Tag Archives: human niche

03/21/26

Looking at Augustin Fuentes’s Article (2016) “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis…” (Part 1 of 16)

0001 The full title of the article before me is “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche: Toward an Integrated Anthropology”.  The work is published in Current Anthropology (volume 57, supplement 13, June 2016, pages S13-S26; DOI: 10.1086/685684).  At the time of publication, the author is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.  He has since been scooped up by Princeton.

Scooped?

Ask anyone in Human Resources what that term means.

0002 The material for this thought-piece is developed at the Center for Theological Inquiry in 2012-13, in a collaborative titled, “Inquiry on Human Nature”, and presented to a Wenner-Gren symposium in 2014.

0003 This is the time when the much-vaunted program of “niche construction” is in the Zeitgeist… er… air.  The author seeks to capitalize on this extension of the evolutionary synthesis.  The first extension, starting fifty years earlier, is from natural history into genetics, and is now called “Neodarwinism”.

And what does he want to invest that capital in?

An integrated anthropology.

0004 Integrated anthropology?

I suppose that anthropology is to integrate with evolutionary science.

This is precisely an interest of Razie Mah, as witnessed in his three masterworks: The Human Niche (2018), An Archaeology of the Fall (2012), and How To Define the Word “Religion” (2015).

0005 But, that is not the references that I really should be pointing to.

I should be indicating two primers, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  These are A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

0006 Why?

The terms in the title of the work under examination associate to elements in a category-based nested form.

I associate “integration” to the normal context3.

I associate “anthropology” to the actuality2.

I associate “evolutionary science” to the potential1.

0007 The category-based nested form derives from the philosophy of Charles Peirce.  It consists in four statements.  The fourth is paradigmatic.  A triadic normal context3 brings a dyadic actuality2 into relation with the monadic possibility of ‘something’1.  The subscripts correspond to Peirce’s three categories.

0008 Here is a picture of my associations, along with how each element gets specified by the title of this article.

0009 What do these associations imply?

The human niche3 is the “integration3” of an “integrated anthropology”.

As such, the human niche3 should contextualize ethnography2 (as a specific application of anthropology2).

0010 The formal causation in these statements seems reasonable.

But, does the efficient causation seem plausible?

Does anthropology2 emerge from the potential of evolutionary science1?

Can ethnography2 situate the potential of ‘niche construction (as a case-study for an extended evolutionary synthesis)’1?

0011 The following figure distills the author’s challenge.

03/4/26

Looking at Augustin Fuentes’s Article (2016) “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis…” (Part 16 of 16)

0163 Consequently, a pattern of domestication and entanglement is an appropriate darwinian model for the adaptations involved in discipline of ethnography.

0164 On one hand, the ethnographer is an emissary from a society with wealth and power and serves as an actuality independent of the adapting narod-folk2a.

The potential of intergroup competition1b says that fear should be the appropriate adaptation2b, in the course of natural and cultural selection3b.

0165 But this does not happen.  Instead, the narod-folk3b,1b adapt by losing their fear of the ethnographer’s society2b.  This is the nature of domestication.

0166 On the other hand, the narod-folk2a are the actuality independent of the adapting species for anthropologists within Western academies3b who are trained by (and train) ethnographers on the methods of mapping the cognitive spaces of narod-folk1b.  The very act of mapping the cognitive spaces of a narod (whether historically given or spontaneously generated) exhibits the anthropology of substantiation and entanglement.

0167 I conclude by returning to the snarky comment at point 119 and apologizing.

Yeah, semioticians have teeth.

0168 The author notes, in the final paragraph, that the human niche is a basal framework that enables the inquirer to include the salient features, forces and processes at multiple levels of… um… organization.  Surely, that description fits the idea of using the purely relational structure of the category-based nested form as a tool for inquiry.  All that this examiner has done is transpose elements from the author’s argument into the empty slots of a category-based nested form.

This suggests that category-based nested forms satisfy Bourdieu’s enigmatic phrase, of “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures”.  Category-based nested forms are purely relational (triadic) structures that gather material through the intuitive use of association, followed by an exploration of the implications.

0169 My thanks go to the author of this article, who undoubtedly has published more academic literature since this work from 2016, without the value that this examination adds.  Perhaps, this 2026 review may add to a re-illustration of the envisioned integrated anthropology.