Paul Alsberg (1883-1965) et le transfert adaptatif du biologique au technique : un pr\'ecurseur de la "cultural niche construction" ?

TL;DR

This paper discusses Paul Alsberg's thesis on human evolution, emphasizing the role of technique as a factor in hominisation and positioning him as a precursor to cultural niche construction theory.

Contribution

It highlights Alsberg's concept of extrabodily adaptation and his influence on the development of niche construction theory, linking early ideas to contemporary evolutionary frameworks.

Findings

Alsberg's principle of body-liberation by tool-using

Connection between Alsberg's ideas and niche construction theory

Alsberg as a precursor to cultural niche construction

Abstract

We propose, in this paper, both a presentation and a discussion of Paul Alsberg's thesis on the supposed specificity principle of human evolution. The author maintains a difference of nature between Man and Animal relying on an opposition between "body-adaptation" - that of the Animal - and "extrabodily-adaptation" - that of Man in which the means of adaptation are switched outside of the organisms by tool-using. This difference is not a mere difference of state, but of evolutionary dynamics. Here, Man is not simply "Homo faber", as in Bergson's view, but produced and made possible by technique; a technique which then appears as an hominisation factor. Thus, his "principle of body-liberation" by tool-using is to be retrospectively understood as a part of the logics of the modification of selection pressure logics, which reminds us the seminal contemporary niche construction theory (F. John Odling-Smee). It seems therefore possible to make Paul Alsberg, from his 1922 work, one of the most important precursors of the cultural niche construction theory.