and sociocultural evolution.
Plan:
1) Theories of human origin.
2) Biological and social in man.
1) Theories of human origin.
People have long been concerned about the question of their origin.
The most ancient is the religious idea of the origin of man. Religion is characterized by belief in the divine creation of life and man. According to religious views, man differs from representatives of the animal world in that he receives an immortal soul from God.
In the second half of the 19th century, an evolutionary theory of the origin of man arose, associated with the revolution carried out by Charles Darwin in biology. Darwin put forward the idea of the appearance of different species of animals during evolutionary development. The basis of evolution, according to Darwin, is natural selection. He saw the main reason for the variability of organisms in changes in environmental living conditions. In the process of struggle for existence, those animals survive that are most adaptable to changing conditions of existence. Darwinists compared the anatomy, primarily of the human and ape brains, and examined the fossil skulls of extinct human “ancestors.” In the structure and physiological characteristics of all the studied objects, features of undoubted similarity were revealed. As a result, it was concluded that man descended from a monkey, which was then transformed into the theory of the origin of man from a now extinct species of monkey through a series of intermediate stages.
Modern science is critical of a number of aspects of Darwin's theory, but there is no other, more convincing theory of evolution yet. Darwinism first introduced man as a product of biological evolution.
Religious and evolutionary concepts of human origins have been seriously criticized for their one-sidedness. It was necessary to find a third way in studying the problem of human origins. This was the path taken by F. Engels, who outlined the labor theory of the origin of man in his work “The Role of Labor in the Process of Transformation of Ape into Man.” On the one hand, in his opinion, the emergence of man was influenced by nature. On the other hand, the emergence of man was facilitated by labor, which became the basis for the existence of human society. Labor activity, as Engels believed, is inherent only to people, and it was this activity that was the main reason for the separation of man from the animal kingdom. Work contributed to the development of communication between people, united them, and articulate speech emerged. Work and articulate speech led to the improvement of the human brain. Thanks to Engels's theory, man appeared as a product of not only biological, but also social evolution.
According to modern scientists, the transformation of apes (hominids) into people could not have been an instantaneous, one-act event. Anthropogenesis, i.e. the process of human formation and development, was of a long evolutionary nature and was inextricably linked with sociogenesis - the process of formation and development of society. These are two sides of a process that is uniform in nature - anthroposociogenesis, which lasted 3-3.5 million years.
The problem of human origin continued to excite scientists and philosophers in the twentieth century. Representatives of philosophical anthropology M. Scheler, A. Gehlen, H. Plesner had a huge influence on theoretical thought, who concluded that man is not the crown of creation at all, but according to the criteria of animal existence, “man is a biologically insufficient creature”, “unspecialized” and “unfinished”, with weakly expressed instincts.
Trying to explain this phenomenon, many scientists argued that the influence of labor activity and collectivity of being on the process of evolutionary development of organisms was expressed not only in the fact that new bodily and mental properties and abilities were acquired, but also in the death of those animal means that prevented the formation of new ones. , actually human relations. First of all, this affected those organs and systems of the body that were responsible for behavior. There are also scientists who believe that the weak expression of instincts in humans is not caused by the development of sociality, but is initially of natural origin.
From the fact of the imperfection of human biological nature, the German philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century, E. Cassirer, deduces the phenomenon of culture. Man as a biological being was doomed to extinction; he was sentenced to search for extreme methods of survival. Without a clear instinctive program, not knowing how to behave in specific natural conditions, man unconsciously began to look closely at other animals, more firmly rooted in nature. As if transforming into one or another creature, man eventually not only survived, but gradually developed a certain system of guidelines that built on top of the instincts, complementing them in its own way. This is how a life program, a culture, created by man himself, appears. An animal acts on an external stimulus directly; in a person, the response must also undergo mental processing. Man no longer lives simply in the physical, but also in the symbolic world. This symbolic world of mythology, language, art, religion is constantly evolving, changing the person himself. Thus, man is a product not only of biological and social, but also of cultural evolution.
2) Biological and social in man.
The biological and social in man are fused together. As a biological being, man belongs to the higher mammals. The biological nature of a person is manifested in his anatomy and physiology. As a biological species, humans have circulatory, muscular, nervous, skeletal and other systems. While inferior to animals in the development of individual organs and in many natural qualities, man surpasses them in his potential capabilities. Its biological properties are not strictly programmed, which makes it possible to adapt to various living conditions. The biological in humans does not exist in its pure form; it is socially conditioned, which manifests itself, for example, in changes in the birth rate, infant mortality, etc.
Man as a social being is inextricably linked with society. A person becomes a person only by entering into social relations, into communication with other people. An individual, for whatever reason, cut off from society from birth, remains an animal. Man is not only a product of socio-historical development, but also its subject, changing the environment through his activities. The social essence of a person is manifested through such useful properties as the ability and readiness for socially useful work, consciousness and intelligence, freedom and responsibility, etc.
Control questions:
1. What theories of human origins do you know?
2. What is anthropogenesis, sociogenesis, anthroposociogenesis?
3. What is a “cultural phenomenon”?
4. Biological in man.
5. Social in man.
The famous popularizer of a healthy lifestyle, Paul Bragg, * argued that man is the only creature in the world who does not die a natural death; all other animals live as long as they are predetermined by their genetic program (unless they become victims of predators). P. Bragg saw the reason for this situation in the fact that the way of life of modern man is far from the one that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens on Earth. This comparison “animal – human” is not accidental, since it emphasizes that man is a logical continuation (and at this stage of evolution, the final product) of the development of the animal world.
* P. Bragg is the author of an original health care system, which includes, as prerequisites, a full motor regimen, a balanced diet with a priority of raw plant foods, psychotraining and psychoregulation, and the use of the healing powers of nature. Tragically died at the age of 95.
Human belonging to animals is determined by evolution and is fixed genetically. This is supported by the commonality of the physiological mechanisms of life and the fundamental principles of the morphology of organs and systems in humans and higher animals, the presence of a number of common diseases, etc. Many biological laws established for animals are confirmed when applied to humans. Thus, scientists extend to people the generally accepted method in biology for calculating the average life expectancy of a biological species - it is 5-6 times longer than the age period characteristic of increasing body length. If we take into account that a person’s growth completely stops at the age of 20–25, then he should live, according to these calculations, 120–150 years.
How can we explain the fact that people live much shorter than this period, that is, they are not able to fully implement their genetic program?
The life activity of animals is built on the basis of a constant struggle for existence, which requires the mobilization of all adaptation mechanisms to maintain and preserve life. Man also had to fight for survival. He had to fight the elemental forces of nature, the danger emanating from the surrounding world and from other people, fight for food, to maintain his thermal stability... And all this forced a person to be in constant readiness for high functionality. Such a person ate mainly immediate prey, which was natural plant or animal food with its own natural combination of natural substances.
Thus, at the beginning of his existence on Earth, man lived in accordance with those natural conditions that constituted his evolutionary past.
However, in the process of the development of civilization, the form of organization of human life has also changed. His main efforts were aimed, on the one hand, at liberation from hard physical labor, and on the other, at creating increasingly comfortable living conditions and satisfying the ever-increasing needs for pleasure. In achieving these goals, the person took several paths:
1. Began to create tools and means of production that work on the energy of natural sources and animals, making work easier and obtaining the benefits of life.
2. He began to create more and more artificial, but with a high level of comfort, conditions in which his life activities take place; In nutrition, highly purified and artificially synthesized foods, additives, etc. began to occupy an increasing place.
3. He began to transform nature, that is, to adapt it to himself, to his needs and comfort. All this led to a change in nature itself, that is, those natural conditions that formed the human body.
Thus, the changed natural environment and living conditions increasingly came into conflict with those adaptation mechanisms that nature itself, in its original form, created in the process of its development in humans. Naturally, such a confrontation cannot pass without leaving a mark, not only for nature, but also for human health.
The most important result of such changes in human life is the fact that in modern conditions he receives material benefits, provides thermal stability and protection from harmful factors not through physical activity and readiness to adapt to natural living conditions, but to the greatest extent through the social assessment of his labor and the ability to adapt to social living conditions.
The development of civilization has made noticeable changes in human biorhythmology. Over millions of years of biogenetic development, animals and humans were subject to daily changes in illumination set on Earth by the Sun. This is what formed our so-called circadian rhythm, when the maximum of vital activity and metabolism occurs during the daylight hours, and the minimum during the dark. The situation changed largely with the advent of electric lighting, when the time limits of human wakefulness expanded significantly. However, this did not abolish the innate subordination of the human body to the natural circadian rhythm, and therefore, in the dark, especially in the evening, a contradiction arises between the increase in sleep inhibition in the central nervous system, on the one hand, and the high demands on the level of performance imposed at this time. period of work, on the other. This leads to an increase in tension in the central nervous system and disruption of the relationships between the nervous processes in it. If such a regime is maintained for a long time, this naturally leads to disruption of the higher nervous activity and human psyche, and hence to various diseases.
Modern life is also associated with an exceptionally large flow of varied information that a person receives, processes and assimilates. In production, where people have freed themselves from hard physical labor, technological processes are mainly focused on mastering and processing information and making quick operational decisions in response to a changed situation. The increased speed of human movement within a locality, region, country, or world determines an increasing number of interpersonal contacts, and to a large extent - with strangers. The brain of a modern person must be in constant readiness to accept, process information and issue a solution with minimal muscle tension.
According to some data, every 10–12 years the volume of newly acquired information in the world corresponds to that which was accumulated over the entire previous history of mankind. This must mean that current generations of children need to learn at least four times more information than their parents did at the same age, and 16 times more than their grandparents! But the brain of modern man has remained almost the same as it was 100, 1000, and 10,000 years ago. The time during which it is necessary to master this multiply increased flow of information has not changed either. From here it becomes clear what a huge load the brain of our contemporary has to perform.
Thus, the process of civilization was accompanied by an increasingly clear tendency towards a decrease in human motor activity and an increase in the load on his brain. This led to a violation of the relationship between these aspects of life that had developed in evolution, when muscle activity was the final, executive link of mental processes, that is, there was a direct relationship between them. The shift in these relationships in modern man has led to an increase in mental stress. This, in turn, affected the relationship between individual periods and phases of sleep, which was designed to give the body not only passive rest, but also to “sort out” and assimilate the information received, freeing the brain to perceive its new flows. With a heavy load on the brain, sleep does not give a feeling of complete rest and the brain begins a new period of work, not yet freed from the previously received information. Naturally, this leads to an even greater increase in mental stress and distortion of the nervous regulation of the activity of vital systems. Therefore, it is not surprising that many diseases are a natural consequence of such disorders. Thus, according to WHO experts, it is with disorders of a person’s mental state that those three groups of diseases that currently account for the overwhelming majority of total mortality in civilized countries are associated: diseases of the cardiovascular system, malignant changes and diabetes mellitus.
Finally, about nutrition. For many millions of years, human ancestors were vegetarians, and for the last two million years, prehistoric man and his predecessors had a diet rich in protein, relatively rich in fat, and usually low in carbohydrates. In this food, natural complexes of biologically active substances and the ratios of their components created by nature were almost completely preserved. It is important that these substances were the “building blocks” that became the structural elements of each cell of the body. And ultimately, it was the changes in these biologically active substances that determined the evolution itself.
At present, the desire to make food tasty and visually attractive forces the manufacturer, in the process of technological processing, not only to remove the necessary substances from it during cleaning and subject it to heat, but also to add sugar, salt, dyes, flavors and other additives to products that are palatable. , which, when included in metabolic processes, disrupt their normal course and cause structural changes in tissues and organs. Purified, tasty and outwardly attractive food, which also has a high energy value, is pleasant to the consumer and does not require thorough chewing (note that this circumstance is one of the serious reasons for impaired blood supply to the teeth and destruction of their structure) - therefore, it is understandable that the consumer wants to prolong the pleasure and eat more. As the results of numerous studies show, more than 60% of the Russian population suffers from overweight and obesity, despite the fact that the nutritional structure itself is not balanced and is characterized by a deficiency of vitamins, microelements and other biologically important substances.
Thermal processing of food itself causes many consequences that disrupt the structure and nature of nutrition. It should be noted that in the process of such processing, the primary structure of most natural products (primarily proteins, which are destroyed at 46–48°C) and natural complexes (in particular, lipoprotein complexes of milk) is disrupted. In addition, as a result of boiling fats, quite aggressive carcinogens can appear in them. And finally, the entry of hot food into the digestive tract (especially the esophagus and stomach) leads to the destruction of their mucous layer, which is a fairly effective protective barrier towards the underlying tissues.
Thus, it can be noted the following serious contradictions between man’s evolutionary past and his current way of life:
1. A decrease in the motor activity of modern humans below the level that ensured the survival of the body in evolution, with the development of physical inactivity.
2. A dangerous contradiction between the ever-decreasing motor activity and the ever-increasing load on the brain of modern man with the occurrence of overstrain of his central nervous system, higher nervous activity and psyche.
3. Comfortable living conditions with a decrease in the functional capabilities of the body and the development of detraining of adaptation mechanisms.
4. The increasingly predominant importance in nutrition of processed foods, characterized by the absence of many natural components, disruption of natural food complexes and the presence of a large number of unnatural and synthesized substances.
5. Living conditions that are far from those that have developed and existed in evolution and throughout the vast majority of human existence on Earth and that exclude the struggle for existence as the main condition for the preservation of life.
6. Increasingly, the exclusion of direct human participation in the technological processes of production of material goods: if during almost the entire period of existence a person was both a producer and a consumer of these goods, then poor health did not give him the opportunity to survive - only the strongest, the healthiest survived; At present, having transferred the work of producing material goods and the concern for preserving life to machines and mechanisms, man has become only a consumer - and the importance of his health for preserving life has sharply decreased.
3.1.2. Biological and social in human nature – unity and contradiction
The appearance of man was a logical step in the evolution of the animal world on Earth. It embodied all the best that nature has accumulated during its development. At the same time, man was a fundamentally new phenomenon in nature, which immediately placed him above all other representatives of the animal world. The essence of the difference between man and the latter can be reduced to the following provisions.
The transition of the monkey to upright walking freed the forelimbs (now upper) from bearing support functions. Thanks to this, man was able to give them a new purpose, in particular the manufacture of tools. The subtle differentiated movements performed with the hands gave impetus to the development of the cerebral hemispheres, especially the frontal lobes. The further development of mankind was accompanied by the desire to form communities that could more successfully withstand the elements of nature, the aggression of other people and the animal world, and carry out joint labor activities. The need to coordinate joint actions led man to the need for communication and the emergence of speech. This, in turn, affected the structural and functional organization of the brain, in the cortex of which centers responsible for the perception, awareness and reproduction of words as a “signal of signals” appeared (I.P. Pavlov). The mastery of speech communication contributed to the emergence in man of a new, second alarm system, which, unlike animals, allowed him not only to perceive direct signals of reality, but also to abstract from them. The latter made it possible for a person to:
– analyze and extrapolate ongoing events and observed phenomena;
– use information received from other people;
– transfer information and accumulated experience to offspring;
– plan your life and your actions.
The emergence of communities capable of communicating using abstract signals not only allowed man to occupy a special place in the animal world, but also became the beginning of a process unprecedented in nature that led to the emergence, as V.I. Vernadsky, “world mind” (noosphere).
Communities of people became more and more numerous. At the same time, each member of the community increasingly realized that his safety and well-being largely depended on other people. Apparently, it was from this time that a completely new phenomenon arose, which complemented the natural conditions of existence and can be considered as a social environment.
The social environment is a cultural-psychological (informational, including political) climate, intentionally and/or unintentionally, consciously and/or unconsciously created for the individual, social groups and humanity as a whole by the people themselves and composed of the influence of people as socio-biological beings on each other in groups directly and with the help of the means of material, energy and information influence invented by them. Such means include economic security (food, housing, etc.), civil liberties (conscience, expression of will, equality, etc.), the degree of confidence in the future (the presence or absence of fear for life, a serious crisis, hunger, crime, etc.). ), moral standards of communication and work activity, the opportunity to use cultural and material values or the awareness of such an opportunity, the possibility of joining the standard social group for a given person, the provision of a socio-psychological spatial minimum that allows one to avoid neuropsychological stress from overpopulation, the comfort of the service sector and much more.
The social environment is integrated with nature into the totality of the human environment. Factors from all environments surrounding a person are closely interconnected and constitute objective and subjective aspects "quality of life". At the same time, the objective is inseparable from the subjective, although a person may not even be aware of this deep connection. It is important to note that none of these environments can be thrown out and replaced by any other - they only enhance or weaken the effect of each other.
The interdependence of people in the social environment has led to the need to develop new conditions for their relationships, since the dropout from the general activity, the failure of one of the members of the social environment, adversely affects the social environment itself and each of its members. That is why the law of the struggle for existence in the human community ceased to play a dominant role, but more and more conventions regulating relationships between people began to appear. This found its expression in ethical, moral, religious, cultural rituals, rules, taboos, and later in legal and other acts establishing the norms of such relationships.
A person is born with a ready-made genotypic program, within which it can be realized in ontogenesis with varying degrees of efficiency. However, the socialization of a person in this program, even despite the genetically determined ability to speak, has not found its expression, and therefore serious contradictions arise between his biological past and social present. That is why, as I.I. pointed out. Brekhman, “the contradictory phenomenon of man consists of the dialectical unity of many opposites inherent in him: between the natural and human principles, biological and social, material and spiritual, personal and social, etc.” Recognition of the social essence of man, along with his original biological origin, forces the development of a health methodology to take seriously his natural beginning, the patterns of individual development, in order to then, through the selection of certain social measures, contribute to the most effective implementation of the capabilities inherent in the genome.
The development of human society was accompanied by further processes and aspects of socialization. In this regard, the emergence of social motives for activity in a person, the emergence, along with biological ones, of new needs, among which love, respect, recognition, etc. should be mentioned, deserve special attention. Such needs are not related and not focused on ensuring vital activity and preserving life, but are aimed at satisfying personal and social aspirations: career, welfare, sex, etc. This reorientation of behavioral motives could not but affect a person’s realization of his genome.
This circumstance is most clearly manifested in the distortion of stress mechanisms. In animals, it serves as the most important means of adaptation to life-threatening conditions, helping to cope with emerging critical situations through movement. In humans, while the physiological mechanisms of stress are common to animals, the conditions for its occurrence and implementation are noticeably different. Firstly, as has already been shown, stress in people is most often associated not with the struggle for survival, but with social motives. Secondly, due to various reasons, a person in the overwhelming majority of cases fails to end stress with movement - and it is not surprising that with a huge number of conditions that provoke stress, a person’s mental tension increases during the day.
It has already been noted that the overwhelming majority of production technological processes are aimed at increasingly freeing a person from physical activity and entrusting him with the function of controlling these processes, that is, again we are talking about a decrease in the motor component and an increase in the load on the central nervous system and psyche. At the same time, the responsibility of each employee for the entire technological cycle, which sometimes employs thousands of people, increases many times over. Awareness of this responsibility makes clear the degree of his mental stress, since one incorrectly made decision in response to a changed production situation can lead to disruption of the entire technological process and to the inability to obtain the final product at a significant cost of human and material resources.
The social status of man ultimately changed his relationship with nature, of which, at the same time, he himself is a part. While the evolution of the animal world is based on the emergence of increasingly sophisticated adaptation mechanisms to changing conditions of existence, man began to transform nature itself, trying to adapt it to his needs. The contradictions that arise in this case between the relatively conservative mechanisms of adaptation formed in evolution and the sharply changing conditions of existence of modern man lead to tension and then to the breakdown of these adaptation devices.
Currently, people live mainly in conditions artificially created by them for what would seem to be their own well-being. But, as F. Engels rightly pointed out, a person first of all gets the result he expected, and secondly, thirdly, etc. - those that he did not foresee, but nevertheless whose significance for life is extremely great. The harmful consequences of environmental changes in the modern world for human health have already been noted; here we allow ourselves to dwell on that aspect of the problem that directly connects the environmental situation and the lifestyle of modern people.
Currently, more than 70% of the Russian population lives in cities and many of them live in megacities with a million people each. In such a city, a person’s life activity is regulated in many respects and is focused on coordinating his regime with the life activity of other people with whom he is connected by family ties, joint professional activities, transport, neighborhood, etc. In addition, regardless of the person’s prevailing daily biorhythm, “larks” , both “pigeons” and “owls” are forced to get up in the morning at the same time, dictated by their work or study schedule, go to bed taking into account the television program, the schedule of their family members, etc. Thus, a person has less and less time left during which he could be left to himself and live in accordance with his personal and typological characteristics. That is why the accelerated pace of city life, the “adjustment” of one’s life activities to strict social and professional regulations have led to the fact that, as psychologists note, urban living conditions lead to a lag in a person’s emotional development and intellectual growth. It is not surprising, therefore, that, according to WHO, over the last decade the incidence of neuroses in the world has increased 24 times. In our country, the active introduction of urban living conditions into the socio-economic and everyday infrastructure of the village is already leading to a noticeable intensification of neuroticism at the expense of the rural population.
Academician N.M. Amosov, in his analysis of the health problem, notes that a person at the end of the 20th century is faced with three vices: the accumulation of negative emotions without physical exercise, overeating and physical inactivity (or, as it is also called, “sitting in a hurry”). It is with the last two circumstances that acceleration is associated - the accelerated physical development of the child (in particular, an earlier and more significant increase in body length and weight). However, at the same time, life support systems (cardiovascular, respiratory, etc.) remain at the same functional level and, thus, are not able to fully meet the needs of a physically larger organism. This circumstance is aggravated by the poorer and altered emotionality of modern man.
So, the social and biological evolution of man appears in the unity of its common and contradictory features. However, a person cannot be protected from the development of civilization, the general tendency of which is to create maximum comfort with minimal muscle expenditure and ever-increasing demands on nervous activity and the human psyche. In these conditions, efforts, and primarily through valeological approaches, must be made to ensure human health, taking into account precisely these changing and increasingly complex factors. At the same time, ignoring the laws of biological and social development of a person in ontogenesis can lead to the fact that many issues of health management will (as is now the case in primary medical prevention) be resolved at the level of logical constructions and conclusions about the need to change factors in the social environment, and not on increasing the capabilities of human socio-biological adaptation, where the main criterion should be individual human health.
The development of scientifically based recommendations for the formation, preservation and promotion of health, however, cannot yet solve the problem as a whole. This is due to the fact that it is largely predetermined by a person’s personal and motivational attitudes. In our country, where the state’s responsibility for human health is declared, unfortunately, the degree of responsibility of the person himself for his health is not defined. That is why a person’s orientation towards “free” medicine, which does not depend on him for maintenance. Social, environmental, household and other circumstances of his health make him passive in relation to his own health. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of people, being optimists and laziness, admit illness or misfortune to anyone, but not to him personally, or, at least, if this happens, it will not now, but before that, he believes, he has there is enough time to take care of your health. Unfortunately, people begin to understand their delusion only when illness or misfortune has already happened.
A way out of this situation is to to instill health priorities, a sense of responsibility for it and teach a person to be healthy. To solve this problem, it is necessary to develop a system of continuous valeological education, which should include the family, preschool and school educational institutions, higher education, health authorities, social protection, etc. Such a system should receive financial support at all levels - from federal and regional to individual enterprises and institutions. At the same time, it is necessary to return to a person the money he has earned in the percentage ratio that exists in all civilized countries, and thereby increase the responsibility of each person for ensuring all aspects of his life, including health. Medicine should remain free only for emergency care, for low-income people and certain categories of citizens (children, pensioners, disabled people, etc.). Increasing the level of valeology culture and a person’s financial responsibility for their health, without a doubt, can give quick and effective results.
Video tutorial:
Lecture:
The central concept of the social studies course is man. What is a person?
Humanis a biosocial being with thinking and speech, the ability to create tools and use them in the process of social production.
Let's consider the biological and social characteristics of a person.
Man as a biological being
As a biological being, man is the result of evolutionary development (anthropogenesis) and is a species of Homo sapiens (reasonable man). It has characteristics common to many animals of the mammalian class, including: viviparity, mammalism, use of natural objects, instincts. Let's dwell a little more on instincts. From your biology course, you know that instincts are innate acts of behavior that help to survive in the natural environment. Humans are characterized by such animal instincts as self-preservation, procreation, “friend or foe” and many others. Any instinctive behavior of a person or animal is dictated by biological needs. Thus, the need for a safe and comfortable home is satisfied by the instinct to build housing. Let us compare this instinct in animals and humans. For example, bees build honeycombs, spiders weave webs, swallows make nests, beavers build huts. But no one taught them this; the ability to build housing in a certain way was passed on to them by inheritance. A person builds a house, but due to the fact that he is Homo sapiens, he also connects his mind to the innate desire to satisfy the need for housing. And so man came up with thousands of ways to build housing.
Consequently, man as a biological being has characteristics common to many animals, but is distinguished by his mind, which helps him act contrary to his biological needs.
Social essence of man
In rationality a person shows his social essence. If, as a biological being, he adapts to the environment, then, as a social capable of transforming it, creating something new that did not previously exist. A person’s acquisition of “humanity” is associated with his presence in a social environment. That is, a person becomes a person not so much by birth as through socialization. This means that living surrounded by people, he learns to communicate, play, acquire knowledge, work and masters many other forms of behavior. In addition, a person learns the rules and norms developed by a given society and firmly established in it. Thus, from early childhood he is taught how to behave and what behavior he should refrain from. As a result, a person turns into a social cultural being. The process of socialization begins from birth, the first touch, the word of the mother and continues throughout life. What happens to a person who finds himself outside of society, for example, among animals? The result of living in “wild” conditions can be different and depends on the person’s age, or, more precisely, on whether the person has gone through at least some stage of socialization or not. We know the facts about children - Mowgli, who were fed by animals. Returning to society, they never learned to speak, use cutlery, wear clothes, or walk on their feet. They became like animals. An adult who has undergone socialization, brought up by society and knows how to use the objects of the surrounding world to his advantage, having found himself in “wild” conditions, arranges his life approximately in the form in which he is accustomed to living. And most importantly, he does not lose his human essence. There is a striking literary example of this - Robinson Crusoe - the main character of the story of the same name by Daniel Defoe.
The biological and social in a person are closely connected. The development of certain social qualities in a person occurs due to the fact that he has biological prerequisites. Let's look at these biological prerequisites and social qualities.
№ | Biological background | Social qualities | Relationship |
1 | Developed brain | Reasonableness | A developed brain allows a person to acquire knowledge, create objects, and transform nature. A person controls his behavior and acts depending on a specific life situation. He distinguishes between good and evil, believes, remembers, dreams, creates. It does not have scary claws and fangs, or camouflage colors that help many animals avoid danger. But man has a mind, thanks to which he has become a powerful force on Earth. |
2 | Upright walking and the special structure of the hand | Creation of tools | Herder I.G., a German philosopher of the 18th century, wrote that “man is at the highest stage of development because he walks upright - there is no other reason.” Upright walking and the development of the hand allowed a person to perform labor actions. The words of the American educator B. Franklin are well known: “Man is an animal that creates tools.” It was the creation of tools that separated man from the animal world. Yes, animals can use natural objects (for example, sticks and stones) to build burrows. But only a person can make some tools with the help of others. |
3 | Anatomical and physiological mechanisms (inclinations), instincts | Thinking and activity | Man transforms the world around him to suit his needs through activity. And the formation of activity depends on the presence of a person’s thinking. Because before doing something, a person thinks about the idea and actions in his head. You will learn more about thinking and activity after studying the topic. |
4 | Speech and communication | Life in society is the daily interaction of people with each other. This interaction occurs in the course of communication, which would not be possible without the presence of articulate speech in humans. Communication and interaction with other people is very important for a person, because only in groups does he develop, realize himself and achieve social maturity. |
To summarize, a person is a biosocial being with thinking and speech. As a biological being, it has the characteristics inherent in animals of the Mammal class: instincts, viviparity, mammals, the use of natural objects and distinctive features: a developed brain, upright posture, a developed hand, instincts. As a social being, he has qualities characteristic only of humans: intelligence, the ability to create tools, activity, the ability to articulate speech, communication.
Individual, individuality, personality.
In sociology, which is part of the subject of social science, along with the term “man”, the concepts of individual, individuality and personality are used. You must understand the meaning of these concepts and be able to differentiate between them.
Individualis one of the representatives of the biological species Homo sapiens, which has genetically inherited biological characteristics.
Every person is an individual. This concept characterizes the fact that people have the same biological characteristics that belong to the species Homo sapiens. So, each person has one head, two arms, 32 teeth, a psyche, the structure of internal organs is the same, etc. But there are no absolutely identical individuals in the world, even if they are twins. Individuals differ from each other in external and internal characteristics. As you know, the external ones include height, eye color, hair length and others, and the internal ones include temperament, character, abilities, knowledge, skills and others. Differences in these characteristics make each of us individual. What is individuality?
Individuality is a set of unique biological and social qualities inherent in every person.
Agree, it is very important for every person that others accept him for who he is. Surely you have heard the words addressed to some person: “He is a bright individual.” These words emphasize the “peculiarity” of a person, his difference from others. People of creative work value this assessment very much: artists, writers, scientists.
Who is called a person? A personality is a person who stands out from others through his actions. A person becomes an individual in society, in the process of socialization.
Personality- this is a social sign of a person associated with the presence of socially significant qualities, that is, those that are important and necessary for society (for example, independence, responsibility, citizenship, patriotism, tolerance, altruism, humanity and many others).
A person is not so much the one who possesses these qualities, but the one who manifests them in his attitude towards people, society and nature. Sometimes we hear: “He is a Man with a capital M.” This is what they say about personality.
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Man as a result of biological and sociocultural evolution Materials for a social studies lesson in the 10th grade in social and humanitarian fields
Plan: 1) Theories of human origin. 2) Biological and social in man.
Anthropogenesis is the process of historical and evolutionary formation of a person’s physical type, the initial development of his work activity, speech, and society. Anthropology is the study of anthropogenesis.
Anthroposociogenesis The process of the origin of man and society, covering the period of primitive society and ending in the late Paleolithic from 1.5 million to 35-40 thousand years ago
Stages of anthropogenesis:
Factors of anthropogenesis
Sociogenesis The process of transformation of a herd of animals into a primitive human herd and then into human society. In the process of sociogenesis, everyone received the right to a share of food, regardless of his participation or non-participation in its production. Prohibitions arose on connections within the maternal clan - the first social organization of antiquity. Couple marriage and family appear
Theories of the origin of man Evolutionary theory of the origin of man He saw the main reason for the variability of organisms in changes in environmental living conditions. In the process of struggle for existence, those animals survive that are most adaptable to changing conditions of existence.
Labor theory of the origin of man by F. Engels Labor activity, as Engels believed, is inherent only to people, and it was this that was the main reason for the separation of man from the animal kingdom. Work contributed to the development of communication between people, united them, and articulate speech emerged. Work and articulate speech led to the improvement of the human brain. Thanks to Engels' theory, man appeared as a product of not only biological, but also social evolution
Homework Message on the topic: “Concepts of human origins”
Man is a biopsychosocial being “Human” is a general concept denoting membership of the human race, the nature of which, as noted above, combines biological and social qualities. In other words, a person appears in his essence as a biosocial being.
Biosocial nature of man Biological in man Social in man are hereditary characteristics; the presence of instincts (self-preservation, sexual emotions; biological needs (to breathe, eat, sleep, etc.); the presence of identical internal organs, hormones, constant body temperature; the ability to use natural objects; adaptation to the environment, procreation. the ability to produce tools labor; articulate speech; social needs (communication, friendship, love); spiritual needs (morality, religion, art); awareness of one’s needs (work, art, etc.) as the ability to transform the world; ; ability to think; creativity; creation; goal setting
On the topic: methodological developments, presentations and notes
Man as a biological and social phenomenon
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Most often, philosophers call human nature binary (double), and man himself is defined as a biosocial being with articulate speech, consciousness, higher mental functions (abstract logical thinking, logical memory, etc.), capable of creating tools and using them in the process of social labor.
As you and I know, the problem of man is one of the main ones in philosophy. Of great importance for understanding the essence of man and the paths of his development is clarification of the question of his origin.
The theory of the origin of man, the essence of which is to study the process of his emergence and development, is called anthropogenesis (from the gr. anthropos - man and genesis - origin).
There are several approaches to solving the question of human origins:
- Religious theory (divine; theological). Implies the divine origin of man. The soul is the source of humanity in man.
Paleovisit theory. The essence of the theory is that man is an extraterrestrial being; aliens from outer space, having visited the Earth, left human beings on it.
Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution (materialistic). Man is a biological species, his origin is natural. Genetically related to higher mammals. This theory belongs to materialistic theories (natural science).
Natural science theory of F. Engels (materialistic). Friedrich Engels states that the main reason for the emergence of man (more precisely, his evolution) is work. Under the influence of work, a person’s consciousness was formed, as well as language and creative abilities.
Thus, only assumptions can be made about the reasons that determined the formation of man himself.
The influence of cosmic energy, electromagnetic waves, radiation and other influences on his psychophysical state is enormous.
Man is the highest stage of development of living organisms on Earth. Biologically, humans belong to the mammalian hominids, human-like creatures that appeared about 550 thousand years ago.
Man is essentially a biosocial being. It is part of nature and at the same time inextricably linked with society. The biological and social in man are fused together, and only in such unity does he exist.
The biological nature of a person is his natural prerequisite, a condition of existence, and sociality is the essence of a person.
Being a part of nature, man belongs to the higher mammals and forms a special species - homo sapiens. Like any biological species, a person is characterized by a certain set of species characteristics, each of which can change. Such a change can be influenced by both natural and social processes. Like other biological species, it has stable variations (varieties), which, when it comes to humans, are most often designated by the concept “race”. The racial differentiation of people is predetermined by the fact that their groups, inhabiting different areas of the planet, have adapted to the specific features of their environment and have developed specific anatomical, physiological and biological characteristics. The biological nature of a person constitutes the basis on which the formation of actual human qualities occurs. Biologists and philosophers call the following anatomical, physiological and psychological features of the human body, which form the biological basis of human activity as a social being:
Straight gait as an anatomical feature that allows a person to take a wider view of the surrounding environment, freeing the forelimbs even during movement, which makes it possible to use them for work better than four-legged animals can do;
Tenacious hands with dexterous fingers and opposable thumb to perform complex and delicate functions;
A gaze directed forward and not to the sides, allowing you to see in three dimensions and better navigate in space;
A large brain and a complex nervous system, allowing for high development of mental life and intelligence;
Long-term dependence of children on their parents, and therefore a long period of adult care, a slow rate of growth and biological maturation and therefore a long period of training and socialization;
g) the plasticity of innate impulses and needs, the absence of rigid mechanisms of instincts, such as those found in other species, the possibility of adapting needs to the means of satisfying them - all this contributes to the development of complex patterns of behavior and adaptation to various environmental conditions;
The stability of sexual attraction, affecting family forms and a number of other social phenomena.
Being, of course, a natural being, living according to the laws of the natural world, a person can fully live and develop only in the society of people like him. Such important factors of human life as consciousness and speech are not transmitted to people in the order of biological heredity, but are formed in them during their lifetime, in the process of socialization, i.e., the individual’s assimilation of the socio-historical experience of previous generations. The main differences between humans and animals:
A person has thinking and articulate speech. Only a person can reflect on his past, critically assessing it, and think about the future, making plans. Some species of monkeys also have communicative capabilities, but only humans are capable of transmitting objective information about the world around them to other people. You can add other ways of reflecting the surrounding reality to speech, for example, music, painting, sculpture, etc.
A person is capable of conscious, purposeful creative activity:
Models his behavior and can choose various social roles;
Has predictive ability, i.e. the ability to foresee the consequences of one’s actions, the nature and direction of the development of natural processes;
Expresses a value-based attitude to reality.
An animal's behavior is subordinate to instinct; its actions are initially programmed. It does not separate itself from nature.
A person, in the process of his activity, transforms the surrounding reality, creates the material and spiritual benefits and values he needs. Carrying out practically transformative activities, a person creates a “second nature” - culture. Animals adapt to the environment, which determines their lifestyle. They cannot make fundamental changes in the conditions of their existence.
Man is capable of making tools and using them as a means of producing material goods. In other words, a person can make tools using previously made means of labor.
A person reproduces not only his biological, but also his social essence and therefore must satisfy not only his material, but also his spiritual needs. Satisfaction of spiritual needs is associated with the formation of a person’s inner (spiritual) world.