Gessler, N. 1989. Part 3. The sciences of Man, pp. 195-198. In: G.G.E. Scudder & N. Gessler (eds.), The Outer Shores. Based on the proceedings of the Queen Charlotte Islands First International Symposium, University of British Columbia, August 1984. 327 pp.
Part 3.
THE SCIENCES OF MAN
Nicholas Gessler
11152 Lucerne Avenue
Culver City, California, USA 90230
The arduous search for an objective truth and a world outlook has built a method and theory of knowing which has come to be called the philosophy of science. Its vigorous scepticism, its repeated tests of its own truthfulness, and its quests for logical consistency and predictive ability arose over 2000 years ago in ancient Greece:
"When human life lay grovelling in all men's sight, crushed to the earth under the dead weight of superstition whose grim features loured menacingly upon mortals from the four quarters of the sky, a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge. Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor the lightening flash and the growling menace of the sky. Rather they quickened his manhood, so that he, first of all men, longed to smash the constraining locks of nature's doors. The vital vigour of his mind prevailed. He ventured far out beyond the flaming ramparts of the world and voyaged in mind throughout infinity. Returning victorious, he proclaimed to us what can be and what cannot: how a limit is fixed to the power of everything and an immovable frontier post. Therefore superstition in its turn lies crushed beneath his feet, and we by his triumph are lifted level with the skies."
Lucretius (ca. 55 B.C., p. 29)
Lucretius, in this vivid account, extolled the new thinking and soaring spirit of scientific discovery. The sheer exhilaration of fresh insight, forged and tempered by experience and experiment, is the essence of the sciences. Its quest is to understand our place in the universe, to understand its evolution, and our own. Intellectual exploration, unfettered by custom, and accountable only to reality, is a reward in itself. But beyond the personal satisfaction it may bring to its practitioners, it has far more reaching consequences for society. For scientific knowledge brings not only understanding, but the ability to affect changes. It brings innovation and it brings choice.
Not just nature, but man and his society, can be brought into the domain of science. The earliest critical study of human history was written by an Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun. His words are as timely now as they were when they were composed over 600 years ago:
"History is a discipline widely cultivated among nations and races. It is eagerly sought after. The men in the street, the ordinary people, aspire to know it. Kings and leaders vie for it.
Both the learned and the ignorant are able to understand it. For on the surface history is no more than information about political events, dynasties, and occurrences of the remote past, elegantly presented and spiced with proverbs. It serves to entertain large, crowded gatherings and brings to us an understanding of human affairs. It shows how changing conditions affected (human affairs), how certain dynasties came to occupy an ever wider space in the world, and how they settled the earth until they heard the call and their time was up.
The inner meaning of history, on the other hand, involves speculation and an attempt to get at the truth, subtle explanation of the causes and origins of existing things, and deep knowledge ' of the how and why of events. History, therefore, is firmly rooted in philosophy. It deserves to be accounted a branch of it."
Khaldun, 1377-81 A.D., p. 5.
Each of us, as individuals, as groups, or as different cultures, categorizes his experiences in different ways. Each of us regards himself, his group, or his culture as the quintessence of humanity. Yet a perspective is needed to rise up above this relativistic morass, a sea of seemingly equally compelling yet conflicting ideas, while still remaining sensitive to each view. Importantly, Khaldun gained that perspective, by distinguishing the "surface" of history form its "inner meaning." In thus uniting it with philosophy, he set the groundwork for social science.
The Nineteenth Century brought revolutions to industry and trade, and with them a revolution in ideas. New varieties of flora and fauna, and different peoples and cultures were being discovered, as was time itself. This diversity of life, and life's great antiquity in earth's history, implied change and evolution. Fact contradicted the divine status of man. The strongholds of idealist philosophy were retreating before an enlightened materialism, aided by Charles Darwin's cautiously presented theory of evolution by natural selection. His abstract, On the Origin of Species, appeared in 1859. Fearing idealist reaction, he withheld his views on human evolution until 1871, when he published them in the Descent of Man. But the intellectual climate was ripe, and his colleagues had already anticipated him. To the same end, one contemporary took a much bolder approach. Karl Marx outlined a theory of human cultural evolution which stressed the primacy of technology and economics in understanding human thought and behaviour:
"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."
Marx, 1859, p. 503.
Nature's investment of energy in food resources, and our own investment of culture in technological products, largely determine which economic options are open to our species. Our thinking is an embellished facade, built on a solid economic foundation. But precisely what role do our ideas play in initiating change, and in coping with change once it has begun?
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising (sic) themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language."
Marx, 1852, p. 398.
We are not as free as we would like to be in setting a course for our futures. Our vision is incomplete, and our favourite plans are often dashed on the shores of change. How can we expect otherwise? For our experiences are derived from the past, and we are slow to understand our new circumstances. Though often inappropriate, we inevitably seek old and familiar solutions to new and unfamiliar challenges.
Today we recognize the inevitability of change and the role of culture in responding to it or bringing it about. Experience has shown us that the natural environment has a limiting and largely determining effect, and that in order to understand the causes of culture change, it is usually effective to look forst for changes in the environment. The causes of culture change can also be internal, and it has again been efficacious to look next for causes in the more material aspects of human culture. It is convenient to divide the spectrum of human cultural experience into three parts, each progressively more distant from the natural environment, each progressively less material and more ephemeral, and each progressively less likely to be a major determining cause of culture change. A culture's technology is the major influence for change, consisting of the materials, tools, facilities, and industries which it produces. A culture's economy is next in influence for change, comprising the peoples' behaviourial patterns in marriage, exchange, work, and other interactions. Finally, a culture's ideology is the least influence for change, being man's thoughts, language, beliefs, religion, mores, and arts. This strategy recognizes the strength of a culture's investment in material works, works which facilitate the flow of matter, energy, and information throughout the society. This strategy does not deny the role played by ephemeral influences for change. Rather it provides a framework in which to study all aspects of human culture, and how they mutually influence one another.
Fig. 1. "Autotem." Pencil drawing by Jim Willer, 1980 (courtesy of Bill Ellis).
The papers which follow illustrate the variety of interests held by social scientists, each explaining different aspects of culture change on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Since the peopling of our islands, some 10,000 years ago, culture has changed with changing natural environments, and with changing strategies of food acquisition. But the most dramatic of these changes have been taking place over the last 200 years. The exchanges between the native Haida culture, based upon fishing, foraging, and hunting, and Western culture, based upon industry and global trade, swiftly and forever altered the course of history on the islands. The introduction of the products of the industrial revolution were probably sufficient to supplant the traditional technology and economy of Haida culture and society, in a scenario that has been repeatedly staged throughout the world. Given the rapid rates of change in industrial civilizations today, the islands will continue to be rocked by ripples in the world economy. Some changes will be welcome, and some changes will not. But even today, the magnitude and direction of these changes are never fully comprehended. In addition to today's subsistence, service, and extractive economies on the islands, efforts to capitalize on the distinctiveness and isolation of the islands, have grown in popularity. Focusing on the islands unique natural and cultural histories, tourism has raised expectations of future economic opportunities.
Fig. 2. "Raven in the 20th Century." Silk-screen print in red and black by Don Yeomans, 1979 (courtesy of Potlatch Arts).
One facet of the Haida culture which has fluoresced through these many changes is its art. Taking its place among the world's great aesthetic traditions, it is fitting to conclude this introduction with two artists' images of the transformation of cultures (Fig. 1 & 2). The aesthetic and the material, art and automobile, rendered in the stylistic traditions of two cultures, serve as a compound dialectic: an ambiguous multifaceted symbolism that is so characteristic of our thinking, and so characteristic of our species.
References
Khaidun, I. (1377-1381 A.D.) 1974. N.J. Dawood (ed.), The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Trans. by F. Rosenthal. Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton. 465 pp.
Lucretius. (ca. 55 B.C.) 1967. The Nature of the Universe. Trans. by R.E. Latham. Penguin Books, Baltimore. 262 pp.
Marx, K. (1852) 1973. The eighteeth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In: Institute of Marxism-Leninism led.), Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, Vol. 1. Progress Pub., Moscow. 596 pp.
Marx, K. (1859) 1973. Preface to a contribution to the critique of political economy. In: Institute of Marxism-Leninism (ed.), Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, Vol. 1. Progress Pub., Moscow. 596 pp.