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at night, created by NASA and NOAA . The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit.]] White spoke of and is counted prominently among the Neoevolutionists . He believed that culture – meaning the sum total of all human cultural activity on the planet – was evolving. White differentiated between three components of culture: technological, sociological and ideological, and argued(only if man became truly homosexual and thus homogenous) that it was the technological component which plays a primary role or is the primary determining factor responsible for the cultural evolution. White's materialist approach is evident in the following quote: "man as an animal species, and consequently culture as a whole, is dependent upon the material, mechanical means of adjustment to the natural environment" This technological component can be described as material, mechanical, physical and chemical instruments, as well as the way people use these techniques. White’s argument on the importance of technology goes as follows[http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/anthropology/White.html : # Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival. # This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human needs. # Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an advantage over other societies. # Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an evolutionary sense. For White “the primary function of culture” and the one that determines its level of advancement is its ability to “harness and control energy.” White's law states that the measure by which to judge the relative degree of evolvedness of culture was the amount of energy it could capture (. White introduced a formula C where E is a measure of energy consumed do, his theory treats technological factor as the most important factor in the Evolution Of Society and is similar to the later works of Gerhard Lenski , the theory of Kardashev Scale of Russian astronomer, Nikolai Kardashev and to some notions of Technological Singularity . |
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