Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

0 Darwin Awards
Darwin Awards “The Darwin Awards” is a Web site
and series of books started in 1993 by Wendy Northcutt, a
molecular biology graduate at the University of California
in Berkeley. She began collecting stories of human stupidity,
then opened a Web site in which people from all over
the world can submit similar stories. Although the books
and Web site claim to offer examples of human evolution
in action, it is highly unlikely that any of the stories actually
represent the process of natural selection. They are,
however, an interesting and entertaining way to examine the
difference between the popular and scientific conceptions of
natural selection.
The people in the Darwin Awards stories commit outlandish
acts of stupidity that either kill them or prevent them
from reproducing. Either way, their genes will not be represented
in the next generation. They have removed themselves
from the human gene pool in what the author calls “a spectacularly
stupid manner,” which will contribute to the eventual
evolutionary improvement of the entire species. This is
the fundamental premise of the Darwin Awards.
Examples include: A woman burned herself to death
because she was smoking a cigarette while dousing anthills
with gasoline; a man took offense at a rattlesnake sticking its
tongue out at him, and when he stuck his tongue out at the
snake, the snake bit it; a college student jumped down what
he thought was a library laundry chute, but libraries do not
have laundry chutes, and the chute led to a trash compactor;
a man electrocuted himself trying to electroshock worms out
of the ground for fish bait; and a man tried to stop a car that
was rolling down a hill by stepping in front of it. These are
all stories that Northcutt attempted to verify before publishing
them, and they are probably true.
Despite the tremendous value of these stories as entertainment,
it is unlikely that they actually represent evolution
in action. The principal reason for this is that the death of
these individuals does not necessarily represent the removal
of what could be called judgment impairment genes from the
population. The lack of intelligence demonstrated by some of
these people may not arise from any consistent genetic differences
between them and the rest of humankind. Even in
cases where a specific genetic basis for intelligence has been
sought, it has not been found; in the Darwin Awards database,
it has not been sought. If the stupidity of the people
arose from habits of thought they acquired from upbringing
and society, then their deaths will have contributed nothing
to natural selection.
These stories may not represent a lack of intelligence so
much as excessive impulsiveness. The proper order for intelligent
action is (1) think, (2) act; to reverse these two steps
is not necessarily as stupid as it is impulsive. The question
then becomes, are there conditions in which impulsiveness
confers a possible evolutionary benefit? He who hesitates
long enough to think will sometimes live longer, but he
will also sometimes miss an opportunity to acquire status,
resources, or reproductive opportunities. Modern humans
are sometimes intelligent, sometimes impulsive, and modern
humans have inherited both of these behavioral patterns
from prehistoric ancestors (see intelligence, evolution
of; sociobiology).
Most scientists believe that human genetic evolution has
not recently progressed in any particular direction (although
random genetic changes have continued to occur). Rather
than allowing natural selection to eliminate inferior versions
of genes, humans have invented technological responses to
everything from the need for more food, to responding to
the weather, to the control of diseases. Most scientists who
study human evolution will insist that no measurable increase
in brain size has occurred in the last 100,000 years, and no
increase in brain quality in about 50,000 years.
Further Reading
Northcutt, Wendy. The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action. New
York: Dutton, 2000.
———. The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection. New York:
Dutton, 2001.
———. The Darwin Awards III: Survival of the Fittest. New York:
Dutton, 2003.
———. “The Darwin Awards.” Available online. URL: http://www.
DarwinAwards.com. Accessed March 23, 2005.
Darwin, Charles (1809–1882) British Evolutionary scientist
Charles Darwin (see figure on page 109) was the
scientist whose perseverance and wisdom changed the way
professional scientists, amateurs, and almost everyone else
viewed the world. He presented a convincing case that all
life-forms had evolved from a common ancestor, and for
a mechanism, natural selection, by which evolution
occurs. Earlier scholars had proposed evolutionary theories
(see Buffon, Georges; Chambers, Robert; Darwin,
Erasmus; Lamarckism), but, until Charles Darwin, no proposals
of evolution were credible.
Charles Robert Darwin was born February 12, 1809, in
Shrewsbury, England, the same day that Abraham Lincoln
was born in the state of Kentucky. Both men, in different
ways, led the human mind to consider new possibilities and
freedoms without which future progress would not have been
possible. Darwin, like many other aristocratic Englishmen,
was born into a rich and inbred family. His father, Robert
Darwin, was a prominent physician, and his mother, Susannah
Wedgwood Darwin, was an heir of the Wedgwood pottery
fortune. Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood were,
in addition, cousins. Unlike other rich inbred Englishmen,
Charles Darwin was to put his inherited wealth to better use
than perhaps anyone ever has.
Darwin had three older sisters, an older brother, and a
younger sister. Scholars do not know what kind of impact
the death of Darwin’s mother had upon him. Her death was
painful and prolonged, and Darwin was only eight years old.
Whether this event might have inclined him to think more of
evolutionary contingency, rather than divine benevolence, as
the ruling order of the world, scholars can only speculate.
The Darwin family was respectably but not passionately
religious. Robert Darwin was secretly a freethinker
but remained associated with the Anglican Church. Susan-