ABSTRACT
The advent of Darwinism helped to define and shape the problems of modern psychology as it did those of anthropology. An evolution of mind within the natural world of living organisms was envisaged. Now a bridge could be built to span the deep and mysterious chasm that separated man from other animals and which, according to Descartian tradition, must forever remain unbridged. Darwin (1871, 1873) himself explicitly set processes of reasoning, long considered an exclusively human possession, in an evolutionary perspective and advanced an evolutionary interpretation of the facial and postural changes of man when expressing emotion. He argued that mental differences in the animal series present gradations that are quantitative rather than qualitative in nature. Although Darwin was later accused of gross anthropomorphism by his critics, nevertheless, he stimulated others to think and write about mental evolution. Romanes (1883) coined the term “comparative psychology” and it was not long before a phylogenetic dimension had been added to the program of scientific psychology.
From Betty Meggers (Ed.), Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal. Copyright © 1959 by the Anthropological Society of Washington. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author. A. Irving Hallowell is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.
