The Steps of Man Towards Civilization

Book excerpt: This book delivers an introduction to the theory programme called structure-genetic sociology. I developed this theory programme in the past 30 years. In the meantime, I have written ten books and numerous articles about the subject. The programme mainly bases on developmental psychology and has worked it out to a theory of the evolution of humankind. It encompasses a theory of social change and social evolution, a theory of the development of economy, society, culture, sciences, religion, morals, law, and manners. The fact of the anthropological evolution of humankind from lower, childlike anthropological stages to more elaborated stages is the most groundbreaking and fascinating fact in all social sciences and humanities. It is the only phenomenon within humanities and social sciences whose relevance and importance corresponds to the fact of biological evolution provided by Darwin ́s evolutionary theory. This fact forms the kernel of the entire theory programme. Structure-genetic sociology is the theoretical heir of the outstanding classical approaches such as the classical sociologies, the classical British anthropology, the ethnology of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, and the philosophy of symbolic forms of Ernst Cassirer. We can understand these classical achievements only against the background of the more elaborated empirical foundations and theoretical structures of my structure-genetic sociology. It helps to verify, to correct, to develop, and to improve the best traditions of social sciences and humanities. Structure-genetic sociology formulates the essence of three hundred years of social sciences and humanities.