European thinkers by a good half-millennium.Meanwhile, most European thinkers maintained that man and his societies were ina state of decline from the golden age of the Garden of Eden. This also meshed withancient Greek mythologies of ages of gold, silver and bronze followed ultimately by themean age of iron, where all things are debased. It was only in the 18th century thatprogress began to seem so certain that theories of the decline of society began to bereplaced by theories of evolution. However, these early theories of evolution used theterm as a synonym for progress and development, not simply for gradual change fromone form to another. This concept of progress still represents common usage of the termevolution.
Evolution and Enlightenment
Evolution in the sense of progress also helped Europeans make sense of thecolonial world they were building through the Age of Discovery. In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes’ (1588 — 1679) view of man’s primeval condition as “solitary, poor,nasty, brutish, and short” is a good summary of the then prevalent view of the savage —i.e. non-European. All that was good in man was the result of the slow development outof this lowly state. This view, of the progression from brute to citizen, was almostuniversally held. But questions arose as to the how and why of progress. Why, in somelands, the people are progressive and civilized, while in others they are poor and brutish.Usually John Locke (1632 — 1704) is presented as the lighter counterpoint toHobbes’ dark, brooding commentary on human nature. Locke presents man as
tabularasa
, made what he is by environment. But in truth, at least on the field of evolution, both espouse the same progressivism. While Hobbes presents the state and law civilizing man, Locke views education as that power. Both are examples of that class of explanations dubbed environmentalist — where man’s environment effects hisevolution. Usually the so-called biologist explanations are opposed to this position,
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