intermediate series of stages of growth between that origin and its present form. We designate maturity in an organism in certain ways, and given any particular organism characterized as mature, all others of its kind that differ from it are regarded as exhibiting

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varying degrees of immaturity or decline. And, finally, we ordinarily picture the growth process, from seed to maturity, as an increase in complexity in the sense that new organs and functions gradually appear and are perfected-a movement from homogeneity to heterogeneity. Species do not "grow" in this sense, and the Darwinian theory is addressed to quite a different order of biological phenomena. The theory might well be said to start, logically, with the observation of an intrusion in the normal individual growth pattern resulting from chance variations. These variations are transmitted and, if selected by nature, can eventually form the basis for a new species of organism. The fact that this process and the growth of an individual organism might both be broadly referred to as "organic change" should not obscure the simple distinction. Now, when the concepts of social and cultural evolutionism, both before and since Darwin, are recalled, it seems clear that they are more easily derived from common notions of growth than from the theory of the evolution of species. The idea of gradual and continuous change in society or culture is an image of organic growth. The notion that origins are a clue to the understanding of a given institution or culture element and hence the conviction that origins must be discovered, are quite in keeping with the picture of the seed as determining growth. The conception of social change as manifesting itself in successive stages, tying origin and present together, and the dissociation of events or happenings from this process, clearly indicate an identification of change with growth. The search for an inner dynamic in the "nature" of Man or Society or Culture as a starting point for sketching a course of change parallels the designation of a certain growth potential in the constitution of organisms. The basic postulate of social evolutionists that change has been from the simple to the complex, "by and large," or at least in technology, is the common characterization of organic growth. And the practice of regarding social or cultural differences as representative stages in the coming to be of a society or culture regarded as more mature or highly developed is clearly suggestive of an acceptance of older and younger organisms of a given kind as representing stages in the growth of that kind. The point must be granted at once, so far as Darwin's influence is concerned, that some of these features of social evolutionism here linked rather to the biological analogy, were strongly reenforced by Darwin. Notably, he saw the process of change in species as taking place gradually-just as an organism grows-and this insistence on gradualism gave reassuring support to theories that already presented such a view of social change. Again, the fact that Darwin arranged given forms in the present-living, or extinct but preserved in the record-to represent a presumably historical succession seemed to be just what students of man had been doing with given forms of society or culture.'0 But
10The fact that Darwin's arrangement along divergent and redivergent lines markedly from the customary unilinear schemes of social evolutionists did not make a strong impression; and when it was recognized, social evolutionists did not in adapting this view to their own materials. One of the difficulties, as Franz Boas differed at first succeed pointed

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neither of these conceptions stood much in need of strengthening by Darwin. The suggestion that social evolutionism has depended upon the biological analogy rather than Darwinian evolutionism is buttressed, apart from the internal evidence, by the didactic and repeated use of the analogy by social evolutionists. Thus Herbert Spencer's model of evolving society was constructed expressly from a picture of individual organic growth, the details of which he drew from von Baer's description of embryonic development from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. For Auguste Comte, the study of social dynamics was patterned after the study of physiology; just as biology described the growth of organisms, sociology examined the growth of society. Throughout the eighteenth century society was likened to an organism, and the growth series of birth, infancy, childhood, youth, and maturity provided the framework in which social development was sketched. In the great debate over the idea of progress the "moderns" again and again pointed to classical times as the "infancy" of the human race and argued that seventeenth century Western Europe should be regarded as the period of "manhood" or near maturity. This is not merely a question of metaphor. Such biological concepts were carried to the study of social change as a means of bringing order out of the chaos of historical experience. It was only in the light of the orientation they provided that investigators could present the contemporary savage as the direct lineal "ancestor" of civilization. The principle of arrangement needed to construct a presumably historical and unilinear succession of stages from a co-existent m6lange of cultural differences was furnished by the picture of Culture as an organism that moved through various degrees of growth observable in the present as cultural differences. It was this picture that called for the discovery of origins and that required the adoption of a genealogical framework for any account of social or cultural coming-to-be. It would be difficult, indeed, to maintain that the analogy was used simply as an expository device to present the results of empirical-historical investigation when such investigation was not only lacking but was openly scorned as an unscientific concern with the miraculous and the supernatural. The analogy was a working principle, accepted with the conviction that natural laws operated universally, so that rules and concepts be applied in another applicable to one domain of nature-organisms-could domain-society or culture. The lengths to which this analogy was carried in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries seem extreme to us now, but it would be a mistake to suppose that the practice was merely a curious intellectual quirk of the times. If we recall earlier Western speculation, in the realms of both order and change, the pervasiveness of this outlook becomes apparent. The medieval conception of society as an organic whole composed of functionally related parts, and the device of picturing the universe as macrocosm with man as microcosm are familiar examples. The hylozoism characteristic of classical Greek thought out, was that the forms of the cultural evolutionist intermingled with one another by borrowing, etc.-something that Darwin's species did not do.

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endowed all things with organic qualities, and in the Socratic philosophy the state or society is precisely depicted as a "natural growth" to which the statesman, as physician, ministers. Whatever the reason, Western thinkers have persistently rationalized something called Society or Culture in biological terms. Evolutionism in humanistic inquiry should be seen, therefore, not as an enthusiastic and short-lived aping of a specific biological theory, but rather as a mode of conceiving change that is deeply rooted in Western thought. Recognizing this long-term heritage, social scientists today should pause and re-examine their store of concepts not just for Darwinian traces but for more basic and simple biologisms. Traditions in social thought are difficult to eradicate under any circumstances. When the tradition itself goes unrecognized or is identified with a transient outlook, the task itself becomes obscured. University of California Berkeley
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