Unfortunately, one of the best books I’ve found on Personology has not yet been made digital. Thankfully,it’s available for a reasonable price secondhand online. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Toward-New-Personology-Evolutionary-Model/dp/0471515736. Although you don’t need it to enjoy this series of posts, I like to keep my sources clear.
Toward a New Personology: An Evolutionary Model is an extremely thought-provoking and insightful philosophical work. While I don’t agree with every aspect of Millon’s model, I do agree with his general direction. Research on how to collect and present information has progressed since Millon wrote the book, and these advances benefit our understanding of personality and people. Any numbers in parentheses in this post will be page numbers from the 1990 Millon book.
The first insight of Personology is that “people exhibit distinctive and abiding characteristics” (5). That is, people have characteristics that vary across individuals and that stay consistent to a degree within individuals. Personology seeks to explain the differences between people’s personalities and the development of each personality. Its objectives can be classified as theoretical, nosological, instrumental, and interventional. Personology is a clinical science that requires theories, nosology, instruments, and interventions. Unlike previous works that only aimed to describe personality, Millon’s evolutionary model seeks explanatory power for classification (18). This follows the usual evolutionary trend in science. We develop explanatory models once we have good descriptive models.
At any point in time, a species has a limited set of genes that serve as trait potentials. The importance of these potentials evolves during each individual’s life (22). Human DNA is made up of a finite number of amino acid pairs that are limited in kind. Roughly 99.9% of human DNA is shared among all humans, and this portion is necessary to qualify for human status. Subtracting the genes that are fixed for specieshood from the total possible combinations results in a limited range of options for humanity’s genetic potential. (This glosses over some details on genetic abnormalities, but these do not change the limited nature of the possible combinations, only the quantity.) Different combinations are expressed more or less frequently in different populations, locations, environments, and times. In each individual, a parallel process takes place: The individual is conceived with a mostly fixed DNA sequence. Over time, the degree to which each gene is expressed evolves with changing environments.
The comparison between the development of the species and the development of individuals relies on the distinction between phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Phylogenesis is the process of gene frequencies changing over generations, while ontogenesis is the process of the salience of traits changing over a lifetime (22). Genetic material is only that which is passed on during reproduction.
Given our evolutionary approach, we can identify four aims of all living beings. Millon defines them as follows:
Existence: “serendipitous transformation of random or less organized states into those possessing distinct structures of greater organization.”
Adaptation: “homeostatic processes employed to sustain in open ecosystems”
Replication: “reproductive styles that maximize the diversification and selection of ecologically effective attributes”
Abstraction: “emergence of competencies that foster anticipatory planning and reasoned decision making” (25).
These definitions may be a bit obscure, but understandably so, given the need for a model describing all life based on the principles of evolutionary theory. I’ll describe each of these aims more simply next.
All living beings must first come into existence and then strive to continue their existence. However, the universe follows the principle of entropy, which leads to the dispersal of matter and a decrease in organization. Life forms, on the other hand, represent highly organized states of matter. Different species have different methods of ensuring their survival, but those that fail to exist or continue to exist cannot reproduce, resulting in a decrease in their population over time. For humans, survival involves seeking heat, both through internal consumption and external means. Therefore, it is essential to aim for existence as it does not occur naturally, but requires continuous effort by the organism.
Lifeforms exist within external environments, which they must actively aim to adapt to, as they may not be naturally suited to their surroundings. Failure to adapt can lead to the failure to exist, making this aim a necessary corollary to the aim for existence. The process of natural selection, which is a fundamental mechanism of evolution, determines which lifeforms will survive over time. This process is based on the ability of organisms to reproduce and pass on their genetic traits to their offspring. According to Millon, life began with the formation of molecular aggregates capable of self-replication (36). Reproduction is a critical characteristic that distinguishes living organisms from non-living ones, and it requires the use of energy and thus necessitates aiming for it. All organisms exhibit decision-making abilities to pursue their aims, although the complexity of these mechanisms varies with the size of the organism.
It should be clear that these aims are all interconnected, and that behavior often serves multiple or even all of them. It’s also worth noting how the argument for the necessity of these aims is based on only a few premises: life must exist to survive, genetic material can be passed down through reproduction, life exists within environments, and decision-making is required to pursue aims. All of these premises are indisputable. However, it’s uncertain whether this list is exhaustive.
Millon identifies two methods for each aim that lifeforms use in pursuit of their aims, which I describe below.
Existence: The two strategies for existence are life enhancement and life preservation, which are analogous to attraction and repulsion. Life enhancement, or pleasure, is the drive to create life, while life preservation, or pain, is the drive to avoid death. To physically exist, a thing must overcome entropy and circumvent entropy to continue to exist. Life has mechanisms for both of these, which allow it to exist.
Adaptation: The two modes of adaptation are ecologic accommodation and ecologic modification. The passive mode is to fit in, while the active mode is to stir. The plant kingdom, autotrophs, use the passive mode, which requires the environment to provide nourishment and protection, while the animal kingdom, heterotrophs, use the active mode, which requires the being to consume preformed organic matter. Different balances of these modes can be seen in complex mechanisms like different personalities, where some people change themselves to accommodate their environment, while others seek to change their environment to accommodate themselves.
Reproduction: The two strategies for the aim of reproduction are self-propagation and other-nurturance. Each lifeform uses some strategy between these two polar extremes, and the balance of the two varies across and within species. The choice of how much energy to spend on reproducing oneself and how much to spend on nurturing one’s offspring emerges because parents have limited time and energy, and the only genes that survive in the long term are those that enable lifeforms to survive long enough to reproduce.
Abstraction: The two modes of abstraction are feeling and thinking. Feeling is necessary for stimulus-response, as it is essentially stimulus-recognition. Thinking is advantageous for anticipatory planning, although it is unclear if it is necessary for life. It is used by humans, and exploring its use in Personology will be worthwhile.
In summary:
- People have characteristics that vary across individuals and that stay consistent to a degree within individuals.
- Personology seeks to explain the differences between people’s personalities and the development of each personality.
- The comparison between the development of the species and the development of individuals relies on the distinction between phylogenesis and ontogenesis.
- Phylogenesis is the process of gene frequencies changing over generations
- Ontogenesis is the process of the salience of traits changing over a lifetime
- Genetic material is just that which is passed on in the course of reproduction.
- Four aims of all living beings and two corresponding methods of achievement:
- Existence: death-avoidance and life-preservation
- Adaptation: passive accommodation and active modification
- Replication: self-propagation and other-nurturance
- Abstraction: feeling and thinking
Next Post: Pain and Pleasure
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