Povijesni prilozi, Vol. 26 No. 33, 2007.
Review article
History versus bio-ecology: from human exemptionalism to deep evolutionary time
Tomislav Markus
Abstract
The author analyses the notion of history within the framework of social sciences
and humanities. He pays particular attention to historiography. History is no neutral
term but a notion deeply bound up with the system of values dominant in the
modern civilization, especially with the myth of progress and the belief in the exemptionalist
paradigm (human separation from nature) as well as biological discontinuity
between humans and other species. The concept of history is part of the standard
model of humanities that considers the biological and ecological perspectives
as irrelevant to the study of human society. Human society, within this paradigm,
exists in a separate world of History and Culture. The author analyzes the work of
three scholars—the ecologist Paul Shepard, biologist Edward Wilson and the anthropologist
Robin Fox—who criticized the conventional understanding of history
and the standard model more generally. They emphasized the importance of our
ancient evolutionary past. The author starts from this scholarship to argue for a
stronger position of ecology and evolutionary biology. Ecology recognizes human
ties to the Nature, and evolutionary biology accepts the existence of human biogrammatics
and the importance of the millions of years of evolution of our human
and hominid ancestors.
Keywords
history; evolutionary biology; ecology; the standard model of humanities
Hrčak ID:
18757
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2007.
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