Let us take up the necessity for a world outlook from the
angle of the proverbial riddle (the chicken and egg riddle). Which came
first: human beings or their world outlook? This is a riddle which can
be easily solved by asking the question in this manner: "Which came
first, theory or practice?"
Human beings have gone through thousands of years of
practice, or, one could say, evolution. What is known
historically is that first there were some physical, anatomical,
physiological changes, or, in sum, structural changes, followed
by a change in function. It is not possible to explain the
existence of human beings without, biologically speaking, various
physiological and structural changes having taken place. One of
the important changes was the development of vocal cords. For
homo sapiens to stand erect on two legs, to become unique bipedal
mammals, a lot of changes in their biological structure had to
take place. Only once such changes were in place to a certain
extent was it possible for the function itself to evolve into
what we call the human, that is, to be able to use the hands
consistently with the brain and thus change nature.
In human social development, it is practice which had to
develop to a certain level before theory could come into being
and play its own directing role. Today too, without practice it
is not possible to acquire a world outlook consistent with that
practice. Of all the great struggles of the present era, the
class struggle and the struggles for production and scientific
experimentation, play the most dominant role in social
development. It can be said that without waging the class
struggle, it will not be possible to acquire a world outlook.
Without acquiring a world outlook, it is not possible to further
develop the class struggle.
As regards the development of the species, it can be said
with certainty that homo sapiens had no choice but to evolve. The
conditions were crying out for nature to produce such a species
as could not only think-in-itself and work according to habits
acquired over millennia, transformed into spontaneous natural
behavior, so determined by the structure and function of any
organism within those conditions, but a species which could also
think for others, which could abstract absence (i.e., conceptualize
what is missing) in a profound way and make nature yield what was
necessary for the humanization of both the social and the natural
environments.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
