human nature

Examples of human nature in the following topics:

• Nature vs. Nurture: A False Debate

  • Recently, the nature versus nurture debate has entered the realm of law and criminal defense.
  • The "nature" in the nature versus nurture debate generally refers to innate qualities.
  • In historical terms, nature might refer to human nature or the soul.
  • The "nature" side may be criticized for implying that we behave in ways in which we are naturally inclined, rather than in ways we choose.
  • A molecular biologist and psychoanalyst explain the nature versus nurture debate.

• Sociology and the Social Sciences

  • Newton made a sharp distinction between the natural world, which he asserted was an independent reality that operated by its own laws, and the human or spiritual world.
  • Newton's ideas differed from other philosophers of the same period (such as Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz, and Johannes Kepler) for whom mathematical expressions of philosophical ideals were taken to be symbolic of natural human relationships as well; the same laws moved physical and spiritual reality.
  • In the attempt to study human behavior using scientific and empirical principles, sociologists always encounter dilemmas, as humans do not always operate predictably according to natural laws.
  • The social sciences occupy a middle position between the "hard" natural sciences and the interpretive bent of the humanities.
  • Isaac Newton was a key figure in the process which split the natural sciences from the humanities.

• The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

  • Humans, however, can.
  • Human society, therefore, is a social product.
  • Neurological evidence, based on EEGs, supports the idea that humans have a "social brain," meaning, there are components of the human brain that govern social interaction.
  • The term was first used in his work, Human Nature and the Social Order.
  • Because they see meaning as the fundamental component of the interaction of human and society, studying human and social interaction requires an understanding of that meaning.

• The Symbolic Nature of Culture

  • Anthropologists have argued that, through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and encode and communicate them symbolically, such as with written language .
  • Since these symbolic systems were learned and taught, they began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if they are not biologically related).
  • That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning is a product of human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture.
  • Anthropologists view culture as not only a product of biological evolution, but as a supplement to it; culture can be seen as the main means of human adaptation to the natural world.
  • Anthropologists distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data that require different methodologies to study.

• Animism

  • Animism is the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, either intrinsically or because spirits inhabit them.
  • In Shinto, spirits of nature, or kami, are believed to exist everywhere.
  • Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, either intrinsically or because spirits inhabit them for a period of time.
  • While animists believe everything to be spiritual in nature, they do not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything in existence as being united (monism), the way pantheists do.
  • Because humans are considered a part of nature, rather than superior to, or separate from it, animists see themselves on roughly equal footing with other animals, plants, and natural forces, and subsequently have a moral imperative to treat these agents with respect.

• The Changing Definitions of Race

  • The division of humanity into distinct races can be traced as far back as the Ancient Egyptian sacred text the Book of Gates, which identified four races according to the Egyptians.
  • Medieval models of race mixed Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic, (Asian), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (European) peoples.
  • In the 19th century a number of natural scientists wrote on race: Georges Cuvier, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.
  • there is a strong relationship between biological races and other human phenomena (such as social behavior and culture, and by extension the relative material success of cultures)
  • These early understandings of race were usually both essentialist and taxonomic; essentialism refers to unchanging and inherent characteristics of individuals and taxonomic refers to classificatory (also usually hierarchical) in nature.

• Spencer and Social Darwinism

  • Like Comte, Spencer saw in sociology the potential to unify the sciences, or to develop what he called a "synthetic philosophy. " He believed that the natural laws discovered by natural scientists were not limited to natural phenomena; these laws revealed an underlying order to the universe that could explain natural and social phenomena alike.
  • According to Spencer's synthetic philosophy, the laws of nature applied to the organic realm as much as to the inorganic, and to the human mind as much as to the rest of creation.
  • It was a universal law, applying to the stars and the galaxies as much as to biological organisms, and to human social organization as much as to the human mind.
  • He claimed all things—the physical world, the biological realm, and human society—underwent progressive development.
  • Critics of Spencer's positivist synthetic philosophy argued that the social sciences were essentially different from the natural sciences and that the methods of the natural sciences—the search for universal laws was inappropriate for the study of human society.

• Sociology and Science

  • Early sociological studies were thought to be similar to the natural sciences due to their use of empiricism and the scientific method.
  • Early sociological studies considered the field of sociology to be similar to the natural sciences, like physics or biology.
  • The goal of positivism, like the natural sciences, is prediction.
  • Scientists like Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert argued that the natural world differs from the social world; human society has culture, unlike the societies of most other animals.
  • Humans, human society, and human culture are all constantly changing, which means the social sciences will constantly be works in progress.

• Symbols and Nature

  • Language as a whole, therefore, is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication.
  • Human language is thought to be fundamentally different from and of much higher complexity than the communication systems of other species ().
  • Human language differs from communication used by animals () because the symbols and grammatical rules of any particular language are largely arbitrary, meaning that the system can only be acquired through social interaction. ()
  • Parrots mimic the sounds of human language, but have they really learned the symbolic system?
  • Animal sounds, like a dog's bark, may serve basic communication functions, but they lack the symbolic elements of human language.

• Animals and Culture

  • Animal culture refers to cultural learning in non-human animals through socially transmitted behaviors.
  • One of the first signs of culture in early humans was the use of tools.
  • It especially reinforces the natural selection component.
  • Much cultural anthropological research has been done on non-human primates, due to their close evolutionary proximity to humans.
  • Formulate a thesis which defends the idea that non-human animals have culture