Darwinism sans Biology
(Rajneesh Mathur's column)
Darwin, Dawkins, Dennet and Determinism
Not, sadly, a column about alliteration, but about one of the greatest ideas of this millennium and possibly of all time - evolution by natural selection. One might disagree about who first came up with the precise concepts that characterise evolutionary biology (the crude ?survival of the fittest? formulation for instance is due to Malthus, not Darwin) but biological evolution by natural selection is now widely accepted, even in the southern United States, as the probable mechanism of the origin of the multiplicity of species that constitute life on this planet.
This of course makes biological evolution dead boring. Scientifically ?true? maybe (whatever that may mean), but dull. What is interesting about Darwin's ideas is not their application in biology, but their application in, seemingly, everything else. From sociology to economics to politics, ethics and anthropology, no discipline seems immune from some kind of Darwinian analysis. Even astronomy ? you may not have expected an attempt to explain the entire freaking universe using the same principles that explain why flowers attract bees - but Lee Smolin has done just that. Apparently, there have been families of universes producing other universes with random variations in some crucial basic characteristics that determine whether they ?survive? and ?reproduce? or ?die?. I find this as clear as mud, but it is symptomatic of the way evolutionary theory, with its added genetic basis in modern times, is widely used as a calculus to try and explain phenomena that are unrelated to its original scope and intention.
An obvious instance of this is in economics, where the survival of the fittest principle has been invoked to explain economic behaviour and phenomena. A Darwinian, competitive scheme, where the well-adapted survive and prosper while the weak and mal-adapted lose out, seems to describe the crucial aspects of modern capitalism quite well. In sociology and anthropology evolutionary explanations are rife. Differences in sexual behaviour between the sexes, rather than reflecting 'cultural' or 'learned' difference, can be described in terms of the need for genes to propagate and survive. More profoundly, so can altruistic, 'self-less' behaviour, where individuals appear to sacrifice themselves for the larger group or 'principle' or 'nation' or any other convenient fiction.
Perhaps the most interesting philosophical application of evolutionary principles is in relation to ideas themselves. How far does natural selection apply to ideas in general? It would be neat, wouldn't it, if there was open competition between ideas, ideologies and theories, with the ones that worked best or were the most scientifically 'true' (that word again!) triumphing over ones that didn't work as well or did not offer as close an approximation to perceived fact? Like for instance, the defeat of Soviet-style communism by the capitalist model of production. Or, in science, the overthrow of the Newtonian world-view by that of modern relativity. Some believe, more or less, that scientific theories appear and supersede each other by methods similar to evolution, with analogues to random variation, mutation and mutation pressure. In fact, it would be especially attractive to see this happening in science because science is expected to embody progress, while at the same time not having an end in mind. Evolutionary biology offers the best (the only?) model we have of progress without the need for a definite purpose or end, i.e., it does away with teleology.
So, is evolutionary biology a good way of describing and explaining this wide range of phenomena? The central feature of all explanations using this model is the fact they all tend to reduce the phenomenon being explained to genetics and survival. Now, this is not in itself wrong - reducing phenomena to essences is a good way of simplifying and explaining them in science. Nor is reductionist thinking restricted to evolutionists. An important and powerful example of it is in the neurosciences, where many prominent people see the mind as being identical to the brain, and mental processes as being, essentially, physico-chemical phenomena in the computer in our heads. (In fact, the same people often believe fervently in both kinds of reductionism, which is kind of inevitable if you think about it). Is there a problem with this way of looking at things? One problem is that reductionism can easily become a sterile denial of the very richness it seeks to explain. It encourages one-dimensional, blinkered thought and fails to appreciate that complexity may sometimes be as much part of the essence as 'one or two basic principles'. Still, this is mainly an aesthetic objection, and a scientifically valid explanation is under no obligation to be pretty as well as 'true' (here we go again!). I could also say that for some reason the prominent reductionist pundits of our day - Daniel Dennet, Richard Dawkins - are also amazingly arrogant (Dennet's best known book is titled, modestly, Consciousness Explained), but again, if they are correct they don't have to be nice as well. No, the problem with applying evolutionary or any other 'scientific' reductionism to explain everything about mankind is deeper than this.
First, a lot of reductionist assertions appear to over-interpret data that are doubtful to begin with, especially sociological data. So they are not as firmly based on fact as their proponents would have us believe. In some instances, there appears to be a fundamental confusion between biological terms and their meaning in other areas. Take the concept of the 'fittest' scientific theory surviving at the expense of the 'less fit' ones. In evolutionary terms, fitness implies ability to reproduce. In scientific terms, philosophers (eg Karl Popper) who would like to see science as an evolving search for the 'truth', equate 'fitness' with the truthfulness or accuracy. There is no compelling reason why the scientific theory that survives best in a struggle for existence is necessarily going to be true or even, truer than its rivals. It may just be the one that is accepted by the widest scientific consensus, which is a cultural phenomenon.
These are just problems with using the language of evolution to DESCRIBE economic, social and political phenomena. More than describing things, evolutionary theory has been used to PRESCRIBE economic and social policies and justify systems that, say, value competition over co-operation, acquisition over community. Here, things get really messy. Essentially, what the evolutionary reductionists say is 'this is the way things happen in nature, hence this is the way they should happen.' This is obviously sloppy reasoning and does not need a label to be recognised as such, but if you need one, it is an example of a 'Naturalistic Fallacy'. We can never determine what ought to be from what is. There is no connection in logic between the two. Strange that the 'brain is but a computer' school should not realise this, don't you think?
Ignoring this fallacy has allowed the philosophical life-support system for late Western capitalism to get the oxygen of 'scientific' justification, when it could have been switched off years ago. People do not have to base their values on some, or any, scientific view of nature, including 'human nature'. There is a lot more to it than that. Just what that is, I will have to leave to another day, as also the 4th D in the title - determinism - which goes hand in hand with reductionism and whose consequences may be equally pernicious. Meanwhile, some reaction would be nice. Any neuro-determinists out there?
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