{"id":10504,"date":"2014-09-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/evolution-and-ethics-revisited"},"modified":"2021-04-13T17:59:38","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T21:59:38","slug":"evolution-and-ethics-revisited","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/evolution-and-ethics-revisited","title":{"rendered":"Evolution and Ethics, Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

They persuade the world of what is false by urging upon it what is true.\u201d That is John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University<\/i><\/a> (1852) referring to the sciences of his day, which threatened to dominate and even overwhelm theological education in the university. A science\u2019s teaching might be true in its proper place but fallacious \u201cif it be constituted the sole exponent of all things in heaven and earth, and that, for the simple reason that it is encroaching on territory not its own, and undertaking problems which it has no instruments to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Newman\u2019s notion of science was far broader than ours, including even painting and music, his description of the overreach of science is still apt. We now have a term \u2014 \u201cscientism\u201d \u2014 for that fallacy, exemplified, as has been demonstrated in these pages<\/a>, by Richard Dawkins\u2019s pronouncement that genes \u201ccreated us, body and mind<\/a>,\u201d and Edward O. Wilson\u2019s claim that biology is the \u201cbasis of all social behavior<\/a>.\u201d If scientism has become so prevalent, it is partly because of the emergence of new sciences, each encroaching, as Newman said, on \u201cterritory not its own\u201d (invading, we would now say, the turf of others), and each professing to comprehend (in both senses of that word) the whole. Intended as an epithet, the term has been adopted as an honorific by some of its practitioners. A chapter in the book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized<\/i><\/a> (2007) by three philosophers is entitled \u201cIn Defense of Scientism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newman\u2019s book appeared seven years before Charles Darwin\u2019s On the Origin of Species<\/i>, which provoked the classic case of scientism \u2014 the mutation of Darwinism into social Darwinism. There had been earlier theories of evolution, such as Lamarck\u2019s. And there had been earlier doctrines, most notably Malthus\u2019s, that applied to society the concept of a \u201cstruggle for existence.\u201d Indeed, Darwin had been inspired by Malthus, while opposing Lamarck. But it was the Origin <\/i>that gave credibility to the theory of evolution and, inadvertently, encouraged others to extend it to society, making the \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d the natural and proper basis for human behavior and social relations.<\/p>\n

The emergence of social Darwinism recalls the adage of another eminent Victorian. \u201cIdeas,\u201d wrote Lord Acton<\/a>, \u201chave a radiation and development, an ancestry and posterity of their own, in which men play the part of godfathers and godmothers more than that of legitimate parents.\u201d Darwin, the unwitting godfather of social Darwinism, disowned even that degree of parentage. He dismissed as ludicrous<\/a> the charge of one reviewer<\/a> that he had endorsed \u201cmight is right\u201d thereby justifying the idea \u201cthat Napoleon is right & every cheating Tradesman is also right.\u201d Challenged on another occasion to declare his views on religion, he replied<\/a> that while the subject of God was \u201cbeyond the scope of man\u2019s intellect,\u201d his moral obligation was clear: \u201cman can do his duty.\u201d Averse to controversy in general (even over the Origin<\/i> itself), Darwin played no public part in the dispute over social Darwinism. That battle was left to Darwin\u2019s \u201cbulldog,\u201d as T. H. Huxley proudly described himself<\/a> \u2014 \u201cmy general agent,\u201d Darwin called him<\/a>. Huxley\u2019s arguments against social Darwinism are all the more telling because they come not, as might have been expected, from a cleric or theologian, but from an eminent scientist and ardent Darwinist.<\/p>\n\n

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\r\n\t\tMan as a Moral Being\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

Sixteen years younger than Darwin, with little formal schooling, self-taught and self-willed, Thomas Henry Huxley (like Darwin) served his apprenticeship as a naturalist by doing research on a royal naval ship (although his official appointment was as assistant surgeon). By the time he returned from that four-year trip, he was a recognized authority on marine biology. In 1851, at the age of twenty-six, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, received the Royal Medal the following year, and two years later was appointed Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines. It was around that time, while Darwin was laboring on early drafts of the Origin<\/i>, that Huxley met him and became one of the party of three, and by far the youngest of the three \u2014 Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker were the others \u2014 who were Darwin\u2019s principal confidants and advisers. \u201cIf I can convert Huxley,\u201d Darwin wrote<\/a> the year of the publication of the Origin<\/i>, \u201cI shall be content.\u201d Huxley needed conversion because he had been wary of other theories of evolution and even of Darwin\u2019s in its earlier stages. But he was completely won over after reading the book. \u201cMy reflection,\u201d Huxley recalled<\/a>, \u201cwhen I first made myself master of the central idea of the \u2018Origin\u2019 was, \u2018How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!\u2019\u201d Preparing Darwin for the \u201cabuse and misrepresentation\u201d the book would receive, Huxley reassured him: \u201cI am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

As there had been earlier theories of evolution, so there were earlier versions of social Darwinism, most notably the laissez-fairism propounded by Herbert Spencer. It took a while for Huxley to address that issue, perhaps because Spencer was a friend (and remained one, in spite of their differences). But when he did, he brought to its refutation the same vigor he brought to the defense of the Origin<\/i>. Provoked by recent demands to deny the state any role in education, Huxley, in his 1871 lecture \u201cAdministrative Nihilism<\/a>,\u201d supported the state in that capacity as in others, arguing that men are not isolated individuals but parts of a \u201csocial organization,\u201d requiring all the help and support that society could and should give them so that each one may attain \u201call the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow-men.\u201d He expanded upon that theme in his 1888 essay \u201cThe Struggle for Existence in Human Society<\/a>,\u201d distinguishing between nature and society, man as an animal and man as a human \u2014 which is to say, moral \u2014 being:<\/p>\n\n\n

From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator\u2019s show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight \u2014 whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Society differs from nature in having a definite moral object; whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man \u2014 the member of society or citizen \u2014 necessarily runs counter to that which the non-ethical man \u2014 the primitive savage, or man as mere member of the animal kingdom \u2014 tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal; the former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the struggle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Five years later, Huxley produced the classic case against social Darwinism \u2014 and scientism in general. His lecture, \u201cEvolution and Ethics<\/a>,\u201d delivered at Oxford in 1893, was the second in the series of the prestigious Romanes Lectures, the first having been given the year before by the prime minister, William Gladstone. The choice of Gladstone as the initial lecturer was surprising in view of the conditions laid down by the sponsor, George Romanes, that the lecturer, as Huxley explained, \u201cabstain from treating of either Religion or Politics\u201d \u2014 the two subjects about which Gladstone was most passionate. A skilled rhetorician, Gladstone managed to address his theme<\/a>, \u201cMedieval Universities,\u201d while skirting as best he could any overt mention of religion, even though it was central to his argument. Huxley, too, had to perform an \u201cegg-dance,\u201d as he said, reassuring Romanes that there would be no allusion to politics in his lecture and that his only reference to religion was to Buddhism, and this only to the \u201cspeculative and ethical side\u201d of it. In fact, politics does appear, if only implicitly. Spencer\u2019s name is not mentioned, but he is clearly implicated in Huxley\u2019s decrying of the \u201cfanatical individualism<\/a> of our time,\u201d adding in a footnote<\/a> that \u201cit is this form of political philosophy to which I conceive the epithet of \u2018reasoned savagery\u2019 to be strictly applicable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Published as an essay the following year, the forty-one-page lecture is prefaced by forty-five pages of \u201cProlegomena\u201d and supplemented by thirty pages of footnotes, exhibiting a remarkable range and depth of knowledge of philosophy in particular \u2014 this not from a philosopher but a scientist (and an autodidact at that). Indeed, philosophy, rather than politics, bears the burden of the argument over social Darwinism. The epigraph from Seneca, in Latin, may be translated: \u201cFor I am wont to cross over even into the enemy\u2019s camp, \u2014 not as a deserter, but as an explorer.\u201d This precisely defines Huxley\u2019s role. The scientist is venturing into the enemy camp, that of the philosopher and moralist, not as a deserter from science, but as an explorer \u2014 and discovering not an enemy, but a welcome ally.<\/p>\n\n

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\r\n\t\tBeyond ‘Survival of the Fittest’\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

T<\/span>he essay opens, less formidably, with a \u201cdelightful child\u2019s story\u201d: \u201cJack and the Bean-stalk,\u201d the familiar story of \u201ca bean-plant, which grows and grows until it reaches the high heavens and there spreads out into a vast canopy of foliage.\u201d The hero, climbing the stalk, finds that the world of the foliage above is made up of the same parts as the world below, \u201cyet strangely new,\u201d for as the stalk grows and expands, it \u201cundergoes a series of metamorphoses,\u201d and then, having reached ever new heights, it begins to wither and crumble. This tale of \u201ccyclical evolution\u201d illustrates the \u201ccosmic process\u201d (a term that is almost a refrain in the essay) that governs mankind as well as the animal kingdom \u2014 but with a difference: the pain and suffering inherent in that process affects all living creatures, but man more intensely, and civilized man, the member of an \u201corganized polity,\u201d more than the savage.<\/p>\n\n\n

Man, the animal, in fact, has worked his way to the headship of the sentient world, and has become the superb animal which he is, in virtue of his success in the struggle for existence….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But, in proportion as men have passed from anarchy to social organization, and in proportion as civilization has grown in worth, these deeply ingrained serviceable qualities have become defects. After the manner of successful persons, civilized man would gladly kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be only too pleased to see \u2018the ape and tiger die<\/a>.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

As savagery gave way to civilization, civilization itself became problematic. \u201cThe stimulation of the senses, the pampering of the emotions,\u201d and the cultivation of the intellectual and imaginative faculties led to a weakening of old customs and traditions, including primitive ideas of justice. Only with the further advance of civilization was justice refined, distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary misdeeds, doling out punishment in accord with motive, and making justice an instrument of \u201crighteousness\u201d rather than mere revenge. It was at this stage that civilized man was superseded by \u201cethical man,\u201d who, rejecting the \u201cape and tiger promptings\u201d of nature, branded them as sins and punished them as crimes. It was then that philosophers sought to reconcile the implacable facts of evolution, of nature itself, with \u201cthe ethical ideal of the just and the good.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, Huxley comes close to defying Romanes\u2019s injunction about religion. He does steer clear of Christianity, to be sure; Jesus, the New Testament, and the Church Fathers are conspicuously absent from his account. But the Book of Job and the Buddhist sutras are amply cited to illustrate \u201cthe unfathomable injustice of the nature of things\u201d \u2014 \u201cthat the wicked flourishes like a green bay tree, while the righteous begs his bread; that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.\u201d While Job took refuge in \u201csilence and submission,\u201d Buddhists sought to vindicate the cosmic process with the \u201cdoctrine of transmigration,\u201d and Indian philosophers invoked the concept of \u201ckarma\u201d for the same purpose. The Greek philosophers took different approaches to the problem. Several of the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Heraclitus, were \u201cpronounced evolutionists,\u201d their aphorisms and metaphors anticipating some of the modern doctrine. Socrates and the Athenians, on the other hand, engaged in \u201ca kind of inverse agnosticism,\u201d putting physics \u201cbeyond the reach of the human intellect\u201d and enjoining philosophers to devote themselves to the study of ethics, \u201cthe one worthy object of investigation.\u201d The Stoics, professing to be disciples of Heraclitus, altered his teachings by endowing the \u201cmaterial world-soul\u201d with the attributes of an \u201cideal Divinity,\u201d thus giving it an ethical quality. But the stoical dictum, \u201cLive according to nature,\u201d made the cosmic process an ideal for human conduct, thus resolving the ethical issue no more than the doctrines of karma or transmigration.<\/p>\n

The philosophers of antiquity occupy the largest part of Huxley\u2019s essay, as if to establish the universality and inexorability of the problem. But the account comes to its climax in the modern doctrine of the \u201cethics of evolution,\u201d which might better be called, Huxley suggests, the \u201cevolution of ethics.\u201d Unfortunately evolution gives rise to and perpetuates immoral sentiments together with the moral. \u201cCosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.\u201d The fallacy in the ethics of evolution is the equation of the \u201cstruggle for existence\u201d with the \u201csurvival of the fittest,\u201d and the assumption that \u201cthe fittest\u201d is identical with \u201cthe best.\u201d But that struggle may favor the worst rather than the best. It is the function of laws and moral precepts to curb the cosmic process, encouraging self-restraint rather than self-assertion, and reminding the individual that he owes to the community, if not existence itself, at least a life better than that of the savage.<\/p>\n\n\n

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm and to set man to subdue nature to his higher ends; but I venture to think that the great intellectual difference between the ancient times with which we have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain measure of success….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fragile reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says<\/a>, is a thinking reed: there lies within him a fund of energy, operating intelligently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe, that it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tThe Scientist cum<\/i> Poet\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

T<\/span>he epigraph introducing the essay has the scientist preparing to \u201ccross over\u201d into the enemy camp, that of the moralist. The essay concludes with Huxley, now the scientist-moralist, crossing over into the still more alien camp of the poet \u2014 of Tennyson, in his poem \u201cUlysses,\u201d exhorting
man \u201c… strong in will \/ To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.\u201d Interpolating Tennyson, Huxley reminds us that \u201cwe are grown men, and must play the man, cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil, in and around us, with stout hearts on diminishing it.\u201d The final words of the essay are Tennyson\u2019s:<\/p>\n\n\n

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
… but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

This may be too radical a leap for the scientist of our own day \u2014 to invoke not only morality but poetry as a corrective to scientism. But he may be reassured by the modest claims made by the poet, and by Huxley himself. If evolution, or any other scientific theory, or nature itself, is not the ultimate arbiter of humanity, not the solution to all of our problems, there may be no single arbiter, no grand theory assuring that morality will triumph. This has not the triumphal appeal of scientism, but it is a salutary, realistic, even scientific appraisal of the human condition.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The temptation to draw moral lessons from biology is strong today \u2014 but it is hardly new. As the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb explains, the nineteenth-century scientist known as \u201cDarwin\u2019s bulldog\u201d argued against those who wanted to apply evolutionary science to mankind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18237,"template":"","article_type":[13],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[5009,5033],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22103,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10504\/revisions\/22103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=10504"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=10504"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=10504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}