The Psychic Unity of Mankind
By Niccolo Leo Caldararo
In The Psychic Unity of Mankind, Caldararo writes about how anthropology came into being. Caldararo writes how anthropology was a backlash to colonialism and the colonial powers that dominated the world. When the Europeans went anywhere, they would conquer the land and subjugate the native people. The colonialist just took them as savages. Anthropology was brought about mainly as a way to show that these native people were no less human than the Europeans.
The anthropologist had a fascination with learning about the indigenous people all over the world, especially in the Americas and Africa. The anthropologist came in to try and study and preserve the native people’s way of life. They showed that the native people had a value to their culture as well. Caldararo talked about in class once that history is written by the people that win the wars. The Europeans were always training their children for war, so wherever they went they dominated, killed the leader, took the land, and enslaved the people. The original anthropologist came when slavery was starting to be questioned as something that shouldn’t happen.
Caldararo writes in the first chapter how some of the anthropologist were taken as just promoting their own welfare by being able to write books and make money off of the profits. There was also anthropologist that took the native people as not completely evolved as humans because of their primitive societies. But with all of these controversies, anthropology survived as a creditable science.
In Chapter 2 Professor Caldararo’s focus is cultural relativism. He talks about how people argue both sides of this subject. It seemed as though cultural relativism was about characteristic that are only held in each unique culture. With cultural relativism there is no such thing as some innate divinity within man to function the same way. The anthropologist acknowledges that there are similarities with humans, but the traits very so much form culture to culture that there is not one binding force that makes different cultures synonymous.
The anthropologist point out, with cultural relativism that; yes, all humans have langue, but a lot of these languages are so different, especially when they haven’t had any influence of each other, that there is not one unifying principle. They talk about how the pronunciations of the words can have no similarity to each other, and this would show opposition to any type of anamnesis: Platonic doctrine of innate ideas. Anamnesis was a big thing in the European societies because of dogma that was required of the Christian societies. All of the colonialist would always use religion for the justification of dominating other indigenous people. Without one unifying deity they would have a hard time justifying their subjugation of others. Some other arguments apposing these innate concepts, that were held within each man, were things like the color spectrum. In different cultures they would have simpler
schemes of colors. Some cultures in Africa only had three main colors.
The use of mathematics was something that would encourage the concept of an innate unity, for most cultures would use a ten based system. One of the systems that isn’t ten based is the sexigesimal, which is a system that is based on the number 60. Clocks are considered this, and it sprung from the gnomon. The sexigesimal was something that was universal in ancient India and ancient Greece, but there could have been other cultures that came up with other types of numerical systems.
Another argument that supports some type of innate unity would be music. Caldararo was written about how all of the cultures that were researched had some type of musical ability. With all of this it would seem that there was some type of unifying principles within all of the human race, but this was because the cultures were also dominated and shaped by their own environment. It seems as though Caldararo was showing how the arguments on both sides of the topic are valid.
In chapter 2 Caldararo was also talking about the justification of the supremacist. There would be those that took the other cultures as stuck in evolution. They were primitive and it was a justification for the colonial powers to dominate. This also led to the eugenics, which was meant to purify the white race.
In chapter 3 Caldararo writes about those that doubt and appose anthropology. Hymes was one of the main opponents that Caldararo refers to. Hymes seems to be lacking on his understanding of what anthropology is. Caldararo writes how Hymes gets ethnography and anthropology mixed up. He sources opinions in his writing that are not substantiated and are misunderstood. Hymes, as well as Willis, talks about how anthropologist were just colonial powers that were doing research to benefit themselves. They were stating that anthropologist weren’t interested in the truth, they just wanted to advance their own ideas. It seemed as though Hymes and Willis had their own White Supremacist ideas, and that is why they were opposed to anthropology. It was as though they were trying to discredit the science.
The people that were opposed to anthropology would site anatomist that believed that indigenous people were stuck in evolution. The “savages” is how they referred to them. They didn’t want to give any credence to any of the indigenous cultures that the anthropologist did. Their basis for rejecting Boas and other credible anthropologist was Christianity, and the superiority of the white race, with the way that the Europeans were able to dominate everywhere they went.
Hsu was someone that objected to the anthropologist Malinowski, and Caldararo writes how Hsu misrepresents what Malinowski had written. Hsu’s main argument is to do things like judge his character by stating the Malinowski was getting some type of sexual gratification by doing research on indigenous people’s sex conduct. Hsu also says that if it were to be truly research it would be objective and Malinowski would have found a way of doing the research without interacting with the indigenous people.
One of the amazing things that Malinowski was able to discover was how people had different concepts of things like “love, hate, despair, rage, hope and anxiety” (p 51). This is something that most would think is universal to the human nature, but Malinowski shows how this is not so. It is the Europeans that enforce their concepts of these ideas upon all of the cultures that it dominated.
Caldararo’s main premise of chapter 3 was that anthropology was either a widely misunderstood science, or that people, politicians and supremacists, would distort what the anthropologist were doing to benefit their own political agenda.
In chapter 4 professor Caldararo writes about some of the objection that people were having towards two of the anthropologist: Margaret Mead and Freedman. The objections that were raised with these two important anthropologist were the facts that they might not have had objective research. People would say that they incorporated too much of their own points of view: subjectivity. This brought upon a lot of skepticism to the science of anthropology, as though it couldn’t even be considered a science.
In chapter 5 the main question that is explored is: are there any universal characteristics to humans that are innately encoded into the genetics of all humans, or is everything determined by environment? This one of the main questions when it comes to anthropology. One of the anthropologist that was studying the Hopi tribes was coming to the conclusion after close observation that the Hopi had no concept of time as in the European societies. If it was true that the Hopi had no concept of time, which everyone would agree to be a basic idea that is innately built into all humans, then this would argue for the fact that humans are determined by their environment and not genetic traits. It was later discovered by another anthropologist that the Hopi, in fact, did have a concept of time that was very similar to the European concept, and this was something that gave support to the theory that humans do have some type of basic universals.
In the second half of chapter 5 there was the hypothesis of adaptation into environment. They were noticing that humans, once the acclimate of a particular environment, can have changes in behaviors that they didn’t have before, but were found within that environment that they acclimated too.
There was this example of a man who moved into a new environment where there was someone that would do things like sleepwalking. This man never did sleepwalking before, but once he got into this new environment he took on some of the behaviors that were found in this environment. It is the adoption of these new characteristics that support the theory of the environment determining behavior, so chapter 5 was showing arguments which supported both conclusions. One was that environment determines behavior, and the other was that genetics give rise to the belief that there are innate qualities that are with in all humans and are universal through different societies.
Caldararo writes in chapter 6 about how there are two main anthropologists that have the theory of epigenesis. Epigenesis has to do with the genetic makeup of humans being universal qualities which are innate. These two anthropologists believe that genetics are responsible for some of the innate characteristics that are in all humans, and for a matter of fact, in all life. The fact that there are determining factors that relate humans to other animals goes against some of the theories of anthropology, for they take humans as above animals in the way that our minds are so superior to them.
With epigenics they agree that environment plays a role, but there is also the determining factor of genes. The genes are responsible for the basic senses that all humans have, and all life has, but the way that those senses develop, and the way that they are used, is shaped through the environment. Everyone can see, hear, touch, taste, and think. It is how these senses are used that determines the development of a person. There was the theory that came with children and how they interact with their mother, mainly, that shaped the development of the individual. All of these conclusions were supporting theories, such as Freud’s psychological determinism, on how humans don’t have free will. So, the conclusion would be that there are innate qualities that are built into humans, and some would say all life, that are shared, so universal, but these qualities are shaped and sculpted by the individual’s environment.
Chapter 7 is about the epigenic constructs that all life has, not just humans. Caldararo writes about how it is not just humans that can come up with artificial societies. Bees, beaver, birds, and others living organisms are all able to construct shelters. Bees and ants live in societies, so this would show that there are epigenic rules to all life. It also gives evidence to how much humans have in common with other life, which was something that a lot of anthropologist argued against.
Some anthropologist wanted to take humans as unique in the way that they behave and are able to build and use cognition. They way that other life is able to achieve things that, humans thought for the longest time was exclusive only to humans, give evidence against some of the ideas about how unique humans are.
With the epigenic theory one of the problems is that if all thought and information is built directly into humans, then the Mayans would have been able to reconstruct the langue that was destroyed by the Spanish when they came and conquered. This would show that not everything is built into humans on an innate level. Some of the constructs might be, but there is still and environmental role.
One of the concept or stipulations was how Natural Selection played a role in the development of human behavior and even societies. The concept was the societies change though adaptation and natural selection as well. This has to do with the individual and the way that the brain develops in its lifetime. There is the mutation component as well, and with the mutation they see how humans develop.
There was an anthropologist that pointed out how humans develop through natural selection and mutation just like animals. This was showing some type of cultural determinism because they could see how animal behavior was determined. One of the arguments that a lot of people make is how different humans are than animals, and this is shown in the human ability to make choices.
With the cultural determinism, natural selection, and mutation the anthropologist could argue that the humans developed is just like animals. They could see that there was difference in the brain, and some speculated that this is what brought about choice, but they also compared the development of human brain to those of other animals, like rats, to see that it needed the simulation of the culture, or the society, and this is what encourages the belief epigenetics.
In book two Caldararo is combating the idea, which has been prevalent in humans from the beginning of time, that humans are so unique compared to animals. Caldararo is pointing out how there are other living things on earth that show such behaviors as the ability to form complex societies. An idea like this can go against much of the dogma that is in human nature, for humans need to take themselves as unique, but complex societies have been found and researched in insects such as bees, wasps, and ants. This is something that goes against most of the original thoughts about how people define themselves as so much different then animals, or other life, yet it would give a strong and wonderful support to the theory of evolution. The ability to form complex societies is called laterality, and some of the research that has given strong opposition to such things as creationism, is the animals have the ability to laterality as well. This is seen in insects and other hominins.
There is also the evidence of body to brain ratios. One of the arguments to show how unique humans are, was that it was thought that humans have the most unique brains. It is shown that humans don’t have the highest body to brain ratio. It has also been observed that whales have a more complex brain structure: the tissue is more elaborate. All of this supports the theory that humans aren’t so unique.
With this Caldararo write about the question: what is unique? It seems as though different scientist have different ideas of the concept of what makes uniqueness. This leaves it as an open debate on how special humans are. It is noted that other animals, even fish, are shown to use tools. It was thought for a long time that the usage of tools is what made humans unique, but we see how a lot of different life on the planet uses tools. I would say that it is not tool use, but the complexity of the tools. That and that ability to develop and constant changing of tool use through technology. I don’t know if any animals, that have been witnessed, developing new tools, but that would be a fascinating discovery if it was found.
There was the concept of sexuality, and how humans have a lot in common with other animals when it comes to the female ovulation and male ejaculation. It was hard to research because humans have such varied sexual habits, but some similarities were found in the bonobo chimpanzees. There was also a book that was written by a lady who was talking about how rape is something that is natural when it comes to humans. They saw that lot of animals have these overwhelming sexual desires which are not exclusively human.
One of the other arguments against human uniqueness it the concept of langue being specifically a human trait. There is research that is done which shows this not to be true. They notice that birds have unique songs that are held to the species. Apes are able to sing and have distinct calls. One that I didn’t see mentions was whales. I’ve read about how killer whales have unique songs that are exclusive to their herd. This is something that shoots down the idea of human uniqueness.
There were also those that argued that animal’s behavior was determined, and if they had the ability to comprehend things, just as humans, then why wouldn’t they have taken humans as a threat and attach us, as humans do to other humans in war. This was seen as a fallacy because animals will attach humans, like wolves, and bees will attach anything which tries to attach their nest. It was also shown that ants can infiltrate human living spaces and render them inadequate. I would say that one of the consequences of being at the top of the food chain is the ability for humans to defend themselves better than other living species. I wouldn’t say that animals don’t take us as a threat, they just don’t have as great an ability to fight back.
It was the main purpose of the second book to show how much humans have in common with other life. It is important for us to see that we do. Evolution is a widely accepted theory when it comes to science, and in fact anyone who is a scientist should believe it: with the exception of the Republican candidate for President Ben Carson. Evolution is important to understand all life, and when humans have an understanding of all life, they have a better understanding of themselves. It was shown in book two that animals form societies, use tools, have a use for langue, as well as other human traits. I would also argue that humans are unique, but no more unique than any other life form, for it is proven that we all depend on each other for existence.
Book one was fascinating in that it was showing how different human cultures can be from each other, and how there is a need to understand every culture, not just the European. Book two was about how much humans have in common with all life, and how one of the biggest misconceptions, enforced by dogma and ego, is that humans are so unique when it comes to other life on the planet. It was interesting to see Caldararo juxtapose these two concepts, which seem to almost oppose each other: how human societies are unique when it comes to each other, but how we have so much in common with all life. This shows the necessity for the science of anthropology. The Psychic Unity of Mankind, by Niccolo Caldararo, is an important read that lays the premise for anthropology and the need for its continued development
