Charles Darwin’s Ideas

Evolution

Darwin essentially argued that living things are
engaged in a ‘struggle for existence’ and that any features they possess
which affect their survival and reproductive potential will be subjected
to continuous selective pressure. This might be seen as his ‘new big
idea’ in the whole evolution thing. This means that through time those
features which confer an advantage in the struggle for life will be
retained and those that constitute a handicap will be lost. Not for
individuals but for the race. So the composition of the population (or
species) changes through time, eventually producing such widely
divergent forms that cannot interbreed, and are so called separate
species. That is a brief outline of the theory.

While on HMS Beagle, he made detailed observations in
the Galapagos that finches on different islands seemed to be derived
from the same ‘basic finch’ through adapting to different diets and
evolving different shaped bills. Thus you can see finches with
seed-eating bills and those adapted for probing or insects or fruit
eating. The bills were distinctly different, but not the rest of their
bodies. These initial observations challenged everything the young
Darwin had been taught at Cambridge and echoed his own grandfather’s
conjectures about the mutability of a species – very much an heterodox
opinion at that time.

Thus, evidence-driven, Darwin was more or less forced
to conclude that these different finches were essentially different
races of the same basic finch which had spread out and then become
geographically separated into different groups. Thus the plasticity of
the species is what he really started out with. Having proved that to
his own satisfaction, he then proceeded to work out the mechanism
–including the struggle for life concept, the survival of the best fit
and the weeding out of the unfit. The word fit being in some ways an
ambiguous and unfortunate choice of words, and in fact meaning ‘suited’
or ‘adapted’ and NOT fit as in ‘sporty, fast or trim’.

So the biological significance of race is immense
–when you are looking at the animal world. But as soon as you transfer
all this to the human world, various problems show up. Darwin himself
was initially very reluctant to get into that side of it and left much
of this work to his ‘bulldog’ Thomas Huxley, who presented evolutionism
to the masses. He also left till fairly late in his life the whole
highly vexed question of human evolution. That was probably because he
knew it was a highly contentious field, especially in uptight, Anglican,
Victorian England! He was afraid of upsetting people and deeply
disturbed by thought of the religious consequences of his theory.

The formation of separate races is chiefly important
as it shows where evolution is beginning to happen. It shows where
changes and differences are opening up for selective and geographical
forces to move in and split a species into two or more subgroups.
However, there is an immense problem about human evolution: how can the
racial differences be open to selective pressure unless they actually
confer a survival or reproductive advantage or disadvantage in having
those features in the struggle for life? Or again, what if there is no
struggle for life anymore?

In my opinion human evolution has stopped, because the
fundamental mechanism of evolution — the struggle for existence and the
retention of the best-fit (and weeding out of the less-fit) –has
stopped, due to the implementation within most human societies of
welfare programs and the fact that no single, agreed-upon characteristic
of a person can be absolutely designated as conferring a survival-value
advantage or having reproductive advantage.

But again, we are on uncertain ground here because
clearly, economic status, might above most others, be singled out as
conferring a distinct adaptive advantage for anyone to possess. But for
it to be proven you would have to conclusively show (ie. there would
have to be abundant evidence to show) that ‘the rich’ reproduce more
often and more successfully than ‘the poor’? Well, they don’t! Quite the
reverse in fact. So to be poor and destitute and illiterate appears to
be a selective advantage in most societies, as they clearly reproduce
more and thus pass on their genes more readily. Likewise, the third
world countries with far higher birthrates than the rich countries. Thus
evolution in human societies is fraught with problems and does not seem
to stand up –or rather it stands on its head! and confounds our
expectations from a purely Darwinian viewpoint.

Mind and Body

There is another problem relating to race and human
evolution. It basically comes down to how you view a person –a body
plus mind or just a body? In the latter –which is the predominant view
in biology and science generally — you are what your chemical reactions
tell you or make you and amen to B F Skinner! If you choose the other,
then you are a ‘spiritualist’ (or vitalist) of one form or another and
see the body as merely a vehicle for, or container of, the mental
consciousness. That’s fine, as it is the predominant view within the
arts and humanities and among religions. In terms of evolution and
Darwinism it only applies to our bodies, therefore what can race
possibly have to do with the contents of your mind? However, in the
biological view, our mind is merely an epiphenomenon of the body and
thought and consciousness merely the product of chemical reactions in
the brain. Therefore body and mind are the same and both subject to
evolutionary forces. That allows some overlap between race and mentality
–in their view.

The argument about human cultural evolution thus very
much rests upon the nature of mind. If you believe mind is a separate
‘thing’ which has continuous and unbroken ‘inheritance’ separate from
the body, then the body-based genetics of race are rather irrelevant.
But if you take the materialist line of Skinner et al, then all
consciousness has to be a product of chemicals, DNA, etc. In the former
case, common to all religions, the spirit is the vessel of consciousness
and thus cultural evolution is a separate thing to the body. In the
latter case it cannot be proven one way or the other, as the organ of
mind –the brain –appears so tightly welded to the activities of
consciousness, that the two, if they are two, cannot be separated. That
I think is the nub of the problem. In the former case, religions argue
that the mind must be a product of itself, ie. arises from former
moments of consciousness, as it is logically silly to claim that mind
arises from the mind of a parent or from the genetic info in sperm or
egg –which are after all the only other alternatives available. If this
were so we would share the memories and thoughts of our parents as well
as their personalities and dispositions, interests, etc. That we clearly
do not share these things, proves the other way –that mind is more
likely to be an indestructible entity, a product of itself and is
continuous and unbroken from time immemorial past into infinite time
future.

Apart from Adrian Desond & James Moore’s
celebrated biography ‘Darwin’, Desmond has recently published two
volumes of biography on Huxley. All these texts can be used as good
sources of information on some of the above points.

Darwin’s ‘Critique of
Protestantism’

I fail to see how Darwin can be credited, in any
special sense, with ‘a critique of Protestantism’, as some people seem
to think, or indeed, of anything else for that matter. It is true that
he was a well-known freethinker and agnostic, as I think we can see from
the following quotes:

‘…Christianity. Darwin admitted that it was not
supported by evidence.’ [Desmond & Moore, 1991, ‘Darwin’, p.658]

‘[he had]…never been an atheist in the sense of
denying the existence of a God…an agnostic would be the more correct
description of my state of mind’ [ibid, p.636]

But…

‘…[he] was loath to become mixed up with
disreputable radicals.’ [ibid, p.626]
He was a deeply conservative man, very hesitant and self-doubting in
his views and beliefs and in no sense whatsoever a vocal criticiser of
anything. He was by no means vocal, but really rather hesitant in his
views. Consider the following further snippets from Desmond and Moore.

Writing in 1843 to Hooker, about what was to become
his most famous work, ‘Origin of Species’, he says:

‘…for seven years he had been engaged in a very
presumptious work’, perhaps ‘a very foolish one’. Having been struck
by Galapagos life and the S American fossils, he said…slowly,
reluctantly, he had been forced to a conclusion…that species are
not…immutable.’ [ibid, p.314]

and again:

‘…[he] had buried evolution for twenty years,
petrified for his repectability, upholding the paternalist order for a
generation before being forced into the open.’ [ibid, p.658]

I venture that these are in no sense the words or
attitudes of a loud protester against Victorian society or the religious
‘principles’ which underpinned it. Quite the reverse, in fact. They are
the hesitant mumblings of a polite, reserved and very thoughtful man who
meant never to offend anyone about anything. And a reluctant hero if
ever there was one.

However, perhaps we should distinguish between
‘Darwin’ and ‘Darwinian’, which I concede are not always the same thing.

Only factors with survival value are acted upon by
selective forces. Those with positive value are retained, and those with
negative value are lost. In terms of human evolution, it does seem very
hard to identify factors in humans which we might reasonably believe to
be progressing or evolving ie. subject to such forces.

Human Evolution

Perhaps I was rash to say human evolution has stopped?
Maybe it has just become too subtle to perceive. It >may< still be
happening, but the different factors being acted upon by selective
pressures may be too subtle for us to identify ‘without prejudice’.
Racism probably represents a typically impatient and IMHO wholly
prejudicial and blundering attempt to identify such possible factors.

Furthermore, human evolution will proceed NOT as we
might wish or want it to (eg. progression to greater intellectual or
moral development), but through ‘natural selection of favoured forms in
the struggle for life’. As I said previously, remove the struggle or the
selection and the mechanism necessarily stops. In order to ascertain IF
human evolution is operating one would have to find and identify *common
factors* amongst those who FAIL to reproduce and also other *common
factors* amongst those who reproduce very successfully. That is one way
to proceed in order to show IF it is still happening and the direction
it is headed. As Jeff hinted, selection operates precisely upon such
factors and ignores all others. Yet it has not been established with any
certainty how or indeed whether intellect or morals are passed on from
one generation to another –other than through cultural and thus
non-genetic routes.

Racism

‘Racism’ appears to be based upon the idea that the
differences between different races are legitimate differences in
ability to survive and thus possess evolutionary significance. This has
been the dominant thread in sociobiology and is repellent to us today
because it strongly implies superior and inferior. This thread leads
straight to the view that blacks are inferior, less intelligent and more
antisocial than whites. And that that ‘fact’ is of evolutionary
significance; OR that blacks are the remnants of inferior forms of human
being. Yet this view stands in stark contrast to the ‘numerical success’
of non-whites around the globe. It seems mighty strange that
‘evolution’, so-called should favour such inferior races!

Such socially inflammatory ideas are too ludicrous to
entertain and it is to the discredit of biologists and biology that such
ideas have been listened to, taken seriously and published. This problem
probably stems from biologists naively transferring their ideas from
zoology into the study of humans. A natural presumption for them to
make, maybe, but is it truly valid? Numerically, the Chinese form of
human is far more ‘successful’ and numerous than any other, followed by
Indians and Africans.

Some of the social aspects of Darwinism that emerged
and which received strong emphasis during the last century include the
idea that natural selection means ‘the strong go forward and the weak go
to the wall’, ‘survival of the fittest’, that ‘nature is red in tooth
and claw’ and that ‘Darwinism is uncharitable and unChristian’.
Darwinism was also used politically, on both sides of the Atlantic, in
attempts to underpin the basic ideas of Capitalism and to discredit
Marxism, trades unions, worker’s rights, poor relief, etc. These were
areas of major impact, historically and culturally, of evolution as an
IDEA at work in the world.

Critique of Protestantism

It is hard to deny, however, that Darwinism was at
least partly responsible for a collapse of faith in the Church — a
critique of Protestantism if you will — and that this was not only
confined to England but spread gradually throughout the world. But I do
not believe that Charles Darwin was personally responsible for it as an
individual. He unleashed his ideas innocently (rather than maliciously)
upon the world but was profoundly uncomfortable that fate had chosen him
to be the one who did it.

Perhaps we should more carefully examine the wider
social background that Darwin was subject to during the period 1830-60,
and which has a direct and profound bearing both on his discovery and on
how he decided to build up his case so slowly, methodically and to take
so long to unleash it upon the world. It gives a fascinating insight
into social and political dissidence in general and how he became
unavoidably exposed to it amongst family and friends, in London and
Cambridge, as well as through the events of the day.

In the Editor’s introduction to the Origin in the
Penguin UK Edition JW Burrow says:

‘The Origin is a profoundly polemical work… its
tone is in a sense defensive: Darwin was not in the position as a
scientist who announces a theory confirmed by striking
experiments…he was trying to show that… transmutation of
species… was a possible explanation, and that these explanations
fitted the facts better than any others… Moreover he knew, of
course, that he was touching an intensely sensitive subject…the
truth of the Bible; the superintending providence of God in the
natural world…Darwin’s tone throughout is mild, unprovocative and
muted by the desire not to give unnecessary offence’ [Origin, 1859,
p.15]

I do not find the work remotely polemical. It is
muted, defensive, deferential — apologetic even. It is more like a
symphony: composed with maximum elegance, symmetry and harmony, as each
theme and argument is allowed to unfold before us. It is clearly
designed to appeal to moderate reason and reads like the courtroom
speech of a lifetime by a top lawyer in defence of a witness. Massive
evidence is invoked and inspected, and all arguments on each side
thoroughly examined so as to reveal not only the BEST conclusion to
draw, but that the author has examined ALL possible conclusions very
thoroughly. If he was so polemical then why doesn’t he just get to the
point and be done with it and to hell with the consequences?

A clue comes from Burrow, who goes on to say:

‘[Darwin] … was one of the least combative of
men and was forced into the position of challenging orthodoxy by
intellectual honesty and the desire to substantiate a scientific
theory; he did not… actively enjoy thumbing his nose at the
theologians.’ [Burrow, ibid, p.16]

And we should also recall that he first went to
Christ’s College, Cambridge to train for Holy Orders, not for a career
in science.

Yet in spite of all this, it is true that Darwin was
furiously assailed by the majority of his fellow countrymen as one who
dared to set his intellect against the word of God. He was personally
attacked in the Press, etc. This was a battle which raged for years,
well into the 1870’s, and it rumbled on to the turn of the present
century. In that sense it is clear that Darwin had set rolling a process
which led to a systematic ‘critique of Protestantism’ by society at
large. In that sense he did indeed become instrumental in a ‘critique of
Protestantism’. Yet in another sense he merely hastened and catalysed a
process already well underway.

Turning to the origin of his ideas and the social
background, it is well to consider the character of the England of
Darwin’s return (in 1836) from his voyage in the southern hemisphere.
And this harks back to Thomas Malthus:

‘Darwin was returning to a re-energised
Malthusian world…charity had been scrapped, and the poor made to
compete or face the workhouse.’ [Desmond & Moore, p.196]

‘As a result …riots had broken out in the
southern counties in May 1835… and running battles fought with the
police… Darwin found that Malthus had acquired a new meaning. His
name was on everyone’s lips, as either Satan or Saviour.’ [ibid,
p.196-7]

‘The economic condition of the working class in
the 1830’s was indeed so bad as to render impossible their steady
cooperation with other classes in a purely political programme.’
[Trevelyan’s ‘British History in The 19th Century and After
1788-1919’, 1965, p.251]

Darwin could not decide whether he wanted to be in
Cambridge or London and shifted around somewhat. But wherever he stayed,
the pungent whiff of dissent was in the air –both amongst working
classes against their bosses and among the middle-class through
domination in speech and thought by the Church. The universities were
plagued with it. Yet Darwin was ambivalent. While sympathetic towards
the poor, he was also profoundly middle-class in his basic views about
all forms of political dissent.

‘He was concerned with standards of
behaviour…and he shared his family’s abhorrence of the fierce and
licentious radicals’ [Desmond & Moore, p.199]

‘…even the British Museum was in turmoil. It
was the subject of a bruising Parliamentary inquiry in 1836,
instigated by radicals who wanted to oust the titled Trustees and turn
it into a research institution along French lines.’ [ibid p.199]

This was the very place he was about to deposit his
precious specimens collected on his voyages.

So it is probably true that Darwin saw just as much
strong confirmation of his Malthusian dogmas in the political events of
1830’s England, on his return, as he had in the ecosystems of South
America while away. In both cases he saw ‘class wars’ going on apace,
and ‘weak to the wall’ and ‘survival of the fittest’. Certainly his
voyages had taught him of the mutability of the species, but it was the
Malthusian nature of ‘species at war’ in nature and of ‘classes at war’
in England, which had most surely laid the foundations of natural
selection in his mind. Thus both parts of the theory were gestating away
by 1836. Though he first mentioned them together formally in mid-March
1837, he did not feel confident enough to publish for a further
staggering 23 years!

Finally, regarding his ‘stomach for the fight’,
Desmond and Moore describe vividly Darwin’s health horrors attending the
publication of the book. He retired to a hydropathic institution in
Yorkshire for October and November of the publication year, 1859, with
persistent attacks of vomiting and stomach cramps.

‘A ghastly fifteen months was capped on 1
October, when Charles finished the proofs amid fits of vomiting.
During that whole time he had rarely been able to write free of
stomach pains for more than twenty minutes at a stretch. The next day,
in torrential rain, he took himself off to Ilkley… bracing himself
against the elements, Darwin felt a cold shudder surge through him
once more. The howling wind was as nothing to the storm of self-doubt,
his nagging, gnawing fear that ‘I have devoted my life to a fantasy’
and a dangerous one…’ God knows what the public will think.’
[Desmond & Moore, p.476-7]

I think that more than amply demonstrates what a
‘reluctant hero’ he really was personally to the cause of mounting any
‘critique against Protestantism’. If it had not been for Wallace and
Huxley (who he first met in 1852), I do not believe he would ever have
published the book. So great was his personal revulsion against the
public backlash he knew would rise up against both the theory and
himself as a human being. And he clearly regarded himself as far too
frail to face up to that.