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Basically Gray's argument comes down to: human nature hasn't changed. This may be true, but considering the irrefutable real advances in agriculture, medicine,
by johngossman 12y ago
Basically Gray's argument comes down to: human nature hasn't changed. This may be true, but considering the irrefutable real advances in agriculture, medicine, literacy, communication, education and transportation reflected in such things as life-expectancy, infant mortality and various standard-of-living measures, it is certainly debatable.
- sowhatquestion 12y agoYes, this is a pet peeve of mine. People assume that because (for example) the human tendency towards selfishness hasn't changed, that "human nature" is a reliable constant. But as philosophers have been pointing out at least since Hegel, it's human nature to create technologies--and I mean technologies in the broadest sense: language, tools, artistic works, social and political institutions--that thoroughly reshape and redirect the influence of innate nature. You don't have to go all the way to strong social constructivism in order to understand this, but people treat it as an either/or!