scholarly journals How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochelle Forrester
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Philosophy Of History

scholarly journals Guttman Scale Analysis and its use to explain Cultural Evolution and Social Change

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochelle Forrester
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Guttman Scale ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Universal Pattern

Guttman scale analysis is a very useful tool to understand the evolution of societies. It shows the accumulation of cultural traits throughout history in various societies and that those cultural traits were usually accumulated in the same order. The results of studies, by Robert Carneiro and others, shows the accumulation of cultural traits is not random and indicates a universal pattern in cultural evolution. The universal pattern is caused by increasing human knowledge of the environment we live in. Human societies usually acquire this knowledge in the same order, with easier discoveries concerning the natural world being made earlier than more complex discoveries. This means human social and cultural history, usually follows a particular course, a course that is determined by the structure of the human environment.

Charismatiques et Socio-politiques dans l'Eglise catholique au Quebec

1978 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Reny ◽  
Jean Paul Rouleau
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Close Relationship

This article presents some characteristics of the charismatic and socio-political movements which can be observed in Catho licism in Québec. The authors situate the emergence of these phenomena within the historical and social context of the country since 1960. They thus elucidete the close relationship which exists between the social change and the change in the expression of beliefs. The links which charismatic and socio-political movements appear to have with the cultural evolution of Quebec are such that the authors consider these phenomena as at least as important as the official endeavours of the religious organisation to restore a certain functionality to religion in this society.

Richard Rorty’s ‘Post-Kantian’ Philosophy of History

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-443
Author(s):  
Loren Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Kantian Philosophy

This article contends that despite Richard Rorty’s famous rejection of metaphysics, his work nonetheless offers a philosophy of history, and that his account mirrors that of Kant’s, a figure Rorty considered one of his primary conceptual adversaries. Although Rorty often presents his approach to history as a foil to Kant’s, his account has striking parallels to the latter’s regulative meliorism. In similar fashion, far from being a blind optimist, Kant provides a critical, progressive vision of history as necessary for the purposes of social action. Properly understood, Kant buttresses rather than undermines Rorty’s aims, and had Rorty engaged his work on history more seriously, he might have avoided some of the more problematic elements of his own prophetic patriotism. Despite Rorty’s dismissal of his work as the apotheosis of the absolute, this article argues that Kant’s regulative philosophy of history is more pragmatically oriented towards concrete social change than Rorty’s.

scholarly journals Zen Communist: Breyten Breytenbach’s view from underground

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Andrew Nash
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Breyten Breytenbach ◽  
Constant Source ◽  
Initial Exploration ◽  
Release From Prison

In an interview after his release from prison, Breyten Breytenbach describes himself, at the time he became involved in underground politics, as a Zen Communist. He returns occasionally to this interaction of Marxist ideas of social revolution and Buddhist ideas of non-attachment, but never attempts to explain the resulting synthesis systematically. Indeed, for Breytenbach, being a Zen Communist is to resist systematic positions, to accept contradiction as a constant source of surprise and invention disruptive of all systematic thought. This paper examines how this interaction of Marxist and Buddhist ideas and practices has informed Breytenbach’s politics in three contexts: his initial exploration of a radical philosophy of history in his poetry (“Bruin reisbrief”, “Brown travel letter”); his role in the underground politics of Okhela in the 1970s; his reflections on politics and social change in his prison and prison-related writings. Key words: Zen communism, anti-apartheid movement, liberation, dialectic.

scholarly journals A Model of How Shifting Intelligence Drives Social Movements

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Noah F. G. Evers ◽  
Patricia M. Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social World ◽  
Practical Intelligence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So

Based on the theory of social change, cultural evolution, and human development, we propose a mechanism whereby increased danger in society causes predictable shifts in valued forms of intelligence: 1. Practical intelligence rises in value relative to abstract intelligence; and 2. social intelligence shifts from measuring how well individuals can negotiate the social world to achieve their personal aims to measuring how well they can do so to achieve group aims. We document these shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic and argue that they led to an increase in the size and strength of social movements.

Choosing the Selectors

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Midgley
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Background Factors ◽  
Evolutionary Pattern ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marxist Conception

This chapter explores the concept of cultural evolution by looking at a variety of perspectives that explain historical change, with emphasis on their advantages and limitations. It begins by considering the Marxist conception of history that focused on the role of non-human background factors in shaping human life. It then discusses two misfortunes lighted up by the history of Marxism that tend to afflict a theory about social development when it claims scientific status: fatalism and the illusion of impartiality. It also examines the evolutionary pattern for explaining social change by selectionism and stresses the importance of concentrating on the actual people involved in social change. The chapter concludes by describing the use of ‘memess’ to explain social change.

Social transmission bias and the cultural evolution of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Beliefs ◽  
Over Time

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.

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