I am not engaged in the Darwin wars, but sometimes advocating for human exceptionalism rubs hulls against some theorists who take Darwinism out of biology, and into subjective realms of human culture and behavior–as if we are slaves to implacable natural forces. Here’s an example. David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology argues that a new social Darwinism should be pursued that promotes equality rather than inequality, as in the former version.
First, he explains why Darwinism and public policy has a bad reputation. From the column:
Why is the concept of evolving the future so new? One reason is that evolution has traditionally been used to justify social inequality and the status quo; evolutionary change requires winners and losers, and helping those who have ”lost” in life’s struggle, so the argument goes, is plain contrary to nature. This is an idea that came to be called Social Darwinism.
Well, at least he admits it. How often do we see some defenders of Darwinism deny that history? Back to Wilson:
Not only can genetic change take place in a single generation, but cultural change counts as an evolutionary process in its own right. Even when evolution has made things that are hard to change, we need to know about these more enduring aspects of human nature so that we can design our current environments accordingly. We design zoos so that wild animals will feel at home so why not our own environments?
But that isn’t evolution, which is random, purposeless, and has no end goal. It is, if you will pardon the use of a controversial term, intelligent “design.” What a hoot.
Wilson is arguing we should look at scientific understandings of human behavior to help fashion policies–which is fine. But I suspect that he is also saying, at least between the lines, that evolutionary science backs his politics. How convenient. Be that as it may, this is clearly wrong in my view:
Evolutionary theory embodies our best scientific understanding of what living organisms are and how they came into existence. For every other animal it seems obvious that the body and brain of that animal were designed in particular ways because of the environments in which they evolved. It is hubris to think that we humans are an exception.
To the contrary. It is ridiculous to think that we haven’t to some degree escaped the impersonal and environmental forces that forge and drive the natural world. Sure, physically we are the sum of our biological history. But we are concomitantly, much greater than the sum of our biological parts.
Humans are exceptional, in part, because we have subjective capacities to choose the kinds of cultures and societies in which we want to live–the very task to which Wilson is calling us. In other words, we are not just gene machines reflexively reacting to stimuli like jukebox ball bearings hit by the paddles. We have free will. We are conscious. We are rational. We are moral agents. We create.
Even if blind natural selection solely caused us to evolve into our unique inherent natures, the consequences of that process have clearly been unprecedented. We are the exceptional species that no longer simply reacts to environment. We make the environment react to us.
September 29th, 2010 | 9:16 pm
Natural selection is far from blind. I often recommend the book “Before the Dawn” by Nicholas Wade (Amazon link http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285812603&sr=1-1)
It shows how as the human race spread out, we adapted to the available food supply. This explains, for example, why some populations are largely lactose-intolerant and others are not.
Part of our adaptation was natural selection in the form of some children thriving on the local food, and some not making it. There may also be mechanisms where certain genes become active as a reaction to environmental stimuli.
So there’s a large reactionary element to evolution, but those genes have to be there in the first place in order to allow us to react. We’re an awful long way from understanding this process.
September 29th, 2010 | 9:51 pm
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September 30th, 2010 | 6:32 am
Natural selection is not blind, but an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent evolutionary mechanism, capice? No NS no nada, capice?
Give me a break! and I was deluded by this not even wrong scientific theory most of my life till I read Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box.
September 30th, 2010 | 10:33 am
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September 30th, 2010 | 12:07 pm
Humans are exceptional, in part, because we have subjective capacities to choose the kinds of cultures and societies in which we want to live.
I always find this assertion fascinating, because it illustrates the “ignore the man behind the curtain” mode of thinking. When we say we “choose,” I always want to know: how do you choose? By what process does your thinking arrive at a choice? Where do choices come from, and at what point do we say we’ve “made” one?
Either there is a process, a set of rules, by which each mind arrives at a choice, or there is not. If there is not, then human beings are purely random creatures– a condition that is manifestly not true. Therefore there exists a set of rules, a process, a mechanism, by which a mind considers potential outcomes and arrives at a choice. Invoking “free will” is simply to dodge the question: what does it mean to say “free will?” Is it simply to say that, presented with a choice, we can choose from any of the potentials? Sure… but will we?
The naturalistic program, for all its faults, has so far been the only one to give us answers. We may not like the answers that methodological naturalism delivers, but at least we’re getting them.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
September 30th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Elf: There is no conflict between human exceptionalism and naturalistic processes. However it happened, we are special.
September 30th, 2010 | 1:39 pm
But “special” how? If there’s no conflict between naturalism and human exceptionalism, then human behavior, however exceptional, is subject to the same process as every other species’ behavior.
To claim that we’re not subject to the natural forces that operate in our universe, as you do in your last paragraphs, is to imagine “natural forces” on a small, and terribly local, scale. Ultimately, the Darwinian conclusion that we survive– or not– and the survivors set the conditions for their progeny, is the only reasonable conclusion.
We may have better tools with which to consider this survival, but so far there’s nothing exceptional enough about us to guarantee that survival in a universe where 99.999999999% of it is a vast, cold, irradiated, vacuum-ridden wasteland hostile to life.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
September 30th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Wow. You must be fun at parties. But be that as it may, because we have stepped somewhat out of that paradigm, at least one species mitigates the coldness and hostility.
September 30th, 2010 | 2:20 pm
Wesley says: “It is ridiculous to think that we haven’t to some degree escaped the impersonal and environmental forces that forge and drive the natural world. Sure, physically we are the sum of our biological history. But we are concomitantly, much greater than the sum of our biological parts.”
This kind of remark reminds me of the man whose lottery number is drawn — one in a million. He thinks: “I must be special. Some great plan must be unfolding here. Why, out of all those millions of ticket-holders was MY number drawn?” And the answer is the “impersonal”: because SOMEBODY had to win. Such is the nature of lotteries.
It is the silly belief that our presence here is miraculous and must have been planned in minute detail by some “intelligent designer” because we’re just the right distance from the sun that we neither roast nor freeze solid; or that the mixture of oxygen and nitrogen in our bloodstreams is just perfect for sustaining human life at about sea level. If you’re a believer in Occam’s razor, however, the simpler (and much more credible) explanation for these characteristics is that human life evolved on earth in the only way it COULD evolve and survive: in accordance with the prevailing conditions.
One may believe that the human species is exceptional because of its cognitive ability (which is true), but the belief that that exceptional characteristic is superior to the exceptional characteristics of any and every other species, such as to make us humans the de facto masters of their fates, is pure and simple bunk. Horses have greater physical strength, hawks have better eyesight and cheetahs can run faster. Even the lowly cockroach is unique in its ability to survive. Were any of these species to have human-like cognitive capabilities they would undoubtedly fall victim to the same delusion of believing that that which comes naturally is actually supernatural; that they’re “special;” that they have “to some degree escaped the impersonal and environmental forces that forge and drive the natural world.” And they’d be wrong.
Simply stated, they’re here because they’re here and most other explanations are nonsensically wishful thinking.
September 30th, 2010 | 8:04 pm
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