Irrational Forces

Progress
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

"a certain propensity in human nature ... the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. ...
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

Homo sapiens (Linnaeus)
Homo faber - propensity to truck (barter, trade)
Providence - the Invisible Hand

Karl Marx
Alienation

• those who control the means of production do not work
• those who work have no access to the means of production

no control over production (for most)
no control over the market (absolutely)

Thomas Malthus, Essay on Population (1798)
starvation or restraint
humanity not perfectable
a necessary evil: indolence, charity

Charles Darwin, Autobiography (1876) on Thomas Malthus, Essay on Population (1798)
"In October 1838, ... fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence with everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work."

• more young produced than can survive
• siblings compete for limited resources
• variations produce some individuals with greater chance for survival

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
reason serves the will
Homo potens: will to power

Being and Becoming (stasis vs. flux)
absolutism of reality

science: "transformation of nature into concepts for the purpose of governing nature."

self-assertion
mediocrity
Übermensch

"The influence of 'external circumstances' is absurdly overrated by Darwin. The essential factor in the vital process is precisely the tremendous power to shape and create forms from within, a power which uses and exploits the environment."

"The mediocre are more valuable than the exceptional specimins;
the decadent are more valuable than the mediocre."

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
psychoanalysis as legitimate science

• psychology as science
• psychoanalysis as medical method of treatment (cure for disease)
  • disease = neurosis < subconscious

Hysteria < Gr. hystera = uterus
"floating uterus"

Subconscious active in everyone

• dreams
• mannerisms
• fantasy

Determinism in mental activity

• subconscious dominated by impressions from early childhood (p. 44)
• "what was originally animal in our nature" (p. 61)

  Determinism: