Carneiro R L
American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Nov 7;97(23):12926-31. doi: 10.1073/pnas.240462397.
Students of social evolution are concerned not only with the general course it has followed, but also with the mechanisms that have brought it about. One such mechanism comes into play when the quantitative increase in some entity, usually population, reaching a certain threshold, gives rise to a qualitative change in the structure of a society. This mechanism, first recognized by Hegel, was seized on by Marx and Engels. However, neither they nor their current followers among anthropologists have made much use of it in attempting to explain social evolution. But as this paper attempts to show, in those few instances when the mechanism has been invoked, it has heightened our understanding of the process of social evolution. And, it is argued, if the mechanism were more widely applied, further understanding of the course of evolution could be expected to result.
研究社会进化的学者不仅关注其总体发展历程，还关注导致这一历程的机制。当某个实体（通常是人口）的数量增长达到一定阈值，从而引发社会结构的质变时，就会有一种这样的机制发挥作用。这种机制最早由黑格尔认识到，马克思和恩格斯也予以采用。然而，无论是他们本人，还是当今人类学家中的追随者，在试图解释社会进化时都没有充分利用这一机制。但正如本文试图表明的那样，在少数援引这一机制的案例中，它加深了我们对社会进化过程的理解。而且，有人认为，如果这一机制得到更广泛的应用，有望进一步加深对进化历程的理解。
