Human Nature

What Makes a Human Being?

Humans are distinguished from animals by their ability to use tools, develop language, and reason. These last two are closely connected in that the practice of logic is intertwined with the structure of language. While rhesus monkeys have been taught to use sign language and domesticated animals are capable of understanding spoken words, the development of a formal language is unique to human beings. Indeed, humans have created a diversity of spoken and written [Page 1085]languages, and the vocabularies of these languages reveals commonalities and differences among cultures. Written language permits a more detailed historic record and enhanced opportunities for self-consciousness and specialized labor.

In biological terms, the “human” is a mammal, large brained, has an “s”-shaped spinal column, an erect posture, opposable thumbs, an ominivorous diet, binocular vision, speech, practices bipedal locomotion, and dwells on the ground. The human or hominid is preceded in the mammalian chronology by pongids (apes or monkeys). Pongids and hominids share several characteristics with humans: their group living, their careful socialization of children, and their capacity for learning, among others.

The human brain is supple and responds to environmental challenges through reconfiguring its neural pathways. An individual's loss of a sense leads to a process in which the other senses compensate, and a new synthetic understanding of the environment emerges. Damage to the brain stimulates a reassignment of functions among the healthy parts of the brain. The individual's need to process information and interact with the environment stimulates the development of appropriate areas of the brain. The chemistry of the brain is thus altered. Nurture and broad experience may affect nature.

Humans live in groups, not as isolates. Human survival is crucially dependent on primary and secondary groups, from the dyad and nuclear family to larger kinship patterns. Families depend on an overarching organization or complex of organizations, ranging from the tribe and confederations of tribes, to the political structures of the city and nation-state. Pongids share the primary and secondary group structures in which humans live, but they lack the more complex political and economic institutions that characterize human experience.

One basic need satisfied by social organization is continuity in food supply. Participation in social organization with this purpose is not optional. A primary function of the economic system is to assure the availability of food and accommodations and, beyond this, to guide the distribution of wanted goods consistent with cultural values.

Religion has emerged among humans to explain and guide shared experiences of birth, illness, death, love, hurt, and disaster. These explanations are organized into a superstructure that provides reasons, names, and rationales, confers membership, allocates power, and promulgates a charter to order society. Religions proliferate but societies have more recently turned to secular forms of organization in which the influence of religion can still be discerned. Religions constitute one of the oldest forms of social organization and continue to shape business practice, political movements, and statecraft. Religion is an important element of culture that stands along with biology in explaining human behavior.

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