BIOLOGY PRECEDES, CULTURE TRANSCENDS - AN EVOLUTIONISTS VIEW OF HUMAN-NATURE

I will, first, outline what we currently know about the last 4 million years of human evolutionary history, from bipedal but small-brained A ustralopithecus to modern Homo sapiens, our species, through the proli fic toolmaker Homo habilis and the continent wanderer Homo erectus. I shall then identify anatomical traits that distinguish us from other a nimals and point out our two kinds of heredity, the biological and the cultural. Biological inheritance is based on the transmission of gene tic information, in humans very much the same as in other sexually rep roducing organisms. Bur cultural inheritance is distinctively human, b ased on transmission of information by a teaching and learning process that is in principle independent of biological parentage. Cultural in heritance makes possible the cumulative transmission of experience fro m generation to generation. Cultural heredity is a swifter and more ef fective (because it can be designed) mode of adaptation to the environ ment than the biological mode. The advent of cultural heredity ushered in cultural evolution, which transcends biological evolution. I will, finally, explore ethical behavior as a model case of a distinctive hu man trait, and seek to ascertain the causal connections between human ethics and human biology. My conclusions are that (1) moral reasoning- that is, the proclivity to make ethical judgments by evaluating action s as either good or evil-is rooted in our biological nature; it is a n ecessary outcome of our exalted intelligence, but (2) the moral codes that guide our decisions as to which actions are good and which ones a re evil are products of culture, including social and religious tradit ions. This second conclusion contradicts those evolutionists and socio biologists who claim that the morally good is simply that which is pro moted by the process of biological evolution.