Great Ideas of Philosophy

2. There is no room for qualifying the radical implications of Darwinian thought. We now confront anuncompromisingly evolutionary psychology in which human nature is not separated in any way fromthe balance of nature.C. Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830–1833) provided a time frame compatible with therequirements of Darwin’s theory.1. Lyell’s uniformitarian theory (that the same geological forces that operated in the remote past werestill operating and in the same fashion) meant that there was enough time in the earth’s past forevolution to work.2. Lyell had also proposed, based on the fossil record, that older species had died out and been replaced.(Lyell, however, believed that progress was not by way of modifying existing species but by theirreplacement.)III. Some of Darwin’s critics, as late as the second half of the 19 th century, insisted that he had not proceededaccording to the established methods of Bacon and Newton, reaching broad generalizations without thenecessary step-by-step inductive process. Even in our own time, scientists have concluded that the “naturalselection” account is farfetched.A. A scientific theory is expected to be both retrodictive, in that it explains how things came to be the waythey are, and predictive. Thus, gravitation laws not only explain why objects have fallen but also predictthat and how they will fall.B. Evolutionary theory, however, is non-predictive: It is impossible to tell how natural selection will work inthe future. Darwin himself called his method a kind of natural history.C. Some also argued that the fossil record—which Darwin insisted was incomplete—was actually too good.1. These critics said that the record was quite complete but failed to reveal the minute progression ofchange and gradual appearance of new species that the theory required.2. Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory and a distinguished scholar in his own right,answered these criticisms, saying that although the fossil record is complete, it is not an accuraterecord because of the upheavals that have taken place at the level of the strata. They provide a brokenand shifted record. Were the record undisturbed, it would support the theory.D. Many pointed out that though farmers and breeders had been selectively breeding livestock and domesticanimals for millennia, they had never been able to create a new species.IV. More significant for most was Darwinism’s implication that nature has its own creative and renewing resources,deployed with no plan or intention.A. Evolutionary theory does not offer the peaceable kingdom of a providential God, but a hellish place ofcompetition, and conflict.1. Herbert Spencer first used the expression “survival of the fittest” in his Social Statics, published eightyears earlier than Origin.2. Darwin borrowed the phrase but remained aloof to the radical libertarianism and “social Darwinism”advocated by Spencer.3. The evolutionary principles advanced by Spencer were, unlike Darwin’s, forged into a moralimperative: Given that progress depends on the achievements of the best, these are not to be held backby accommodating the needs of the less talented.B. Yet another implication of evolutionary theory is that what matters are collectives, not individuals.1. It is not coincidental that Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, was writing on hereditary genius in 1869.He made the point that, in a large sample of human beings, there will be a negligibly small number oftruly exceptional instances, but the entire race ultimately depends on the achievements of that smallgroup.2. Galton himself was totally committed to the hereditarian view of natural variations and to the need toimprove society by genetic means, even proposing cash payments for voluntary sterilization to thosemeasuring low in estimates of intelligence.C. If nature can prune and purify at the level of intellect, it can also select moral predispositions, if theseenhance the species’ adaptive potential.1. Ethics thus boils down to biology.18©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership