Darwinism: Publicly Ignored for 150 Years?

Traditionally, the answers to such questions, and many others about modern life, have been sought in philosophy, sociology, even religion. But the answers that have come back are generally unsatisfying. They describe, rather than explain. They do not get to the nitty-gritty of what it truly is to be human. Policy based on them does not work. This is because they ignore the forces that made people what they are: the forces of evolution.

--"Why We Are, As We Are," The Economist (12.20.08)

The 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, is upon us, and articles honoring or at least acknowledging the anniversary are starting to appear in print. And it should be both acknowledged and honored, for Darwin's observations and reflections were so original, so generally right, and so singularly important to advancing our understandings of the origins and development--the evolution--of all life forms on earth. And as far as scientific knowledge has since advanced, his work remains the foundation for understanding evolutionary science and research today. But this article in the Economist laments that the public and public policy makers fail to see what it asserts is the singular relevance of "Darwinism" to solving society's ills and problems.

The article poses examples of questions it suggests Darwinism provides the better answers to, questions alluded to in the opening quote, above:

But why do those who are already well-off feel the need to out-earn other people? And why, contrariwise, is it so hard to abolish poverty?

America executes around 40 people a year for murder. Yet it still has a high murder rate. Why do people murder each other when they are almost always caught and may, in America at least, be killed themselves as a result?

Why, after 80 years of votes for women, and 40 years of the feminist revolution, do men still earn larger incomes? And why do so many people hate others merely for having different coloured skin?

And it goes on to pose and answer other questions as well: Why does a rich or high-status man have more opportunities to mate (or wed)? Is it absolute wealth or relative wealth that matters? How does the range of relative status affect hierarchies and health? Is criminal behavior an evolved response? And how would that explain why murderers are most often disadvantaged, unemployed young men, and why their murders are most often a function of competitive violence against other young men? Could rape be an evolved behavior? What about the murder of children? And what of vengeance, punishment and cheating?

But as ambitious as the claims of Darwinism are, the article, at least, acknowledges that they cannot provide the answers to all questions. And therein lies the issue, the problem, really: the dogmatic belief of many Darwinists, the insistence that, nonetheless, most public issues or problems can be best understood and resolved based on fundamental neo-Darwinian principles or theory. And while the term "Darwinism" does in fact mean different things--both respectful and derisive--when used by different groups of people, I use it here in one sense clearly implied by this article: dismissive of much of the work and research in other scientific fields, sometimes even of nonconforming evolutionary research by mainstream scholars. I refer to the "faithful," because for many it appears a rigid and consuming life philosophy, and for some amounts to a non-deistic "religion."

As the opening quote indicates, they extend but little respect to much of the work of the social sciences and the insights and reflections of the humanities. And for policy makers to rely at all on the findings or views of these other scientists and scholars is viewed by them as ignorance of the truth.

The reasons for that ignorance are complex. Philosophers have preached that there exists between man and beast an unbridgeable distinction. Sociologists have been seduced by Marxist ideas about the perfectibility of mankind. Theologians have feared that the very thought of evolution threatens divine explanations of the world. Even fully paid-up members of the Enlightenment, people who would not for a moment deny humanity’s simian ancestry, are often sceptical. They seem to believe, as Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University, in England, elegantly puts it, that evolution stops at the neck: that human anatomy evolved, but human behaviour is culturally determined.

The corollary to this is the idea that with appropriate education, indoctrination, social conditioning or what have you, people can be made to behave in almost any way imaginable. The evidence, however, is that they cannot. The room for shaping their behaviour is actually quite limited. Unless that is realised, and the underlying biology of the behaviour to be shaped is properly understood, attempts to manipulate it are likely to fail.

Reflecting Darwinism's "true believer" tendencies, the article purposefully and dismissively reduces complex issues and thinking to inadequate simplicities, and misleadingly suggests that yesterday's superannuated academic thinking is still purveyed today. Its reference to the work of sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers is woefully misinformed, for most of them are "fully paid-up members of the Enlightenment." And as such, they know that beyond the Darwinist generalizations, there is much research and many findings that complicate an unequivocal understanding of research in evolutionary science and related fields. Today, geneticists, neuroscientists, and cognitive psychologists labor at understanding the evolution and functioning of the human brain--and how we experience the workings of that brain. There are in fact more and more sociologists whose work embraces evolutionary science, if not "Darwinism." There are philosophers who work at a synthesis of scientific, experiential and phenomenological understandings.

And while evolutionary, genetic prescriptions and probabilities are more powerful than most people can comfortably acknowledge, there is also a significant role played by social learning, acculturation, education, and behavioral conditioning. The research evidence for this is also substantial and credible--more substantial than Darwinists appear willing to acknowledge. So, I must respect and, more, broaden one of the articles central messages: the deterministic context and plight of mankind. But I must reiterate that the environments that acculturate, teach and condition appear nearly as deterministic and uncontrollable as our genetic endowment. I offer much more on this in my 2005 essay "Choices," part of my What God? series.

That unwelcome, deterministic reality is an earnest finger poked in our chest, demanding to be heard, attesting repeatedly to the inherited and conditioned qualities that characterize what we do, what we think, who we are. A more euphemistic sentiment might allude to the limits and conditions on the freedom of man. A more direct and fatalistic disposition might charge that what the genes don't dictate, the environment will. And if the genetic brand of determinism is incomprehensible or unacceptable to you, don't expect to find more comfort in the world of conditioned behaviors and beliefs. Or do you believe that the realities of family and cultural conditioning and learning are any less powerful than your genetic endowment?

But before you conclude that I have given it all over to a hopelessly fatalistic viewpoint of human life, a surrender to the biological and environmental factors that shape who we are, "Choices" continues to search and finds an orientation, an approach, that still offers us some real, if limited, understanding of freedom and exercise of self-determination.

You might well conclude, then, that the natural condition of man is an utter lack of freedom, the absence of real, voluntary personal choices—or, put another way, that any sense of freedom exists only in ignorance....

[But] In a real sense, you can enjoy and exercise more real freedom. Your freedom is first in knowing what has made you who you are, the way you are—and how. It is also in knowing what has made others who they are, the way they are. You can learn more about real alternatives, and the potential effect on you of different places and people, different thinking and ways of doing things. Your freedom is in that knowledge. You can also read what different people are reading, listen for what they are saying, watch for what they are doing. You can learn what you need to know, and better understand.

You can, then, see yourself and others in a different, more interdependent way, a more understanding and sympathetic way. And to the extent you know the ways you and others are a product of your circumstances—family, culture, your time and place, the box you are in—you have a blueprint for personal change.

If you protest that my comments are addressed to the plight of individuals and the notions, the challenges, of existential identity, experience and potential, I would remind you that society is the aggregation of individuals, and public policy addresses the aggregate of individual behaviors in community interrelationship. They involve the same complicated determinates of behavior--whether individual behavior, interpersonal behavior, or collective behavior--and understandings of what control or direction can be effectively, wisely exerted over them.

I would also offer another viewpoint: if public policy makers don't often consult Darwinists, it is in part because the work of most other scientists today, including social, biological, and physical scientists--even many of those who labor in the humanities--is in fact well informed of the findings of evolutionary research science. And when public policy makers consult those other researchers or scholars, they are in that process often accessing what is most important about applied evolutionary science in its most practical and useful form.

Let's also bear in mind that, notwithstanding the article's declarations, most evolutionary and cognitive scientists have concluded that there was a notable leap in the evolution of the human brain: the human cognitive ability to think about thinking, identity and experience, to exercise intellectual functions and skills well beyond our closest evolutionary forebears. And regardless of how much we know about evolution, genetics, learning or acculturation, we understandably see and experience our lives as more than the cold, deterministic genetics of evolutionary history, more too than the social forces that have influenced and shaped us. We do have a sense of unique identity, of choice and self-determination, however limited in fact. Our thinking and analysis about our sense of identity and our experience is more subjective, more phenomenological. And doesn't that reflect more closely our personal experience of "what it truly is to be human"?

So we understandably demand that our individual and public issues be framed in terms that address our sense of individual and collective identity, and the subjective meaningfulness of our experiences. There is in fact so much more than a narrow Darwinism necessary to effectively inform our individual and public understandings, and our public policy decisions.

[For my views on the compatibility of faith and science see my 2005 essay, "What God"?]

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795581