Module 04 Social Evolution

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

1. Know where, when and who started social evolution.
2. Know the long waves of social evolution.
3. Determine the impacts of global information explosion.

Social Evolution
- Proposed in the 19th century, social advancement, which is infrequently alluded to as
Unilineal Evolution, was the main hypothesis produced for human sciences specifically for
anthropology. This hypothesis asserts that social evolution occurs based on a single
universal order, meaning evolution of societies follow one singular path but differences in
societies are present because social evolution happens at various rates. This is why there
were/are distinctive kinds of societies existing on the planet.
- Proponents of Social Evolution, who by the way mainly relied on secondary-data, classified
societies into universal evolutionary stages with technology or technological advancements
being the primary basis.
- Social development is the thing that researchers term an expansive arrangement of
hypotheses that endeavor to clarify how and why present day societies are not quite the
same as those before.
Social development has a wide assortment of opposing and clashing elucidations among
researchers - actually, Herbert Spencer [1820-1903] as indicated by Perrin (1976), one planner
of present day social evolution had four working definitions that he modified throughout his
career. According to Perrin, Spencerian social evolution studies a mixture of all of the following:

1. Social Progress: Society always moves toward an ideal setting, where though
there exists individuality and specialization based on different achieved qualities,
there is voluntary cooperation among individuals who have high discipline.
2. Social Requirements: Society is shaped by its set of functional requirements like
sexual reproduction and food sustenance, environmental aspects like climate,
and social existence aspects, the behaviors that makes living together possible.
3. Increasing Division of Labor: the evolution of society happens by intensifying the
functioning of each class, group, or individual.
4. Origin of Social Species: it is believed that society’s development like an embryo
echoes the stages and change that has been experienced by its ancestors, albeit
the final direction of those changes may and can still be altered by outside forces.

Where Did This Notion Come From?

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In the mid-19th century, the physical evolution theories of Charles Darwin influenced social
evolution but lo and behold social evolution did not come from the theories or writings of
Charles Darwin. The 19th-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan is credited to be the first
to apply the principles of evolution to social phenomena.

Morgan pointed out that society moved relentlessly through stages that he coined as
savagery, barbarism, and civilization.

But it wasn't Morgan who observed that first. Before the 19th-century social evolutionists,
researchers in the 17th and 18th Centuries like that of Auguste Comte, Condorcet, Cornelius de
Pauw, Adam Ferguson, among others reacted to "voyage literature", stories of the fifteenth and
sixteenth century western pioneers who brought back reports of newfound plants, creatures,
and social orders. And those researchers attempted to give explanation as to why there were
differences In their societies. One example is Thomas Hobbes who in 1651 stated that Native
Americans were in a rarified state of nature, a condition that all societies were before becoming
civilized and establishing political structure.

But then again, ancient scholars such as Polybius and Thucydides describing the early Roman
and Greek cultures as barbaric versions of their own present, built histories of their own
societies. Society developed from a family-based organization, into village-based, and finally
into the Greek state, that is Aristotle's idea of social evolution Greek and Roman literature
contains a lot of the modern concepts of social evolution.

Despite the differences of social evolutionists whether modern or ancient they all have a
classical view of change as growth, that progress is natural, inevitable, gradual, and continuous
according to Bock (writing in 1955). All of them write in terms of successive, finely-graded
stages of development; all seek the seeds in the original; all exclude consideration of specific
events as effective factors, and all derive from a reflection of existing social or cultural forms
arranged in a series.
 Long Waves of Social Evolution

Figure 4.1. Long Waves of Social Evolution

Similar to how social evolutionists categorized what is a more socially evolved culture or
society, the long waves of social evolution depict how technology technology has advanced through
time. From early stone tools to the development of the water wheel which in itself marked the
industrial revolution. From the discovery or invention of electricity and engineering which also
marked the start of computers until what it is today as we know it, the Internet Age.
It can also be seen that the long waves of social evolution aside from being benchmarked with
technology, the waves overlap with each other. As discussed in previous topics the end of a wave
could actually mean the end of a certain or specific technological advancement that which has not
adapted to the needs of the society or that which has seen the last of its usefulness to society.

Global Information Explosion

Due to more and more people gaining access to information in the World Wide Web and more
so with more and more individuals or groups making information easily available in the internet,
information explosion has become a reality if not already very close to it.
The effects can already be seen in the cyclical uploading and downloading of information. With
so much information it can easily lead to erosion of work efficiency. Take for example, the simple
browsing or surfing the net. People tend to get lost in the moment or get lost in the information for
that matter and time flies without them knowing they have not really accomplished what can be called
a productive work or time.
Albeit not all impacts and effects of online information overload is negative:
•Access to and availability of more information enables ideas, comparability and interlinkages.
Are we doing the right thing? How do others handle the same challenge or situation?

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 •There are always problems behind more problems - and so there will always be solutions for
more solutions. By understanding the cause-effect dynamics, better and more information enable a
holistic and integrative approach to be built
•When we link the problem at hand to others who have encountered similar concerns, and have
attempted different solutions, more ideas can be generated when people have a broader and deeper
understanding of the issues involved.
•Access to a wide range and gamut of information aids local creativity, inspires action, and
generates innovative ideas and ways of doing things.
•Continual learning is critical for anyone to be able to understand the changing values and
behavior patterns of people in the now that affect the future. Continual learning becomes an anytime-
anywhere process due to the easy access of information.
Based on how information is interpreted and used in the global arena or in the local area, easy
access to a broader and deeper range of information facilitates convergence of concepts, visions and
ideas or maybe even a divergence of it.
In the end, there needs to be self-restraint, self-control, and self-discipline in filtering the vast
universe of information available online in order to overcome some of the problems associated with
information overload.
References and Supplementary Materials
Online Supplementary Reading Materials

1. Social Evolutionism - How Did Modern Society Develop?;

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-social-evolutionism-172801; May 11,2018
2. Social Evolution of Anthropological Theory;
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/culturalanthropology/chapter/anthropologicalth
eory/; May 11,2018
3. File:Long Waves of Social
evolution.jpg;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Long_Waves_of_Social_Evolu
tion.jpg; May11, 2018
4. Global Convergence and Local Divergence:
Implications of Online Information Explosion;
https://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/output3.html; May11, 2018

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