Darwin vs. Social Darwinism

A recent critique of Darwin is the use of social Darwinism and its negative effects on society. The basic argument is an application of the theory of natural selection to social, political, and economic issues. Social Darwinism follows the mantra of "survival of the fittest" including human issues. Social Darwinism has been used ever since to justify crimes like the holocaust, colonization, and Eugenics. Charles Darwin has in essence been used as the scapegoat for crimes against humanity. The first problem with this argument is that Charles Darwin did not come up the phrase “survival of the fittest”. This was Herbert Spencer doing some 30 years after the Origin of the Species was written. Furthermore, Darwin intentionally stayed away from writing and or extrapolating his theories to mankind. Darwin was strongly against slavery and "ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species" (Darwin, 1874). He also spoke about the mistreatment of Natives. Those who believe in Social Darwinism are twisting the words of Darwin's theory in order to support their own personal beliefs and views. There exists a large element of choice in representation of a concept. It is guided by political and ethical values. The decision of what information to include or leave out and the language used is all dependent on one's agenda. Social Darwinism completely goes against the principals of Darwin because they believe in the human race being higher or better that everything else on earth. Thus, they attack Darwin's theory and identify it as absurd. Darwin believed that we were all equal and there was no higher” or “lower” animal on earth. The belief in social Darwinism is a direct contradiction to Darwin theory because it takes nature out of the picture and instead forced us to “evolve” into the society that is deemed “fit” by a selected few in power.

Competition over new Eco-space

Last week we looked at the paper: Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land, by Sandra Sahney et al. In the paper Sahneys team look at different molecular and fossil records and determine that the increase in tetrapod biodiversity was not due to competition but more because of the expansion into unoccupied ecospace. They decided to group these tetrapods based on their ranges and ecomorphs like size and diet. They compared this to what niches they actually occupy and saw that the actual rate was lower than the expected. With this information they thought it was enough evidence to prove that competition must not have been the determining factor in their expansion.

The conclusion reached from this paper is a huge overreach. The methods used by the researches are very subjective because a lot of tetrapods live in overlapping areas and diets. Therefore one scientist might look at the data and group these tetrapods in to far more or less than the methods used by Dr. Sahney and her team. The researchers also used fossil records to see if tetrapods lived in various areas. This seems to be a very unreliable method because the fossil record is famously incomplete. There may have been many tetrapods in an area but because the conditions were not right millions of years ago no fossils were formed. Furthermore the fossil record rarely tells us anything about the diet of the tetrapods which was one of the criteria that was sorted. I believe that this paper can be heavily criticized based on its subjectivness on the materials and methods section. This in no way refutes competition the means for diversification. Competition may have still been happening on a smaller scale and some of the radiations that took place may have been influenced by the new use of territory, but nevertheless competition was always taking place and was the major factor in almost all species radiations. The paper is only about tetrapods and cannot be extrapolated to the other 90% of all animals on earth. This paper seems to make a conclusion which is a far reach from the truth and in no way is a contradiction to Darwins theory of competition.

Darwin was not a Social Darwinist

This week we had a special lecture by Dr. Bruce Alexander professor emeritus of psychology at SFU. I found this to be one of the most intriguing lectures I’ve had in a long time. As a Darwinist Dr. Alexander explained some of the views of Darwin in more detail in response to many of the critiques of Darwin that we’ve seen to date in our class. First of all I was surprised to hear that Darwin had written many books on Psychology. Apparently he was also a Geologist. Dr. Alexander went on to break down some of the common misconceptions about Darwin. One of his most important points was that Darwin was not a Social Darwinist in today’s use of the word.

Many of today’s groups use examples of Darwin mainly from the Origin of Species to advocate many of their own agendas involving survival of the fittest etc. Dr. Alexander explains that you have to read Darwin’s other works to fully understand his views relating to humans. In the origin he barely refers to human's saving his thoughts for his later books. In the Decent of Man and his other works Darwin gives many examples of how you should not use his theories about other species and extrapolate them to humans. He explains this is because we as humans have morals that we have evolved through out time. He gives examples of how humans may risk or give their lives for others, a trait that is inherently human. For this reason you can not put all things on earth under the same umbrella. There are exceptions to the rule. In conclusion I was really impressed in the way that Dr. Alexander treated to subject and disproved a lot of the modern day Social Darwinists extremist views by giving examples from Darwin himself.

Lamarck: Close, but no cigar!

Butler argument had been that everything that Darwin has written has been said before. He attacked Darwin on many points as I discussed in an earlier post, but I would like to concentrate on his theories of Use and Disuse. Butler made the point that Evolution was not necessarily Darwinism. Darwinism included evolution but not vice versa. The theory of use and disuse was first proposed by Lamarck where he used their example of the giraffe. Lamarck also included in his theory spontaneous variation. Butler argued that there was little difference in the theories of Darwin and Lamarck except for the amount of influence of each part.

Lamarck believed that Use and Disuse was the primary means of evolution with a small part of it being due to spontaneous variation, whereas Darwin said spontaneous variation is the main reason behind Variation with use and disuse being secondary. This is not a small difference in the theory. It actually is a completely different theory and way of thinking compared to Lamarck. Darwin knew that Lamarck's Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics was wrong. We now know this because of experiments. We now know that changes that happened in an animals life aren’t passed on to there offspring. If you were to cut the tail off a dog like a Rottweiler, the offspring of the dog would still have a tail. We also now know that traits can only be passed on through genes, and genes cannot be affected by the environment. These and other examples show that Lamarck's theory does not explain evolution correctly. Lamarck has the pieces of the puzzle but he just couldn’t put it together. Darwin did and for that reason he is credited for his theories of evolution.

Butler on Darwin

“The Deadlock of Darwin” by Samuel Butler takes the approach of the Intellectual critique of Charles Darwin and his work. To understand this critique I believe that you must know a little about the past history between Darwin and Butler. Butler had tried to contact Darwin numerous times to discuss some issues he had with The Origin of Species. Darwin did not reply to his critiques so Butler decides to write extensively about Darwin and his work. Without committing the genetic fallacy I think it’s still important to know a little bit about Butler’s motivation to write about Darwin.

Butler was not a scientist so he took the path of critiquing Darwin from within. He did no counter research to disprove Darwin’s theories nor did he provide a counter theory. It was purely a rebuttal to his book. In today’s world of academics and science you would not be taken seriously in your rebuttal if you were not also a scientist or expert in the field that you are crituiqing. The whole purpose of peer reviewed journal is that your paper is reviewed by experts in the field that you’re writing about. You can’t be someone with no training or expertise in a subject and just criticize them. This may be ok for television or blogs but not in the academic world.

Nevertheless Butler produces a decent argument against Darwin at first glance. He goes on to make the point that Darwin has not come up with any of his own ideas. He states that Evolution and Natural selection were not his ideas and that, in essence he was being false with the claim that he came up with these theories and ideas. It seems a plausible argument until you realize that what Darwin did was more than just repeat what other scientist said. It’s true that a lot of the theories in the origin of species were known before Darwin, but Darwin had taken these theories and put them together in a concise clear manner that had not been done before. These theories were like dots on a blank page, what Darwin did is connect these dots to make the picture. This was the genius of Darwin’s work. Most scientist of his day had read the works of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck and Buffon. Yet nobody at that time had been able to put the full picture together. Darwin did this and for that reason he will be remembered or credited with sharing these theories with the world.

Darwin's rhetorical style: let others defend his ideas

In this week's lecture by Dr. Stephen Ogden, on 7 Oct 2010, we looked at Samuel Butler's essay The Deadlock in Darwinism which suggested Charles Darwin was a better rhetorician (and possibly an immoral one for allegedly claiming a theory he did not originate) than scientist. Dr. Ogden also detailed background information of how Butler's initial support of Darwin gave way to animosity when Butler failed to receive the positive response he craved from Darwin for his initially well-intended assistance.

In an article by John Angus Campbell entitled The Invisible Rhetorician: Darwin's "Third Party" Strategy, the author makes the point that rather than respond directly, Darwin habitually had his allies, (particularly his "inner guard" of Joseph Dalton Hooker, Charles Lyell, Asa Gray, and Thomas Henry Huxley) publicly defend the ideas he put forward in Origin - even when he philosophically disagreed with these men privately. As Samuel Butler writes it: "a powerful literary backing at once came forward to support him [Darwin]." Campbell describes Darwin as "a rhetorician in a distinct but complementary sense: his skill as the manager of his own campaign."

Campbell documents Darwin's correspondence with his "inner guard" to solicit their support of his doctrine. He wanted to win them over personally because, for example, "Lyell's public stature was so great that his hesitation would slow general acceptance, while his "conversion" would virtually spell victory." In addition to explicitly directing these four colleagues in how to respond to his troublesome critics, Darwin also had copies of their articles (if complimentary to Origin) republished, at his own expense, and sent to journals, critics, scientists, and clerics to bolster belief in his ideas. In this way, Darwin was able to indulge his "desire for action without compromising his appearance of being above the fray."

Darwin's tactics seem to have been to win detractors over by persuasion rather than combat: "While Darwin himself certainly used battle imagery, for every reference to battle in his letters, there are two to "conversion" ... When we consider that Darwin's "enemies" were also his friends [i.e. orthodox colleagues], even those of his own household [his religious wife], his dominant imagery is consistent with his rhetorical aim." Campbell makes the analogy: "Not Huxley's mythical battle between the scientific David and the religious Goliath, but the subtle diplomacy of Jacob versus Essau prepares us to grasp the kind of tactics Darwin used to convert his culture to his theory."

The article also provides some insight into Darwin's scientific philosophy:

Darwin's empiricism was narratological; that is, he believed that the testable unit in science was less the isolated fact than the unified narrative. In Darwin's view, natural selection should be accepted, not because it could be proven experimentally but because it could bring greater coherence to larger bodies of facts than any other theory then available.

Campbell quotes Darwin writing to Huxley (who "'accepted' Darwin's theory on the caveat that natural selection had not yet been confirmed experimentally") on the topic:

You speak of finding a flaw in my hypothesis, and this shows you do not understand its nature. It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaws and holes as sound parts. My question is whether the rag is worth anything? I think by careful treatment I can carry in it my fruit to market for a short distance over a gentle road; but I fear you will give the poor rag such a devil of a shake that it will fall all to atoms: and a poor rag is better than nothing.

But even according to his personal & intellectual critic, Samuel Butler, the effect of Darwin's "poor rag" is influential and lasting. He writes that, unlike Darwin's evolutionary theory predecessors, who "did not bring people round to their opinion ... Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace did, and the public cannot be expected to look beyond this broad and indisputable fact."

Campbell's article shows Darwin's savvy ability not only to successfully write rhetorically in Origin, but also to draw attention and support for his ideas by persuading others to defend them on his behalf - though perhaps this tactic backfired with Samuel Butler, who might have been content to be Darwin's ardent fan, had he early on been offered the personal touch.