Biographies Characteristics Analysis

Man as a biosocial being in nature. Man as a biosocial being - essays, abstracts, reports

Unlimited social progress is associated with the emergence of man as a biosocial being, characterized by reason and a pronounced social orientation. As a rational being producing material means of production, a person has existed for about 2 million years, and almost all this time, changes in the conditions of his existence led to changes in the person himself - in the process of purposeful labor activity, his brain, limbs improved, thinking developed, new creative skills were formed, collective experience and knowledge. All this led to the emergence about 40 thousand years ago of a modern type of man - Homo sapiens (reasonable man), who stopped changing, but instead, society began to change very slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly.

What is a person? How is it different from animals? People have been thinking about these questions for a long time, but to this day they have not found a definitive answer. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato answered them like this: "Man is a two-legged animal without feathers." Two thousand years later, the famous French physicist and mathematician B. Pascal objected to Plato: “A man without legs still remains a man, and a rooster without feathers does not become a man.”

What distinguishes people from animals? There is, for example, a sign that is inherent only to people: of all living beings, only a person has a soft earlobe. But is this fact the main thing that distinguishes man from animals? Despite the fact that a person originated from an animal and his body, blood, brain belong to nature (he is a biological being), great thinkers came to the conclusion that the most important sign of a person is that he is a social being, or social (the Latin word socialis means public). Labor was the determining condition for the transformation of an animal ancestor into a human being. And labor is possible only as a collective, i.e. public. Only in society, in communication between people, labor led to the formation of new, human qualities: language (speech) and the ability to think.

Therefore, the purpose of my work is to study both the biological and social aspects of human existence.

And since, for a correct understanding of the processes occurring in a person, determining his place in nature, in the life and development of society, it is necessary to scientifically substantiate the question of the origin of man, the task of my work is to consider the issue of the origin of man, as well as the concept of his essence.

The question of one's own origin constantly attracted the attention of people, since for a person the knowledge of oneself is no less important than the knowledge of the surrounding world. Attempts to understand and explain their origin were made by philosophers, theologians, scientists - representatives of the natural (anthropology, biology, physiology), humanitarian (history, psychology, sociology) and technical (cybernetics, bionics, genetic engineering) sciences. In this regard, there are quite a large number of concepts that explain the nature and essence of man. Most of them consider a person as a complex holistic system that combines biological and social components.

Anthropology, the general doctrine of the origin and evolution of man, the formation of human races and variations in the physical structure of man, occupies a central place in the complex of natural sciences that study man. Modern anthropology considers anthropogenesis - the process of human origin - as a continuation of biogenesis. The main issues of anthropology are questions about the place and time of the appearance of man, the main stages of his evolution, the driving forces and determining factors of development, the relationship between anthropogenesis and sociogenesis.

With the formation and development of anthropological science, five basic concepts of anthropogenesis tried to answer all these questions:

1) the creationist concept - man was created by God or the mind of the world;

2) the biological concept - man descended from common ancestors with monkeys through the accumulation of biological changes;

3) labor concept - labor played a decisive role in the emergence of man, turning ape-like ancestors into people;

4) mutation concept - primates turned into humans due to mutations and other anomalies in nature;

5) the cosmic concept - a person as a descendant or creation of aliens who, for some reason, came to Earth. (Sadokhin, Alexander Petrovich. Concepts of modern natural science)

A decisive, truly revolutionary step was taken by Charles Darwin, who in 1871 published his book The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection. In it, on the basis of vast factual material, Darwin substantiated two very important propositions:

man descended from animal ancestors;

man is related to modern great apes, which, together with man, descended from an older original form.

This is how the simial (monkey) concept of anthropogenesis arose, according to which man and modern anthropoids descended from a common ancestor who lived in a distant geological era and was a fossil African ape-like creature.

Since the 19th century, the concept of the origin of man from the highly developed ancestors of modern monkeys, which follows from Darwin's theory of evolution, has dominated science. It received genetic confirmation in the 20th century, since chimpanzees turned out to be closest to humans in terms of the genetic apparatus of all animals. But all this does not mean that the living chimpanzees or gorillas are exact copies of human ancestors. It's just that a person with these monkeys has a common ancestor. Scientists named it Dryopithecus (Latin for “tree monkey”).

These ancient apes, which lived on the African and European continents, led an arboreal lifestyle and apparently fed on fruits. Moving through trees at different speeds, changing directions and distances led to a high development of the motor centers of the brain. Approximately 6-8 million years ago, due to powerful mountain-building processes in South Africa, a cooling set in, vast open spaces appeared. As a result of the divergence, two evolutionary branches were formed - one leading to modern great apes, and the other leading to humans.

Australopithecus (from Latin australis - southern + Greek pithekos - monkey) are the first among the ancestors of modern man, which appeared in Africa about 4 million years ago. Australopithecus, the so-called "monkey people", inhabited open plains and semi-deserts, lived in herds, walked on the lower (hind) limbs, and the body position was almost vertical. The hands, freed from the function of movement, could be used for obtaining food and protection from enemies.

About 2–1.5 million years ago, in East and South Africa, in Southeast Asia, creatures lived closer to humans than Australopithecus. Homo habilis ("handy man") knew how to process pebbles to make tools, built primitive shelters and huts, and began to use fire. A sign that distinguishes great apes from humans is the mass of the brain, equal to 750 g.

In the process of becoming a person, three stages are conditionally distinguished: the most ancient people; ancient people; modern people.

The result of evolution was the fundamental biosocial differences of a person, which appear in the process of ontogenesis, provided that a person lives among people, in society. These features relate to the physiology, and behavior, and lifestyle of a person.

Man, unlike animals, has a special form of thinking - conceptual thinking. The concept contains the most important essential features and properties, the concepts are abstract. The reflection of reality by animals is always concrete, objective, connected with certain objects of the surrounding world. Only human thinking can be logical, generalizing, abstract. Animals can perform very complex actions, but they are based on instincts - genetic programs that are inherited. The set of such actions is strictly limited, a sequence is defined that does not change with changing conditions, even if the action becomes inappropriate. A person first sets a goal, draws up a plan that can change if necessary, analyzes the results, draws conclusions.

IP Pavlov (1925), studying the features of human higher nervous activity, reveals its qualitative differences from the nervous activity of animals - the presence of a second signaling system, that is, speech. Through the senses, animals and humans are able to detect various changes in the qualities and properties of surrounding objects and phenomena (sound, color, light, smell, taste, temperature, etc.). It is the work of sensory mechanisms that underlies the action of the first signaling system common in humans and animals. At the same time, a second signaling system develops in humans. The signals here are words, speech, separated from the subject itself, abstract and generalized. The word replaces immediate stimuli, is a "signal of signals." Numerous observations have shown that the second signaling system can be developed only when communicating with people, that is, the development of speech has a social character.

Many animals are capable of certain creative activities. But only a person is able to make complex tools, plan labor activity, correct it, foresee results and actively change the world around.

The development of fire was of great importance for the development of man and social relations. This fact allowed a person to stand out from the natural world, to become free, not to depend on the conditions of the elements. The heat treatment of food and the use of fire to make more advanced tools have become positive in the development of mankind.

Already at the initial stages of the development of human society, there was a division of labor according to age and gender. This led to the development of social relations, to an increase in labor productivity, and made it possible to transfer experience and knowledge to a new generation.

The regulation of marital relations by society was a positive factor not only for the development of society, but also for the biological evolution of man. The prohibition of related marriages prevents the accumulation of negative mutations, leads to the enrichment of the gene pool of society.

All of the listed fundamental differences between man and animals became the paths along which the isolation of man from nature proceeded.

At the same time, a person has specific features of the body structure inherent only to him.

The decisive step on the way from ape to man was bipedalism. The transition to upright posture led to a change in the morphology of the lower extremities, which became the supporting organ. The lower limb acquired a flattened foot with longitudinal arching, which softened the load on the spinal column.

The hand underwent huge changes, the main function of which became grasping, and this did not require any serious anatomical changes. There was an increasing opposition of the thumb relative to the palm, which made it possible to pinch a stone or stick and hit them with force.

After the human ancestor got to his feet and rose above the surface of the earth, his eyes moved to the frontal-parallel plane, the fields of vision of both eyes began to overlap. This provided binocular depth perception and led to the development of visual brain structures.

But the main differences between man and animals are fixed in the material carrier of the mind - the brain. It is no coincidence that the brain mass of 750 g is considered to be a sign separating anthropoid apes from humans. It is with this brain mass that a child masters speech. The brain of our ancestors constantly increased in the course of biological evolution. So, in Australopithecus, the brain volume was 500-600 cm 3, in Pithecanthropus - up to 900 cm 3, in Sinanthropus - up to 1000 cm 3. The brain size of a Neanderthal was, on average, larger than that of modern humans. It was found that in the course of evolution, the degree of filling of the skull with medulla began to increase significantly.

Thus, for a long time, evolutionary factors of genetic variability and selection acted predominantly in the process of anthropogenesis. The change in the conditions of existence of human ancestors created strong selection pressure in favor of the survival of individuals and groups with traits that contributed to the progressive development of upright posture, the ability to work, the improvement of the upper limbs and the cognitive activity of the brain. Natural selection retained the traits that stimulated the joint search for food, protection from predatory animals, care for offspring, etc., which in turn contributed to the development of herding as the initial stage in the development of sociality.

Philosophical disputes about human nature have a long history. Philosophers most often call human nature binary (double), and define a person himself as a biosocial being with articulate speech, consciousness, higher mental functions (abstract-logical thinking, logical memory, etc.), capable of creating tools, using them in social labor process.

Being a part of nature, man belongs to the higher mammals and forms a special species - Homo sapiens. Like any biological species, Homo sapiens is characterized by a certain set of specific features, each of which can vary in different representatives of the species within fairly large limits. Such a change can be influenced by both natural and social processes. Like other biological species, the Homo sapiens species has stable variations (varieties), which, when it comes to humans, are most often denoted by the concept of race. The racial differentiation of people is predetermined by the fact that their groups inhabiting various regions of the planet have adapted to the specific features of their environment and have developed specific anatomical, physiological and biological characteristics. But, belonging to a single biological species Homo sapiens, a representative of any race has such biological parameters characteristic of this species that allow him to successfully participate in any of the spheres of life of the entire human society.

The biological nature of a person is the basis on which the formation of actually human qualities takes place. Biologists and philosophers name the following anatomical, physiological and psychological features of the human body, which form the biological basis of human activity as a social being:

a) straight gait;

b) grasping hands with movable fingers and an opposing thumb, allowing complex and subtle functions to be performed;

c) look forward, not to the side;

d) a large brain and a complex nervous system, enabling a high development of mental life and intellect;

f) long-term dependence of children on parents, and consequently, a long period of guardianship by adults, a slow rate of growth and biological maturation, and therefore a long period of training and socialization;

g) the stability of sexual desire, which affects the forms of the family and a number of other social phenomena.

Although human development is largely determined biologically, this influence should not, however, be absolutized. In this regard, such a modern trend as sociobiology is of great interest.

Sociobiology is a scientific discipline that studies the genetic foundations of the social behavior of animals and humans, their evolution under the influence of natural selection. In other words, sociobiology is a synthesis of population genetics, ethology and ecology.

Sociobiology comes up with the idea of ​​synthesis of biological and social knowledge, but on the basis of biology. Here, there is no doubt that a person is a part of living nature, and therefore he obeys biological laws, however, explaining human behavior only in the biological aspect is hardly legitimate.

An analysis of the process of anthropogenesis allows us to conclude that biological evolution ended 30-40 thousand years ago after the emergence of Homo sapiens. Since then, man has separated from the animal world, and biological evolution has ceased to play a decisive role in its development.

The determining factor in the development was social evolution, on which the biological nature, physical appearance and mental abilities of a person depend today.

With the completion of the process of anthropogenesis, the action of group selection as the leading factor in evolution also ended. From now on, all human development is conditioned by the social conditions of life that determine the development of his intellect and purposeful activity. Being a product of biological evolution, man will never go beyond the boundaries of his biological nature. However, a remarkable feature of the biological nature of man is his ability to assimilate social phenomena.

The biological and social principles act as genetically and functionally related levels of the integral organization of a person. The biological principle, being primary in time, determines the social principle, becomes a prerequisite for its reproduction. Therefore, the biological is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the formation and functioning of the social. And indeed, a person cannot arise without a biological basis, because its presence is an indispensable condition and an indispensable prerequisite for separating a person from the animal world. However, a monkey cannot turn into a man only according to the laws of the development of the organic world. Something more is needed here.

Man acquires his social essence not by virtue of biological laws, but by virtue of the laws of social development. Thus, the social acquires relative independence from the biological and itself becomes a necessary condition for its further existence.

However, the exit of man from nature does not mean at all that now an absolute opposition to nature is established for him. Moreover, a person must, like all living things, adapt to it. But unlike animals, which directly adapt to changes in the environment, a person achieves his goal by changing nature, transforming it.

In the course of this, a world of artificial objects and phenomena is created, next to the natural world of nature, an artificial world of human culture arises. It is in this way that a person retains his generic essence and turns into a social being.

Society is always forced, to some extent, to reckon with the biological basis of people, to take care of satisfying the needs that arise on this basis. With the emergence of society, the final subordination of the biological to the social takes place, which in no way means the displacement and abolition of the biological. It simply ceases to be leading. But it exists, and its presence reminds of itself in many ways. After all, the life of each individual person is subject to biological laws. Another thing is that we meet the needs of our body within the framework of the opportunities provided to us by society.

The appearance of man is a huge leap in the development of wildlife. Man arose in the process of evolution under the influence of laws common to all living beings. The human body, like all living organisms, needs food and oxygen. Like all living organisms, it undergoes changes, grows, ages, dies. Therefore, the human body, the human body is a field of study of biological sciences. The biological is also expressed in morphophysiological, genetic phenomena, as well as in neuro-cerebral, electrochemical and some other processes of the human body. But no single aspect reveals to us the phenomenon of man in its entirety. Man, we say, is a rational being. What, then, is his thinking: does it obey only biological laws or only social ones?

The social and biological, existing in inseparable unity in man, fix in abstraction only the extreme poles in the diversity of human properties and actions. The body and personality are two inseparable sides of a person. By his organismic level, he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and by his personal level he is turned to social being, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture. The measurement of a person from the biological and social side is related precisely to his personality.

The biological side of a person is determined mainly by the hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person entering the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. Therefore, this inseparable unity allows us to say: man is a biosocial being.

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What is a person? How is it different from animals? People have been thinking about these questions for a long time, but to this day they have not found a definitive answer. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato answered them like this: "Man is a two-legged animal without feathers." Two thousand years later, the famous French physicist and mathematician B. Pascal objected to Plato: “A man without legs still remains a man, and a rooster without feathers does not become a man.” What distinguishes people from animals? There is, for example, a sign that is inherent only to people: of all living beings, only a person has a soft earlobe. But is this fact the main thing that distinguishes man from animals? Despite the fact that a person originated from an animal and his body, blood, brain belong to nature (he is a biological being), great thinkers came to the conclusion that the most important sign of a person is that he is a social being, or social (the Latin word socialis means public). Labor was the determining condition for the transformation of an animal ancestor into a human being. And labor is possible only as collective, i.e., social. Only in society, in communication between people, labor led to the formation of new, human qualities: language (speech) and the ability to think.

Man as a subject of natural sciences We consider man from different positions of his existence, but first of all, from biological and social ones. The biological is expressed in morphophysiological, genetic phenomena, as well as in neuro-cerebral, electrochemical and some other processes of the human body. But no single aspect reveals to us the phenomenon of man in its entirety. Man, we say, is a rational being. What, then, is his thinking: does it obey only biological laws or only social ones? The social and biological, existing in inseparable unity in man, fix in abstraction only the extreme poles in the diversity of human properties and actions. In this aspect, a person acts as a carrier of the biological form of the movement of matter. But after all, he is not just an organism, not just a biological species, but, first of all, a subject of social relations. The body and personality are two inseparable aspects of a person. By his organismic level, he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and by his personal level he is turned to social being, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture. The measurement of a person from the biological and social side is related precisely to his personality. The biological side of a person is determined mainly by the hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person entering the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. How does a person unite his biological and social principles? To answer this question, let us turn to the history of the emergence of man as a biological species.

At present, the idea has been established in science that a person is a biosocial being, combining biological and social components. Man as a subject of natural science knowledge can be considered in three aspects: - origin; - the ratio of natural and humanitarian in it; - study of the specifics of a person by methods of natural science knowledge. The first direction, traditionally called anthropology, studies: when, from whom and how did a person originate and how does he differ from animals; the second direction - sociobiology - studies the genetic basis of human activity and the relationship between the physiological and mental in a person; the third direction includes the study of the human brain, his consciousness, soul, etc., by natural science.

The similarities between humans and animals are determined: firstly, by the material composition, structure and behavior of organisms (a human being consists of the same proteins and nucleic acids as animals, and many of the structures and functions of our body are the same as those of animals, the higher the evolutionary scale is an animal, the closer its resemblance to man); secondly, the human embryo passes in its development those stages that the evolution of the living has passed; thirdly, a person has rudimentary organs that performed important functions in animals and were preserved in humans, although they do not need them (for example, the appendix).

However, the differences between man and animals are fundamental. First of all, they include the mind. The study of higher animals has shown that they possess much of what was previously thought only humans were capable of. Experiments with monkeys have found that they can understand words, communicate their desires using a computer, and you can thus conduct a dialogue with them. But what the highest animals do not have is the ability to conceptual thinking, i.e. to form abstract, abstract ideas about objects, in which the basic properties of concrete things are generalized. Animal thinking, if one can speak of it, is always concrete; human thinking can be abstract, abstract, generalizing, conceptual, logical

The second main difference is that a person has speech. Again, animals may have developed a system of communication using signals (which, by the way, made it possible to speak of a “civilization of dolphins”). But only a person has what I. P. Pavlov called the second signaling system (in contrast to the first - in animals) communication using words. In this human society differs from other social animals.

The ability to work is another fundamental difference between man and animals. Of course, all animals do something, and higher animals are capable of complex activities. Monkeys, for example, use sticks as tools to get fruit. But only man is capable of making, creating tools of labor. Related to this are statements that animals adapt to the environment, and man transforms it, and that, in the end, labor created man. Two more distinguishing features of a person correlate with the ability to work: upright walking, which freed his hands, and, as a result, the development of the hand, especially the thumb on it. Finally, two more characteristic features of a person that influenced the development of culture are the use of fire and the burial of corpses.

Factors in the Formation of a Modern Man The most characteristic feature of modern man is a perfect hand, capable of a wide variety of labor operations. All other features of the morphology of modern man have developed in connection with the transformation of the hand. It can be thought that the brain improved under the influence of numerous stimuli emanating from the hand, and the number of these stimuli constantly increased in the process of labor and mastery of new labor operations. But this hypothesis meets objections of both factual and theoretical nature. More acceptable is the hypothesis of factors in the formation of a modern type of man, developed by Ya. Ya. Roginsky. He used numerous and well-known in the clinic of nervous diseases observations on subjects in whom the frontal lobes of the brain were damaged; in such subjects, social instincts are sharply inhibited or completely disappear, a violent temper makes them dangerous to others. Thus, the frontal lobes of the brain are the concentration of not only higher mental, but also social functions. This conclusion was compared with the growth factor of the frontal lobes of the brain in modern man compared with Pithecanthropus and, in turn, led to the conclusion that not in general the development of the brain or the development of the hand, but the growth of the frontal lobes of the brain was the main morphological feature that distinguished people modern type from late Neanderthals.

Sociality, the greatest adaptation to life in a team, creating the most favorable morphophysiological and psychological type for it, which together led to the sharpest difference between a person and other representatives of the animal world, determined, one might assume, the next stage in human evolution - the isolation of a person of a modern type as the most perfect organism in terms of the requirements of social organization. By analogy with the labor theory of anthropogenesis, this hypothesis can be called social or social, thus emphasizing the leading role of collective, social life precisely in the formation of the modern species within the genus Homo.

The body and personality are two inseparable aspects of a person. By his organismic level, he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and by his personal level he is turned to social being, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture. The measurement of a person from the biological and social side is related precisely to his personality. The biological side of a person is determined mainly by the hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person entering the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. Therefore, this inseparable unity allows us to say: man is a biosocial being.

BIOSOCIAL

- English bioso-cial; German biosozial. Manifestations of the vital activity of an individual, to-rye are the result of the interaction of biological and social ( e.g., sexual behaviour).

Antinazi. Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2009

See what "BIOSOCIAL" is in other dictionaries:

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Books

  • Human biology. Man as a Biosocial Being , Sidorova Maria Vladimirovna , Panina Elena Vitalievna , Cherepanova Nadezhda Gennadievna , The course "Human Biology" is one of the final ones in the learning process. It is based on the basic knowledge gained by students in the course of studying courses in zoology, morphology,… Category: Other biological sciences Series: Textbooks for universities. Special literature Publisher: Lan,
  • Human biology. Man as a biosocial being. Textbook, Sidorova M.V. , The course of human biology is one of the final ones in the learning process. It is based on the basic knowledge gained by students in the course of studying courses in zoology, morphology,… Category: Biology Series: Textbooks for universities. Special literature Publisher:

INTRODUCTION 3

1. CONCEPTS OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN 5

2. STAGES OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 6

4 THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN 10

INTRODUCTION

Unlimited social progress is associated with the emergence of man as a biosocial being, characterized by reason and a pronounced social orientation. As a rational being producing material means of production, a person has existed for about 2 million years, and almost all this time, changes in the conditions of his existence led to changes in the person himself - in the process of purposeful labor activity, his brain, limbs improved, thinking developed, new creative skills were formed, collective experience and knowledge. All this led to the emergence about 40 thousand years ago of a modern type of man - Homo sapiens (reasonable man), who stopped changing, but instead, society began to change very slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly.

What is a person? How is it different from animals? People have been thinking about these questions for a long time, but to this day they have not found a definitive answer. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato answered them like this: "Man is a two-legged animal without feathers." Two thousand years later, the famous French physicist and mathematician B. Pascal objected to Plato: “A man without legs still remains a man, and a rooster without feathers does not become a man.”

What distinguishes people from animals? There is, for example, a sign that is inherent only to people: of all living beings, only a person has a soft earlobe. But is this fact the main thing that distinguishes man from animals? Despite the fact that a person originated from an animal and his body, blood, brain belong to nature (he is a biological being), great thinkers came to the conclusion that the most important sign of a person is that he is a social being, or social (the Latin word socialis means public). Labor was the determining condition for the transformation of an animal ancestor into a human being. And labor is possible only as a collective, i.e. public. Only in society, in communication between people, labor led to the formation of new, human qualities: language (speech) and the ability to think.

Therefore, the purpose of my work is to study both the biological and social aspects of human existence.

And since, for a correct understanding of the processes occurring in a person, determining his place in nature, in the life and development of society, it is necessary to scientifically substantiate the question of the origin of man, the task of my work is to consider the issue of the origin of man, as well as the concept of his essence.

1. CONCEPTS OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN

The question of one's own origin constantly attracted the attention of people, since for a person the knowledge of oneself is no less important than the knowledge of the surrounding world. Attempts to understand and explain their origin were made by philosophers, theologians, scientists - representatives of the natural (anthropology, biology, physiology), humanitarian (history, psychology, sociology) and technical (cybernetics, bionics, genetic engineering) sciences. In this regard, there are quite a large number of concepts that explain the nature and essence of man. Most of them consider a person as a complex holistic system that combines biological and social components.

Anthropology, the general doctrine of the origin and evolution of man, the formation of human races and variations in the physical structure of man, occupies a central place in the complex of natural sciences that study man. Modern anthropology considers anthropogenesis - the process of human origin - as a continuation of biogenesis. The main issues of anthropology are questions about the place and time of the appearance of man, the main stages of his evolution, the driving forces and determining factors of development, the relationship between anthropogenesis and sociogenesis.

With the formation and development of anthropological science, five basic concepts of anthropogenesis tried to answer all these questions:

1) the creationist concept - man was created by God or the mind of the world;

2) the biological concept - man descended from common ancestors with monkeys through the accumulation of biological changes;

3) labor concept - labor played a decisive role in the emergence of man, turning ape-like ancestors into people;

4) mutation concept - primates turned into humans due to mutations and other anomalies in nature;

5) the cosmic concept - a person as a descendant or creation of aliens who, for some reason, came to Earth. (Sadokhin, Alexander Petrovich. Concepts of modern natural science)

A decisive, truly revolutionary step was taken by Charles Darwin, who in 1871 published his book The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection. In it, on the basis of vast factual material, Darwin substantiated two very important propositions:

man descended from animal ancestors;

man is related to modern great apes, which, together with man, descended from an older original form.

This is how the simial (monkey) concept of anthropogenesis arose, according to which man and modern anthropoids descended from a common ancestor who lived in a distant geological era and was a fossil African ape-like creature.

2. STAGES OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

Since the 19th century, the concept of the origin of man from the highly developed ancestors of modern monkeys, which follows from Darwin's theory of evolution, has dominated science. It received genetic confirmation in the 20th century, since chimpanzees turned out to be closest to humans in terms of the genetic apparatus of all animals. But all this does not mean that the living chimpanzees or gorillas are exact copies of human ancestors. It's just that a person with these monkeys has a common ancestor. Scientists named it Dryopithecus (Latin for “tree monkey”).

These ancient apes, which lived on the African and European continents, led an arboreal lifestyle and apparently fed on fruits. Moving through trees at different speeds, changing directions and distances led to a high development of the motor centers of the brain. Approximately 6-8 million years ago, due to powerful mountain-building processes in South Africa, a cooling set in, vast open spaces appeared. As a result of the divergence, two evolutionary branches were formed - one leading to modern great apes, and the other leading to humans.

Australopithecus (from Latin australis - southern + Greek pithekos - monkey) are the first among the ancestors of modern man, which appeared in Africa about 4 million years ago. Australopithecus, the so-called "monkey people", inhabited open plains and semi-deserts, lived in herds, walked on the lower (hind) limbs, and the body position was almost vertical. The hands, freed from the function of movement, could be used for obtaining food and protection from enemies.

About 2–1.5 million years ago, in East and South Africa, in Southeast Asia, creatures lived closer to humans than Australopithecus. Homo habilis ("handy man") knew how to process pebbles to make tools, built primitive shelters and huts, and began to use fire. A sign that distinguishes great apes from humans is the mass of the brain, equal to 750 g.

2.1 Stages of human development

In the process of becoming a person, three stages are conditionally distinguished: the most ancient people; ancient people; modern people.

3.2 Differences between humans and animals

The result of evolution was the fundamental biosocial differences of a person, which appear in the process of ontogenesis, provided that a person lives among people, in society. These features relate to the physiology, and behavior, and lifestyle of a person.

3.2.1 development of the mind

Man, unlike animals, has a special form of thinking - conceptual thinking. The concept contains the most important essential features and properties, the concepts are abstract. The reflection of reality by animals is always concrete, objective, connected with certain objects of the surrounding world. Only human thinking can be logical, generalizing, abstract. Animals can perform very complex actions, but they are based on instincts - genetic programs that are inherited. The set of such actions is strictly limited, a sequence is defined that does not change with changing conditions, even if the action becomes inappropriate. A person first sets a goal, draws up a plan that can change if necessary, analyzes the results, draws conclusions.

3.2.2 speech

IP Pavlov (1925), studying the features of human higher nervous activity, reveals its qualitative differences from the nervous activity of animals - the presence of a second signaling system, that is, speech. Through the senses, animals and humans are able to detect various changes in the qualities and properties of surrounding objects and phenomena (sound, color, light, smell, taste, temperature, etc.). It is the work of sensory mechanisms that underlies the action of the first signaling system common in humans and animals. At the same time, a second signaling system develops in humans. The signals here are words, speech, separated from the subject itself, abstract and generalized. The word replaces immediate stimuli, is a "signal of signals." Numerous observations have shown that the second signaling system can be developed only when communicating with people, that is, the development of speech has a social character.

3.2.3 work activity

Many animals are capable of certain creative activities. But only a person is able to make complex tools, plan labor activity, correct it, foresee results and actively change the world around.

3.2.4 use of fire

The development of fire was of great importance for the development of man and social relations. This fact allowed a person to stand out from the natural world, to become free, not to depend on the conditions of the elements. The heat treatment of food and the use of fire to make more advanced tools have become positive in the development of mankind.

3.2.5 division of labor

Already at the initial stages of the development of human society, there was a division of labor according to age and gender. This led to the development of social relations, to an increase in labor productivity, and made it possible to transfer experience and knowledge to a new generation.

3.2.6 family and marriage relations

The regulation of marital relations by society was a positive factor not only for the development of society, but also for the biological evolution of man. The prohibition of related marriages prevents the accumulation of negative mutations, leads to the enrichment of the gene pool of society.

All of the listed fundamental differences between man and animals became the paths along which the isolation of man from nature proceeded.

3.3 Human characteristics

At the same time, a person has specific features of the body structure inherent only to him.

The decisive step on the way from ape to man was bipedalism. The transition to upright posture led to a change in the morphology of the lower extremities, which became the supporting organ. The lower limb acquired a flattened foot with longitudinal arching, which softened the load on the spinal column.

The hand underwent huge changes, the main function of which became grasping, and this did not require any serious anatomical changes. There was an increasing opposition of the thumb relative to the palm, which made it possible to pinch a stone or stick and hit them with force.

After the human ancestor got to his feet and rose above the surface of the earth, his eyes moved to the frontal-parallel plane, the fields of vision of both eyes began to overlap. This provided binocular depth perception and led to the development of visual brain structures.

But the main differences between man and animals are fixed in the material carrier of the mind - the brain. It is no coincidence that the brain mass of 750 g is considered to be a sign separating anthropoid apes from humans. It is with this brain mass that a child masters speech. The brain of our ancestors constantly increased in the course of biological evolution. So, in Australopithecus, the brain volume was 500-600 cm 3, in Pithecanthropus - up to 900 cm 3, in Sinanthropus - up to 1000 cm 3. The brain size of a Neanderthal was, on average, larger than that of modern humans. It was found that in the course of evolution, the degree of filling of the skull with medulla began to increase significantly.

Thus, for a long time, evolutionary factors of genetic variability and selection acted predominantly in the process of anthropogenesis. The change in the conditions of existence of human ancestors created strong selection pressure in favor of the survival of individuals and groups with traits that contributed to the progressive development of upright posture, the ability to work, the improvement of the upper limbs and the cognitive activity of the brain. Natural selection retained the traits that stimulated the joint search for food, protection from predatory animals, care for offspring, etc., which in turn contributed to the development of herding as the initial stage in the development of sociality.

4 THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN

Philosophical disputes about human nature have a long history. Philosophers most often call human nature binary (double), and define a person himself as a biosocial being with articulate speech, consciousness, higher mental functions (abstract-logical thinking, logical memory, etc.), capable of creating tools, using them in social labor process.

Being a part of nature, man belongs to the higher mammals and forms a special species - Homo sapiens. Like any biological species, Homo sapiens is characterized by a certain set of specific features, each of which can vary in different representatives of the species within fairly large limits. Such a change can be influenced by both natural and social processes. Like other biological species, the Homo sapiens species has stable variations (varieties), which, when it comes to humans, are most often denoted by the concept of race. The racial differentiation of people is predetermined by the fact that their groups inhabiting various regions of the planet have adapted to the specific features of their environment and have developed specific anatomical, physiological and biological characteristics. But, belonging to a single biological species Homo sapiens, a representative of any race has such biological parameters characteristic of this species that allow him to successfully participate in any of the spheres of life of the entire human society.

The biological nature of a person is the basis on which the formation of actually human qualities takes place. Biologists and philosophers name the following anatomical, physiological and psychological features of the human body, which form the biological basis of human activity as a social being:

a) straight gait;

b) grasping hands with movable fingers and an opposing thumb, allowing complex and subtle functions to be performed;

c) look forward, not to the side;

d) a large brain and a complex nervous system, enabling a high development of mental life and intellect;

f) long-term dependence of children on parents, and consequently, a long period of guardianship by adults, a slow rate of growth and biological maturation, and therefore a long period of training and socialization;

g) the stability of sexual desire, which affects the forms of the family and a number of other social phenomena.

Although human development is largely determined biologically, this influence should not, however, be absolutized. In this regard, such a modern trend as sociobiology is of great interest.

Sociobiology is a scientific discipline that studies the genetic foundations of the social behavior of animals and humans, their evolution under the influence of natural selection. In other words, sociobiology is a synthesis of population genetics, ethology and ecology.

Sociobiology comes up with the idea of ​​synthesis of biological and social knowledge, but on the basis of biology. Here, there is no doubt that a person is a part of living nature, and therefore he obeys biological laws, however, explaining human behavior only in the biological aspect is hardly legitimate.

An analysis of the process of anthropogenesis allows us to conclude that biological evolution ended 30-40 thousand years ago after the emergence of Homo sapiens. Since then, man has separated from the animal world, and biological evolution has ceased to play a decisive role in its development.

The determining factor in the development was social evolution, on which the biological nature, physical appearance and mental abilities of a person depend today.

With the completion of the process of anthropogenesis, the action of group selection as the leading factor in evolution also ended. From now on, all human development is conditioned by the social conditions of life that determine the development of his intellect and purposeful activity. Being a product of biological evolution, man will never go beyond the boundaries of his biological nature. However, a remarkable feature of the biological nature of man is his ability to assimilate social phenomena.

The biological and social principles act as genetically and functionally related levels of the integral organization of a person. The biological principle, being primary in time, determines the social principle, becomes a prerequisite for its reproduction. Therefore, the biological is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the formation and functioning of the social. And indeed, a person cannot arise without a biological basis, because its presence is an indispensable condition and an indispensable prerequisite for separating a person from the animal world. However, a monkey cannot turn into a man only according to the laws of the development of the organic world. Something more is needed here.

Man acquires his social essence not by virtue of biological laws, but by virtue of the laws of social development. Thus, the social acquires relative independence from the biological and itself becomes a necessary condition for its further existence.

However, the exit of man from nature does not mean at all that now an absolute opposition to nature is established for him. Moreover, a person must, like all living things, adapt to it. But unlike animals, which directly adapt to changes in the environment, a person achieves his goal by changing nature, transforming it.

In the course of this, a world of artificial objects and phenomena is created, next to the natural world of nature, an artificial world of human culture arises. It is in this way that a person retains his generic essence and turns into a social being.

Society is always forced, to some extent, to reckon with the biological basis of people, to take care of satisfying the needs that arise on this basis. With the emergence of society, the final subordination of the biological to the social takes place, which in no way means the displacement and abolition of the biological. It simply ceases to be leading. But it exists, and its presence reminds of itself in many ways. After all, the life of each individual person is subject to biological laws. Another thing is that we meet the needs of our body within the framework of the opportunities provided to us by society.

CONCLUSION

The appearance of man is a huge leap in the development of wildlife. Man arose in the process of evolution under the influence of laws common to all living beings. The human body, like all living organisms, needs food and oxygen. Like all living organisms, it undergoes changes, grows, ages, dies. Therefore, the human body, the human body is a field of study of biological sciences. The biological is also expressed in morphophysiological, genetic phenomena, as well as in neuro-cerebral, electrochemical and some other processes of the human body. But no single aspect reveals to us the phenomenon of man in its entirety. Man, we say, is a rational being. What, then, is his thinking: does it obey only biological laws or only social ones?

The social and biological, existing in inseparable unity in man, fix in abstraction only the extreme poles in the diversity of human properties and actions. The body and personality are two inseparable sides of a person. By his organismic level, he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and by his personal level he is turned to social being, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture. The measurement of a person from the biological and social side is related precisely to his personality.

The biological side of a person is determined mainly by the hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person entering the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. Therefore, this inseparable unity allows us to say: man is a biosocial being.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

    Akimova, T.A. Ecology: Textbook for university students / T.A. Akimov. V.V. Haskin. - 3rd ed., revised. and additional - M.: UNITI-DANA, 2007. - 495 p.

    Gorelov A.A. Concepts of modern natural science: Proc. allowance for universities / A.A. Gorelov.-M.: AST; Astrel, 2004. −382 p.

    Concepts of modern natural science: A textbook for universities / Edited by L. A. Mikhailov. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2008. - 336 p.

    Nikolaikin N.I. Ecology: Textbook for universities / N.I. Nikolaikin, N.E. Nikolaikina, O.P. Melekhova. − 3rd ed., stereotype. − M.: Bustard, 2004. −624 p.

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In the Age of Enlightenment, many thinkers, seeking to separate the natural and the social, considered all the attributes of social life (social institutions, morality, traditions, etc.) as "artificially" created by man, during this period such concepts as "natural law", " natural equality", "natural morality".

The natural (natural) was considered as the foundation, the basis for the correctness of the social structure. There is no need to emphasize that the social played a sort of secondary role and was directly dependent on the natural environment. In the second half of the XIX century. various theories of social Darwinism, the essence of which is an attempt to extend to social life the principles of natural selection and the struggle for existence in wildlife, formulated by the English naturalist Charles Darwin, are widely spread. The emergence of society, its development were considered only within the framework of evolutionary changes occurring independently of the will of people. Naturally, everything that happens in society, including social inequality, the strict laws of social struggle, was considered by them as necessary, useful both for society as a whole and for its individual individuals.

In the XX century. attempts at a biological "explanation" of the essence of man and his social qualities do not stop. As an example, one can cite the phenomenology of a person by the famous French thinker and naturalist, by the way, the clergyman P. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). According to Teilhard, man embodies and concentrates in himself all the development of the world. Nature, in the course of its historical development, acquires its meaning in man. In it, it reaches, as it were, its highest biological development, and at the same time it also acts as a kind of beginning of its conscious, and, consequently, social development.

Man is a social being

At present, the opinion about the biosocial nature of man has been established in science. At the same time, the social is not only not belittled, but its decisive role in the selection of Homo sapiens from the animal world and its transformation into a social being is noted. Now hardly anyone will dare to deny the biological prerequisites for the emergence of man. Even without resorting to scientific evidence, but guided by the simplest observations and generalizations, it is not difficult to discover a person's enormous dependence on natural changes - magnetic storms in the atmosphere, solar activity, earthly elements and disasters.

In the process of ontogenesis, fundamental biosocial differences between man and animal appeared, which is associated with the life of a person among people, in society. Such features relate to the physiology, and behavior, and lifestyle of a person.

The main difference between a person and an animal, which speaks of the socialization of a person, is the presence of conceptual thinking. The concept contains the most important essential features and properties of the object being defined, the concepts are abstract. For animals, the reflection of reality is concrete, objective, and human thinking can be logical, generalizing, abstract. The basis of animal behavior is instincts, which are innate aspirations and tendencies that are expressed in automatic behavior and are inherited. Such behavior is strictly limited and predetermined, it does not change with changing conditions, even if the action becomes irrational. And human behavior has a goal, for the achievement of which he draws up a certain plan, which can vary depending on the circumstances. In addition, a person is able to analyze the results of his actions, draw conclusions from the results of activities and correct his behavior.

Another difference between a person and an animal, which determines his social essence, is speech.

Russian scientist - physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, who studies the features of higher nervous activity of a person, considered the presence of speech in a person as a specific feature that distinguishes his nervous activity from the nervous activity of animals.

Human speech is the second signal system, the first signal system is the sense organs that allow you to capture various changes in the qualities and properties of surrounding objects and phenomena (sound, smell, taste, temperature, etc.). The first signaling system is common in humans and animals. If sensory mechanisms work in the first signaling system, then the signals of the second system are words, speech, separated from the object itself, abstract and generalized. The results of numerous studies have shown that a person's speech can develop only when communicating with other people, which means that the development of speech has a social character.

Labor is also the result of human socialization. Animals, to some extent, are capable of creative activity, but only a person is capable of making complex tools of labor, planning labor activity, adjusting it depending on the results, and predicting the results of this activity.

In the process of its development, a person became independent of the elements - he mastered fire, electricity, learned to protect himself from various natural phenomena with the help of clothes, which made a person free. The development of science, technology and various human achievements are all the result of the developments of many scientists, achieved through interaction between scientists, as well as through the transfer of experience from generation to generation.

Man learned the division of labor - already at the initial stages of the development of human society, there was a division of labor according to age and gender. In the future, social relations developed, which led to an increase in labor productivity, and made it possible to transfer experience and knowledge to a new generation.

An important positive result of socialization, which contributed to the development of society and the biological evolution of man, was the regulation of marital relations. So, empirically, a person came to the need to ban kinship marriages, which avoids the accumulation of negative mutations, leads to the enrichment of the gene pool of society.

In addition to the fundamental differences between man and the animals listed above, a person has specific structural features of the body inherent only to him - upright posture, the ability to work, cognitive activity of the brain, and others. Natural selection retained the traits that stimulated the joint search for food, protection from predatory animals, care for offspring, etc., which contributed to the development of herding as the initial stage in the development of sociality.