Life History Evolution a Biological Meta-Theory for the Social Sciences
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life history evolution A Biological Meta-Theory for the Social Sciences Steven C. Hertler, Aurelio José Figueredo, Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre, Heitor B. F. Fernandes and Michael A. Woodley of Menie Life History Evolution Steven C. Hertler Aurelio José Figueredo Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre Heitor B. F. Fernandes Michael A. Woodley of Menie Life History Evolution A Biological Meta-Theory for the Social Sciences Steven C. Hertler Heitor B. F. Fernandes College of Saint Elizabeth University of Arizona Morristown, NJ, USA Tucson, AZ, USA Aurelio José Figueredo Michael A. Woodley of Menie University of Arizona Vrije Universiteit Brussel Tucson, AZ, USA Brussels, Belgium Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre and University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA Unz Foundation Junior Fellow Palo Alto, CA, USA ISBN 978-3-319-90124-4 ISBN 978-3-319-90125-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90125-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939729 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover image: © INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland CONTENTS 1 Life History Theory: An Overview in Abstract 1 Part I Huntington, Crosby, and Baker 2 Ellsworth Huntington’s Victorian Climatic Writings 25 3 Alfred W. Crosby: Adapting Within a Matrix of Flora and Fauna 43 4 The Historical Geography of Alan R. H. Baker: Scratching Out a Living After the Neolithic Revolution 57 Part I Section Metacommentary Part II Price, Malthus, and Landers 5 Richard Price: The Schedules of Mortality 77 6 Thomas Robert Malthus, Stratifcation, and Subjugation: Closing the Commons and Opening the Factory 91 v vi CONTENTS 7 Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death: John Maxwell Landers’ Four Horseman Spurring Humans Faster Along the Life History Continuum 105 Part II Section Metacommentary Part III Toynbee, McNeill, and Casey 8 Arnold Joseph Toynbee: The Role of Life History in Civilization Cycling 129 9 William H. McNeill: Epidemiological and Biogeographical Perspectives on Civilization 143 10 James Casey: Extrapolating from Early Modern Iberia 157 Part III Section Metacommentary Part IV Murdock, Keeley, and Harris 11 George Peter Murdock: Stemming the Tide of Sterility with an Atlas of World Cultures 183 12 Lawrence H. Keeley: Pre-state Societies in the Hobbesian Trap 197 13 Marvin Harris: Ecological Anthropology and Cultural Materialism 213 Part IV Section Metacommentary Part V Montesquieu, Mann, and Goldthorpe 14 The Baron de Montesquieu: Toward a Geography of Political Culture 239 Contents vii 15 Michael Mann and Societal Aggregation: From Tribe, to Fief, to City-State, to Nation, to Empire 255 16 John Harry Goldthorpe: Weighing the Biological Ballast Informing Class Structure and Class Mobility 271 Part V Section Metacommentary Part VI Cattell, Bowlby, and Bronfenbrenner 17 Raymond B. Cattell: Bequeathing a Dual Inheritance to Life History Theory 293 18 Edward John Mostyn Bowlby: Reframing Parental Investment and Offspring Attachment 307 19 Urie Bronfenbrenner: Toward an Evolutionary Ecological Systems Theory 323 Part VI Section Metacommentary Epilogue 345 Master Bibliography 351 Index 403 LIST OF FIGURES Chapter 3 Fig. 1 Conceptual schematics for three major symbiotic portmanteau assemblages 51 Chapter 6 Fig. 1 Environmental carrying capacity in relation to logistic population growth 96 Chapter 10 Fig. 1 World map of consanguineous unions produced by A. H. Bittles and M. Black 166 Fig. 2 World map of family organization produced by the University of Toronto 167 Chapter 16 Fig. 1 Real Median Household Income by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1967–2014 281 ix LIST OF TABLES Chapter 11 Table 1 Raw CPEM bivariate correlations 193 Table 2 CPEM frst (lag 1) serial spatial autocorrelations 194 = Table 3 Correlations among CPEM frst (lag 1) = serial spatial autocorrelations 194 xi CHAPTER 1 Life History Theory: An Overview in Abstract As defned by the Cambridge Dictionary, the social sciences are a federation of disciplines dedicated to the “study of the customs and culture of a soci- ety, or a particular part of this subject, such as history, politics, or econom- ics.”1 Oxford Dictionaries2 identify the “scientifc study of human society and social relationships” as the unifying principle around which the social sciences are organized. Merriam Webster3 expands on this defnition without changing its substance: “A branch of science that deals with the institutions and functioning of human society and with the interpersonal relationships of individuals as members of society.” As can be seen in these and other defnitions, the social sciences are bound together under one banner by virtue of their shared mission to explain human nature and soci- ety. Equally important to note, the social sciences have unity of purpose even as they have no meta-theory; no foundation from which variables can be connected, causally sequenced, or ultimately explained. Many social scientists feel the absence of such a meta-theory. Take the celebrated sociologist Charles Murray, who, as previously described (Hertler 2017), intuited the biological unity underpinning the divisions of class about which he wrote in Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010. At one point, Murray explicitly predicted that “advances in evolutionary psychology are going to be conjoined with advances in genetic understanding, leading to a scientifc consensus…” This is actually part of a longer quote that Murray originally wrote as a contributor to Culture and Civilization: Volume 2: Beyond Positivism and Historicism.4 In both works, Murray continues describing his intuition thus: © The Author(s) 2018 1 S. C. Hertler et al., Life History Evolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90125-1_1 2 S. C. HERTLER ET AL. There are genetic reasons, rooted in the mechanisms of human evolution, why little boys who grow up in neighborhoods without married fathers tend to reach adolescence not socialized to the norms of behavior that they will need to stay out of prison and to hold jobs. These same reasons explain why child abuse is, and always will be, concentrated among family structures in which the live-in male is not the married biological father. These same reasons explain why society’s attempts to compensate for the lack of married biological fathers don’t work and will never work. Charles Murray is not alone. Social scientists of every variety routinely struggle to glean patterns, relate individual traits to group norms, and infer causal relationships among correlated variables. Evolution has been advanced as this missing meta-theory. And of course, it is only through evolution that humans have been embedded within the natural world. Prior to evolutionary theory, most understood animals to be of a different order; subservient beasts to be exploited for the good of mankind. An evolutionary perspective, properly absorbed, contextualizes humans as Eukarya, Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primates, Hominidae, Homo, Sapiens. Evolutionary branching inferred through geologic time tells us so much about our function, origins, and history. Evolution’s unifying utility has long been recognized within the biological sciences, as demonstrated by the following excerpt from Henry Ward Beecher’s Evolution and Religion written in 1885 (Beecher 1885/1934; pp. 50–51): The theory of Evolution is the working theory of every department of physical science all over the world. Withdraw this theory, and every depart- ment of physical research would fall back into heaps of hopelessly dislo- cated facts, with no more order or reason or philosophical coherence than exists in a basket of marbles, or in the juxtaposition of the multitudinous sands of the seashore. We should go back into chaos if we took out of the laboratories, out of the dissecting rooms, out of the felds of investigation, this great doctrine of Evolution. Faith in evolution’s synthesizing ability was likewise precociously expressed in the writings of Robert G. Ingersoll (1900) and is similarly found amidst the inadmissible evidence of expert scientists testifying in the 1925 State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Evolution’s sway extended steadily over the life sciences following the modern synthesis, wherein the likes of J. B. S. Haldane and Ronald Fisher reconciled the work of Darwin with that of proto-geneticist, Gregor Mendel. 1 LIFE HISTORY THEORY: AN OVERVIEW IN ABSTRACT 3 For many social scientists, however, evolution was established as some- thing to respect, but was also subject to neglect. Evolution remained a rarifed background theory that seemed of little import to the questions that most social scientists were absorbed in asking and answering. A general reading of evolutionary theory provided the social scientist with some direction concerning human universals, but less so of particulars.