Neural Darwinism (ND) is a large scale selectionist theory of brain development and function that has been hypothesized to relate to consciousness. According to ND, consciousness is entailed by reentrant interactions among neuronal populations in the thalamocortical system (the ‘dynamic core’). These interactions, which permit high-order discriminations among possible core states, confer selective advantages on organisms possessing them by linking current perceptual events to a past history of value-dependent learning. Here, we assess the consistency of ND with 16 widely recognized (...) properties of consciousness, both physiological (for example, consciousness is associated with widespread, relatively fast, low amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical system), and phenomenal (for example, consciousness involves the existence of a private flow of events available only to the experiencing subject). While no theory accounts fully for all of these properties at present, we find that ND and its recent extensions fare well. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the impact of Darwinism in metaethics and dispel some of the confusion surrounding it. While the prospects for a Darwinian metaethics appear to be improving, some underlying epistemological issues remain unclear. We will focus on the so-called Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) which, when applied in metaethics, are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs so as to undermine their epistemic justification. The point is that an epistemic disanalogy (...) can be identified in the debate on EDAs between moral beliefs and other kinds of beliefs, insofar as only the former are regarded as vulnerable to EDAs. First, we will analyze some significant debunking positions in metaethics in order to show that they do not provide adequate justification for such an epistemic disanalogy. Then, we will assess whether they can avoid the accusation of being epistemically incoherent by adopting the same evolutionary account for all kinds of beliefs. In other words, once it is argued that Darwinism has a corrosive impact on metaethics, what if its universal acid cannot be contained? (shrink)

Following Wallace’s suggestion, Darwin framed his theory using Spencer’s expression “survival of the fittest”. Since then, fitness occupies a significant place in the conventional understanding of Darwinism, even though the explicit meaning of the term ‘fitness’ is rarely stated. In this paper I examine some of the different roles that fitness has played in the development of the theory. Whereas the meaning of fitness was originally understood in ecological terms, it took a statistical turn in terms of reproductive success throughout (...) the 20th Century. This has lead to the ever-increasing importance of sexually reproducing organisms and the populations they compose in evolutionary explanations. I will argue that, moving forward, evolutionary theory should look back at its ecological roots in order to be more inclusive in the type of systems it examines. Many biological systems can only be satisfactorily accounted for by offering a non-reproductive account of fitness. This argument will be made by examining biological systems with very small or transient population structures. I argue this has significant consequences for how we define Darwinism, increasing the significance of survival over that of reproduction. (shrink)

Socioeconomic Darwinism is one of the great dilemmas of our industrialized culture, playing itself out in economic events as it does periodically, in an appalling way. The authors expect marketplace competition to result in the better quality, availability, and affordability of a wider range of goods. In each episode of South Park, the authors talk about the boys reflecting on daily life, spiced up with bizarre imaginative cartoon elements, occasional aliens, a pterodactyl or two, biological mishaps, nuclear meltdowns, celebrity politicians, (...) and an endless stream of adult behavior that can only be classified as stranger than weirdness. Death is the great equalizer, which the boys are just old enough to sense. (shrink)

Does Darwinism generally, and human sociobiology in particular, lead to an unwarranted (and possibly socially offensive) determinism? I argue that one must separate out different senses of determinism, and that once one has done this, a Darwinian approach to human nature can be seen to shed important light on our intuitions about free will, constraint, and control.

In Darwinism's Struggle for Survival Jean Gayon offers a philosophical interpretation of the history of theoretical Darwinism. He begins by examining the different forms taken by the hypothesis of natural selection in the nineteenth century and the major difficulties which it encountered, particularly with regard to its compatibility with the theory of heredity. He then shows how these difficulties were overcome during the seventy years which followed the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, and he concludes by analysing the major (...) features of the genetic theory of natural selection, as it developed from 1920 to 1960. This rich and wide-ranging study will appeal to philosophers and historians of science and to evolutionary biologists. (shrink)

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the (...) geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science. (shrink)

Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin's Darwinism’ in terms of five philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) nominalism vs. essentialism about species and (v) the tempo and mode of evolutionary change. Both Darwin and (...) his critics recognized that his approach to evolution was distinctive on each of these topics, and it remains true that, though Darwinism has developed in many ways unforeseen by Darwin, its proponents and critics continue to differentiate it from other approaches in evolutionary biology by focusing on these themes. This point is illustrated in the second half of the entry by looking at current debates in the philosophy of evolutionary biology on these five themes, with a special focus on Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. (shrink)

The most public-facing forms of contemporary Darwinism happily promote its worldview ambitions. Popular works, by the likes of Richard Dawkins, deflect associations with eugenics and social Darwinism, but also extend the reach of Darwinism beyond biology into social policy, politics, and ethics. Critics of the enterprise fall into two categories. Advocates of Intelligent Design and secular philosophers (like Mary Midgley and Thomas Nagel) recognise it as a worldview and argue against its implications. Scholars in the rhetoric of science or science (...) communication, however, typically take the view that Darwinism isn't a worldview, but a scientific theory, which has been improperly embellished by some; they uphold the distinction between is and ought and argue that science is restricted to the former. This prompts an is–ought problem on another level. I catalogue the ways in which Darwinism plainly is a worldview and why commentators' beliefs that it ought not to be distorts their analysis. Hence, it is their own worldview that precludes them from accepting Darwinism's worldview implications. (shrink)

Darwinism consists of two parts: a phylogenesis of biological species (ours included) and the claim that the primary mechanism of the evolution of phenotypes is natural selection. I assume that Darwin’s account of phylogeny is essentially correct; attention is directed to the theory of natural selection. I claim that Darwin’s account of evolution by natural selection cannot be sustained. The basic problem is that, according to the consensus view, evolution consists in changes of the distribution of phenotypic traits in populations (...) of organisms. An evolutionary theory must therefore explicate not just the notion of organisms being selected, but also the notion of organisms being selected for their phenotypic traits. I argue that that there is no way for a theory of natural selection to do so, and that Darwin’s assumption to the contrary was likely the consequence of placing too much weight on the analogy between natural selection and artificial selection. The paper ends with the suggestion that selectionist explanations, insofar as they are convincing, are best construed as post hoc historical narratives: natural history rather than biology. (shrink)

Darwinists classify biological traits either by their ancestry (homology) or by their adaptive role. Only the latter can provide traditional natural kinds, but only the former is practicable. Process structuralists exploit this embarrassment to argue for non-Darwinian classifications in terms of underlying developmental mechanisms. This new taxonomy will also explain phylogenetic inertia and developmental constraint. I argue that Darwinian homologies are natural kinds despite having historical essences and being spatio-temporally restricted. Furthermore, process structuralist explanations of biological form require an (...) unwarranted assumption about the space of developmental possibility. (shrink)

Despite the harsh scientific basis of Social Darwinism, its followers strove to unify nature with humane feelings—for world views necessarily attempt such reconciliations. To answer the difficult “problem of evil” posed by natural selection and survival of the fittest, Social Darwinists such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Herbert Spencer resorted to three kinds of theodicy: sentimental denial of the problem, belief in progress, and belief in perfection. Spencer's writings particulary display at different times both a rigid individualism (...) and a softer organicism. Eventually, however, T. H. Huxley would abandon the attempt, acknowledging in effect that no complete world view was possible. (shrink)

The broader context for the formal darwinism project established by two of the commentators, in terms of reconciling the Modern Synthesis with Darwinian arguments over design and in terms of links to other types of selection and design, is discussed and welcomed. Some overselling of the project is admitted, in particular of whether it claims to consider all organic design. One important fundamental question raised in two commentaries is flagged but not answered of whether design is rightly represented by an (...) optimisation program, and another from one commentary of whether the coreplicon dissolves in the face of multi-generational imprinting. Calls for the project to be extended to design at levels above and below the individual are considered sympathetically, but judged impractical at the high level of abstraction of the project. All claims of substantive technical error are emphatically rejected. Close technical readings are welcomed that, among other things, represent the project as 'axiomatizing fitness'. The prospects for the project are set out in the light of this highly varied set of commentaries. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of Hodgson and Knudsen’s version of Generalized Darwinism, asking to what extent it has explanatory force. The paper develops two criteria for potential explanatory transfer of theories between disciplines, and argues that Generalized Darwinism does not meet these. The paper proposes that Hodgson and Knudsen’s version of Generalized Darwinism is best understood as a research program aimed at modest unificationism sensu Kitcher, that provides a heuristic perspective to guide research, but does not produce actual evolutionary (...) explanations. (shrink)

This important new study is an intellectual history exploring the reception of Darwinism by prominent German socialist theoriests: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles, Friedrich Albert Lange, Ludwig B chner, August Bebel, Karl Katusky, and Eduard Bernstein. It relies not only on published books, articles, and speeches by these men, but also on some unpublished correspondence. In addition, one chapter covers the anti-socialist stance of prominent Darwinian biologists, including Charles Darwin and the foremost champion of Darwinism in Germany, Ernst Haeckel. Darwinism's effect (...) on German socialism's view of eugenics, race and religion are also discussed. (shrink)

This article investigates whether the doctrine of social Darwinism had any bearing on the Labour Party’s decision to support Britain’s participation in the First World War. Many socialist intellect...

In this chapter we will try to show how the introduction of Darwinian evolutionary theory transformed metaphysics, and in particular, the philosophical understanding of the temporality of being. In the interests of brevity, we will focus on two particularly significant aspects of the impact of Darwinism on Latin America. We will consider, first, how the new evolutionary thought transformed past notions of temporality. Second, we will discuss the ways in which the ideas of regression and extinction, viewed as essential components (...) of the evolutionary process, problematized the nature of progress and civilization. We trace these developments in the work of three central figures of Latin American thought: José Martí, José Rodó, and Euclides da Cunha. All three of these men were extraordinarily versatile thinkers, and each has been the subject of voluminous secondary literature. But the first two, unlike some other influential figures—such as, famously, Domingo Sarmiento of Argentina—were hardly self-professed Darwinians. Still, we have chosen to discuss them because of this last fact, and not despite it. As for da Cunha, though he accepted the basic canons of the new evolutionary theory, he remained ambivalent about its application. All three struggled, each in his own way, to come to terms with the Darwinian legacy, and each found his thinking profoundly shaped by this struggle; they offer us three different, unique perspectives on the impact of Darwinism. The magnitude of the new evolutionism can only be understood if we consider the wide range of discussion it triggered in consequence of its profound philosophical impact. (shrink)

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long-standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of the philosophical consequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention rather than by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural. For theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Karl Popper, the growth of knowledge is (...) seen to be continuous from "the amoeba to Einstein." Philosophical Darwinism brings perspective to contemporary debates. It has far-reaching implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from the field of biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. Most importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author views as the unreasonable postmodern theories of Kuhn, Lyotard, and Rorty. (shrink)

Abstract. Darwinism has attracted proportionately less attention from Jewish thinkers than from Christian thinkers. One significant reason for the disparity is that the theodicies created by Jews to contend with the catastrophes which punctuated Jewish history are equally suited to address the massive extinctions which characterize natural history. Theologies of divine hiddenness, restraint, and radical immanence, coming together in the sixteenth-century mystical cosmogony of Isaac Luria, have been rehabilitated and reworked by modern Jewish thinkers in the post-Darwin era.

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of philosophical concequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori, i.e., established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention, not by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural and for theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Popper, the growth of knowledge is (...) seen to be continuous from the amoeba to Einstein'. Philosophical Darwinism throws a whole new light on many contemporary debates. It has damaging implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from within biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. More importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author argues are the unreasonable postmodern fashions of Kuhn, Lyotard and Rorty. (shrink)

The dissertation criticizes two analogical applications of Darwinism to the spheres of mind and culture: the Darwinian approach to creativity and memetics. These theories rely on three basic analogies: the ontological analogy states that the basic ontological units of culture are so-called memes, which are replicators like genes; the origination analogy states that novelty in human creativity emerges in a "blind" Darwinian manner; and the explanatory units of selection analogy states that memes are "egoistic" and that they can spread independently (...) of our mind. The detailed philosophical analysis offered in the dissertation shows that these three analogies rely on either wrong or trivial statements: they provide either wrong or no new descriptions or explanations of the phenomena at hand. In Chapter One, I introduce the diverse ways, in which contemporary Darwinism is used today outside of evolutionary biology. Chapter Two explains what it means to claim that something evolves in a Darwinian manner. Chapter Three to Five address each of the three analogies separately. Darwinism applied to culture and mind, at least in the way discussed in this study, is not a dangerous idea. It leads either to wrong claims or to a re-telling in Darwinian terms of what we have already known. (shrink)

This Element is a philosophical history of Social Darwinism. It begins by discussing the meaning of the term, moving then to its origins, paying particular attention to whether it is Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer who is the true father of the idea. It gives an exposition of early thinking on the subject, covering Darwin and Spencer themselves and then on to Social Darwinism as found in American thought, with special emphasis on Andrew Carnegie, and Germany with special emphasis on (...) Friedrich von Bernhardi. Attention is also paid to outliers, notably the Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace, the Russian Peter Kropotkin, and the German Friedrich Nietzsche. From here we move into the twentieth century looking at Adolf Hitler - hardly a regular Social Darwinian given he did not believe in evolution - and in the Anglophone world, Julian Huxley and Edward O. Wilson, who reflected the concerns of their society. (shrink)

In the Germany of the 1860s and 1870s, the problem of the value of life was urgently debated, as a consequence of the two culture-defining systems of thought that had risen to prominence in those decades—Schopenhauerian Weltschmerz and the theory of evolution—and the degree to which they could be reconciled. On one hand, the struggle for existence affirmed the pessimistic inference as to the suffering and meaninglessness of the cosmos; on the other, it appeared to promise moral and material improvement (...) in human affairs. This article reconstructs the historical connections between the emergence of pessimism and Darwinism, most clearly represented by the work of Eduard von Hartmann, and it argues that Nietzsche’s programmatic statements on life, culture, and pessimism, from the Untimely Meditations on, are best understood in light of this context and his engagement with Hartmann’s writings. (shrink)

Presenting an ardent defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, this book offers a clear and comprehensive exposition of Darwin's thinking. Michael Ruse brings the story up to date, examining the origins of life, the fossil record, and the mechanism of natural selection. Rival theories are explored, from punctuated equilibrium to human evolution. The philosophical and religious implications of Darwinism are discussed, including a discussion of Creationism and its modern day offshoot, Intelligent Design Theory. Ruse draws upon the most recent (...) discoveries, writing with a minimum of jargon in order to appeal to all readers, from professional biologists to those concerned that Darwinism is a naturalistic religion that is forced on school children despite their own Christian convictions. Openly revealing his own beliefs, Ruse presents readers with all the information and critical tools they need to make an informed decision on evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of philosophical concequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori, i.e., established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention, not by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural and for theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Popper, the growth of knowledge is (...) seen to be continuous from the amoeba to Einstein'. Philosophical Darwinism throws a whole new light on many contemporary debates. It has damaging implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from within biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. More importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author argues are the unreasonable postmodern fashions of Kuhn, Lyotard and Rorty. (shrink)

In recent years, evolutionary theorists have come to recognize that the reductionist, individualist, gene-centered approach to evolution cannot sufficiently account for the emergence of complex biological systems over time. Peter A. Corning has been at the forefront of a new generation of complexity theorists who have been working to reshape the foundations of evolutionary theory. Well known for his Synergism Hypothesis—a theory of complexity in evolution that assigns a key causal role to various forms of functional synergy—Corning puts this theory (...) into a much broader framework in _Holistic Darwinism_, addressing many of the issues and concepts associated with the evolution of complex systems. Corning's paradigm embraces and integrates many related theoretical developments of recent years, from multilevel selection theory to niche construction theory, gene-culture coevolution theory, and theories of self-organization. Offering new approaches to thermodynamics, information theory, and economic analysis, Corning suggests how all of these domains can be brought firmly within what he characterizes as a post–neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

This paper uses the framework of Formal Darwinism (FD) to evaluate organism-centric critiques of the Modern Synthesis (MS). The first section argues that the FD project reconciles two kinds of selective explanations in biology. Thus it is not correct to say that the MS neglects organisms—instead, it explains organisms’ design, as argued in the second section. In the third section I employ a concept of the organism derived from Kant that has two aspects: the parts presupposing the whole, and the (...) productivity of the parts in relation to the whole. The first aspect corresponds to the “design” that FD explains, whereas the second aspect is something about which the MS is largely silent. (shrink)

The recent debate over Intelligent Design provides an opportunity to examine the pervasiveness and the meaning of Darwinian thinking in modern culture. The latest incarnation of a century-old critique of evolution, ID infuriated critics as a disease of scientific illiteracy. However, examining the debate as cultural history of science suggests that the IDers were not ignorant or stupid, but rather shrewd and disingenuous. They wielded scientific data as a rhetorical weapon, not as truth but as text, to be bent to (...) one's moral purpose—which in their case was an attack on science itself. In contrast to the scientific critics, I view ID as a symptom, a boil on the neck of a social body infected with anxiety over cultural Darwinism. Though the courts seem to have effectively lanced ID, the infection remains. In an age of Darwinian psychiatry, Darwinian business, Darwinian literature criticism, and even Darwinian anti-Darwinism, some boundary checks on cultural Darwinism would be salutary—not for advancing a conservative political agenda as the ID folks seek to do, but simply for reconciling a faith in reason with a rejection of biological determinism. (shrink)

The article sums up a number of points made by the author concerning the response to Darwinism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and repeats the claim that a proper understanding of the theory's impact must take account of the extent to which what are now regarded as the key aspects of Darwin's thinking were evaded by his immediate followers. Potential challenges to this position are described and responded to.

Save for Anthropologists, few social scientists have been among the participants in the discussions about the appropriate structure of a ‘Universal Darwinism’. Yet evolutionary theorizing about cultural, social, and economic phenomena has a long tradition, going back well before Darwin. And over the past quarter century significant literatures have grown up concerned with the processes of change operating on science, technology, business organization and practice, and economic change more broadly, that are explicitly evolutionary in theoretical orientation. In each of these (...) fields of study, the broad proposition put forth by Darwin that change proceeds through a process involving variation, systematic selection, renewed variation... has proved both persuasive and powerful. On the other hand, the evolutionary processes involved in these areas differ in essential ways from those we now know are operative in the evolution of biological species. The objective of this essay is to highlight those differences, which a ‘Universal Darwinism’ needs to encompass, if it is to be broad enough to be a theory that is applicable to the evolution of human cultures as well as evolution in biology. (shrink)

We consider the question: under what circumstances can the concept of adaptation be applied to groups, rather than individuals? Gardner and Grafen (2009, J. Evol. Biol.22: 659–671) develop a novel approach to this question, building on Grafen's ‘formal Darwinism’ project, which defines adaptation in terms of links between evolutionary dynamics and optimization. They conclude that only clonal groups, and to a lesser extent groups in which reproductive competition is repressed, can be considered as adaptive units. We re-examine the conditions under (...) which the selection–optimization links hold at the group level. We focus on an important distinction between two ways of understanding the links, which have different implications regarding group adaptationism. We show how the formal Darwinism approach can be reconciled with G.C. Williams’ famous analysis of group adaptation, and we consider the relationships between group adaptation, the Price equation approach to multi-level selection, and the alternative approach based on contextual analysis. (shrink)

Darwinism presents a paradox. It discredits the notion that one’s life has any intrinsic meaning, yet it predicts that we are designed by Darwinian natural selection to generally insist that it must—and so necessarily designed to misunderstand and doubt Darwinism. The implications of this paradox are explored here, including the question of where then does the Darwinist find meaning in life? The main source, it is proposed, is from cognitive domains for meaning inherited from sentient ancestors—domains that reveal our evolved (...) human nature as the fool that it is: given to distractions and delusions of many kinds, designed by natural selection primarily for one essential purpose—to allay our instinctual fear of failed legacy, rooted in our uniquely human awareness that we are not immortal. Darwinism, however, also teaches that genuine legacy is a fate enjoyed only by individual genes. Accordingly, as argued here, those genes with the grandest legacy—and hence rampant within us—are of two types: “legacy-drive” genes delude us into thinking that the legacy can be individually and personally ours; and “leisure-drive” genes distract us from the agonizing truth that it can never be. The most rudimental delusion of legacy is the perception of offspring as vehicles for memetic legacy—the transmission of resident memes from one’s mind to the minds and behaviors of offspring— thus also ensuring genetic legacy: the transmission of resident genes, including importantly, genes inherited from ancestors that influence both legacy and leisure drives. Today, legacyand leisure-drive genes reveal their phenotypes across a wide range of human affairs, and together with the phenotypes of survival- and sex-drive genes, they provide a foundation for a novel view of the Darwinian roots of cultural evolution. (shrink)

Darwinism presents a paradox. It discredits the notion that one’s life has any intrinsic meaning, yet it predicts that we are designed by Darwinian natural selection to generally insist that it must—and so necessarily designed to misunderstand and doubt Darwinism. The implications of this paradox are explored here, including the question of where then does the Darwinist find meaning in life? The main source, it is proposed, is from cognitive domains for meaning inherited from sentient ancestors—domains that reveal our evolved (...) human nature as the fool that it is: given to distractions and delusions of many kinds, designed by natural selection primarily for one essential purpose—to allay our instinctual fear of failed legacy, rooted in our uniquely human awareness that we are not immortal. Darwinism, however, also teaches that genuine legacy is a fate enjoyed only by individual genes. Accordingly, as argued here, those genes with the grandest legacy—and hence rampant within us—are of two types: “legacy-drive” genes delude us into thinking that the legacy can be individually and personally ours; and “leisure-drive” genes distract us from the agonizing truth that it can never be. The most rudimental delusion of legacy is the perception of offspring as vehicles for memetic legacy—the transmission of resident memes from one’s mind to the minds and behaviors of offspring—thus also ensuring genetic legacy: the transmission of resident genes, including importantly, genes inherited from ancestors that influence both legacy and leisure drives. Today, legacy- and leisure-drive genes reveal their phenotypes across a wide range of human affairs, and together with the phenotypes of survival- and sex-drive genes, they provide a foundation for a novel view of the Darwinian roots of cultural evolution. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Darwin's Life Darwin's Darwinism Philosophical Problems with Darwin's Darwinism The Core Problems and Darwinism Conclusion References Further Reading.

The reputation of the Christian tradition has fared poorly in the literature on the history of attitudes to nonhuman animals. This is more a consequence of secularist prejudice than objective scholarship. The idea of "dominion" and the understanding of animal souls are almost universally misrepresented. There has been no firmer conclusion than that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had a profoundly beneficial impact on the recognition of our similarities to, kinship with, and consequent moral obligations to, other species. In reality, (...) Darwinism had no such effect. That there was an essential kinship with, and homologies between, humans and other species had been attested to for centuries. In the first major ethical issue that arose after the publication of Darwin's The Descent of Man -- legislation to restrict vivisection -- Darwin and Huxley stood on the side of more or less unrestricted vivisection while many major explicitly Christian voices -- from Cardinal Manning to Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to the Earl of Shaftesbury -- demanded the most severe restrictions, in many cases abolition. The customary tale of how Christianity hindered the development of sensibilities to animals and how Darwinism occasioned a revolution in animal ethics needs to be rethought and retold. (shrink)

In the last decades two different and apparently unrelated lines of research have increasingly connected mathematics and evolutionism. Indeed, on the one hand different attempts to formalize darwinism have been made, while, on the other hand, different attempts to naturalize logic and mathematics have been put forward. Those researches may appear either to be completely distinct or at least in some way convergent. They may in fact both be seen as supporting a naturalistic stance. Evolutionism is indeed crucial for a (...) naturalistic perspective, and formalizing it seems to be a way to strengthen its scientificity. The paper shows that, on the contrary, those directions of research may be seen as conflicting, since the conception of knowledge on which they rest may be undermined by the consequences of accepting an evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

Philosophical Darwinism is a species of naturalism. Among philosophers, naturalism is widely treated as the view that contemporary scientific theory is the source of solutions to philosophical problems. Thus, naturalists look to the theory of natural selection as the primary source in coming to solve philosophical problems raised by human affairs. For it combines more strongly than any other theory relevance to human affairs and scientific warrant. Other theories, especially in physics and chemistry, are more strongly confirmed, especially because their (...) more precise predictions can be tested in real time. But these theories have little to tell us about human conduct and institutions. On the other hand, actual and possible theories, in the social and behavioral sciences, may in the future have more tell us about humanity than Darwinian theory, but these theories do not as yet have anything like the degree of confirmation of Darwin’s theory. Since Darwinism has important consequences for human affairs, the naturalist must look to Darwin’s theory, above all others, in the search for philosophical understanding. (shrink)

The discussion of Darwinism's past--of what Charles Darwin wrote and thought--is crucial to an understanding of the history and philosophy of biology, but largely irrelevant to assessing its current warrant and its future prospects. In this paper the structure, and the credibility of the theory are defended against a variety of criticisms both of biologists and anti-Darwinians. It is argued that many features of the theory often treated as defects, like its generality and neutrality, its openness to realization at many (...) levels of organization, its lack of specific predictive content, and its anomalous relation to taxonomy, are in fact important strengths that any theory with the range and bearing of the theory of natural selection must have. These strengths are specifically related, in the latter portion of the paper, to the evolutionary discoveries we can expect from the revolutionary developments in molecular biology. (shrink)

Two questions are raised for Grafen’s formal darwinism project of aligning evolutionary dynamics under natural selection with the optimization of phenotypes for individuals of a population. The first question concerns mean fitness maximization during frequency-dependent selection; in such selection regimes, not only is mean fitness typically not maximized but it is implausible that any parameter closely related to fitness is being maximized. The second question concerns whether natural selection on inclusive fitness differences can be regarded as individual selection or whether (...) it leads to a departure from the central motivation that led to the formal darwinism project, viz., to show that “Darwinian” evolution through individual selection leads to “good design” or phenotypic adaptation through trait optimization. (shrink)

The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including humans are the end product of a long, slow, natural process of evolution rather than the miraculous creation of an all-powerful God--is one of the truly momentous cultural events in Western Civilization. Darwinism as Religion is an innovative and exciting approach to this revolution through creative writing, showing how the theory of evolution as expressed by Darwin has, from the (...) first, functioned as a secular religion. Drawing on a deep understanding of both the science and the history, Michael Ruse surveys the naturalistic thinking about the origins of organisms, including the origins of humankind, as portrayed in novels and in poetry, taking the story from its beginnings in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century right up to the present. He shows that, contrary to the opinion of many historians of the era, there was indeed a revolution in thought and that the English naturalist Charles Darwin was at the heart of it. However, contrary also to what many think, this revolution was not primarily scientific as such, but more religious or metaphysical, as people were taken from the secure world of the Christian faith into a darker, more hostile world of evolutionism. In a fashion unusual for the history of ideas, Ruse turns to the novelists and poets of the period for inspiration and information. His book covers a wide range of creative writers - from novelists like Voltaire and poets like Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century, through the nineteenth century with novelists including Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and H. G. Wells and poets including Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and on to the twentieth century with novelists including Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, William Golding, Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson, and poets including Robert Frost, Edna St Vincent Millay and Philip Appleman. Covering such topics as God, origins, humans, race and class, morality, sexuality, and sin and redemption, and written in an engaging manner and spiced with wry humor, Darwinism as Religion gives us an entirely fresh, engaging and provocative view of one of the cultural highpoints of Western thought. (shrink)

I proceed from the hypothesis that the difficulties in Kant’s presentation of his plan and, accordingly, the implicit reason for the critical attitude to this plan on the part of many contemporary philosophers stem from the fact that he had no theoretical link at his disposal which would offer a more solid scientific grounding for his entire system. I believe that Darwinism is such a link which bolsters the central but ungrounded thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason on the (...) existence of a priori synthetic judgments. The synthesis of Darwinism and critical philosophy dictates, however, a substantial restructuring of the latter since some of its key elements prove to be weak in the light of modern studies and need to be revised or even reversed. The first reversal explored in this article determines the origin of the categories which are now revealed not “from the top down” where Kant sought them, i. e. not in logical functions in accordance with metaphysical deduction and not in self-consciousness as transcendental deduction claims, but “from the bottom up” if one considers things in the evolutionary dimension, i. e. in the instincts. The second reversal shifts the freedom of will which Kant placed in the same ontological basket with things in themselves at “the top,” to another level of the pyramid of ontologies, by changing dualism to pluralism because dualism is too narrow to accommodate all the autonomous components of critical philosophy. Thus spirit and freedom find a new place separate from the sphere of physical nature; the category of adaptation explains how different ontologies can coexist; while the problem of two interpretations of transcendental idealism finds a solution through their reconciliation. (shrink)

In an earlier article published in this journal I challenge Reydon and Scholz’s (2009) claim that Organizational Ecology is a non-Darwinian program. In this reply to Reydon and Scholz’s subsequent response, I clarify the difference between our two approaches denoted by an emphasis here on the careful application of core Darwinian principles and an insistence by Reydon and Scholz on direct biological analogies. On a substantive issue, they identify as being the principal problem for Organizational Ecology, namely, the inability to (...) identify replicators and interactors “ of the right sort” in the business domain; this is also shown to be easily addressed with reference to empirical studies of business populations. (shrink)

In an earlier article published in this journal I challenge Reydon and Scholz’s (2009) claim that Organizational Ecology is a non-Darwinian program. In this reply to Reydon and Scholz’s subsequent response, I clarify the difference between our two approaches denoted by an emphasis here on the careful application of core Darwinian principles and an insistence by Reydon and Scholz on direct biological analogies. On a substantive issue, they identify as being the principal problem for Organizational Ecology, namely, the inability to (...) identify replicators and interactors “ of the right sort” in the business domain; this is also shown to be easily addressed with reference to empirical studies of business populations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 323-344 [Access article in PDF] Darwinism and Death: Devaluing Human Life in Germany 1859-1920 Richard Weikart The debate over the significance of Social Darwinism in Germany has special importance, because it serves as background to discussions of Hitler's ideology and of the roots of German imperialism and World War I. 1 There is no doubt that Hitler was a Social Darwinist, (...) viewing history as a struggle for existence among unequal races. All Hitler scholars agree on this point, and it is too obvious to deny when one reads Mein Kampf. 2 Whether Social Darwinism contributed to imperialism and militarism is less clear, though some have argued it did, at least as a justification for them. 3 Some Anglo-American writers during and immediately after World War I blamed Social Darwinism for inflaming German militarism. 4 [End Page 323]This discussion over both Social Darwinism in general and its German form in particular has reached something of an impasse lately. While some scholars insist that Darwinism contributed to or at least reinforced a competitive ethos in European political and social thought, others have stressed the varieties of Social Darwinism. 5 The latter remind us that, although some Darwinian social thinkers stressed competition, socialists were also avid Darwinists and saw it as support for their vision of a more cooperative socialist society. 6 Some scholars focus so much on the cooperative and peaceful thrust of Darwinian thinkers that one might think that Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid had carried the day in the late nineteenth century. For example, Paul Crook argues that Darwinism produced pacifist inclinations more than it did militarism. 7Another important debate in Darwin scholarship concerns the compatibility or incompatibility of Darwinism with other world views, especially traditional religion. The warfare thesis, which sees religion and science in perpetual conflict (often with science heroically winning the battle), has largely been abandoned by historians of science, who now see greater complexity in the interactions of science and religion. 8 Reacting against the warfare thesis, some have emphasized accommodation, showing how science and religion often work in harmony. As applied to Darwinism the accommodationist view stresses the receptivity of many Christians, including prominent evangelical pastors and [End Page 324] theologians, to evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century. 9 While the warfare thesis was clearly a crude caricature, an overemphasis on accommo-dationism can render the intensely emotional debates over Darwinism in the nineteenth century unintelligible and ignores the polemical uses of Darwinism by materialists and positivists in their fight against religion. 10This essay will attempt to make a contribution to both these debates by focusing on aspects of Darwinism that have been insufficiently explored to date—not the issues of competition vs. cooperation or capitalism vs. socialism or explicitly on religion, as is usual in the discussion over warfare or accommodation, but how Darwinism impacted thinking about the value of human life and the significance of human death. Indeed Darwinism, in harmony with the growth of materialism and positivism, helped alter many people's views on matters of life and death. Many prominent German Darwinists urged their society to reevaluate its stance on what today is known as biomedical ethics—infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, abortion, etc. By focusing on these issues, we will see that leading Darwinists invoked Darwinian science to undermine traditional Judeo-Christian ethical values; this went far beyond merely dismissing the Genesis creation story or even rejecting the supernatural.The scientists and physicians most important in embracing, developing, and popularizing Darwinism in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany vigorously argued that Darwinism did have important implications for religion, ethics, and social thought. Darwinism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced a significant shift in the world views of many who embraced it, and leading Darwinists insisted that their newly-found world view undermined traditional ways of thinking, including traditional ideas about religion and ethics. Ernst Haeckel, the most famous German Darwinist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, believed the most important aspect... (shrink)

Many things evolve: species, languages, sports, tools, biological niches, and theories. But are these real instances of natural selection? Current assessments of the proper scope of Darwinian theory focus on the broad similarity of cultural or non-organic processes to familiar central instances of natural selection. That similarity is analysed in terms of abstract functional descriptions of evolving entities (e.g. replicators, interactors, developmental systems etc). These strategies have produced a proliferation of competing evolutionary analyses. I argue that such reasoning ought not (...) to be employed in arbitrating debates about whether particular phenomena count as instances of natural selection. My argument is based on hierarchical functional descriptions of natural selection. I suggest that natural selection ought not to be thought of as a single process but rather as a series of processes which can be analysed in terms of a hierarchy of functional descriptions (in much the same way as many people think of cognition). This, in turn, casts doubt on the idea that it is possible in principle to settle debates about whether particular phenomena count as instances of natural selection. (shrink)

A number of authors have combined a commitment to Darwinian evolution as a major source of insight into human nature with a strong commitment to environmentalist concerns. The most notable of these is perhaps Edward O. Wilson, in a series of books. Yet it may appear that there is a tension between Darwinism as a world-view – or least some major aspects of it – and a concern for non-human entities as worthy of concern in their own right. In the (...) present paper, I want to address some of the reasons for thinking there is such a tension. (shrink)