Download DARWINIAN EVOLUTION AND HUMAN RACE

DARWINIAN EVOLUTION, HUMAN RACE, AND HUMAN VALUES
Charles Darwin’s reputation in the history of science is based largely on his
having convinced the scientific community in his day that they could resolve many of the
pressing questions in natural history if they accepted the theory of evolution, that is,
organisms on Earth have descended from earlier forms and have changed over time.
Historians have pointed out the irony of Darwin’s success—he was able to
persuade naturalists that evolution had occurred, but he was unable to sway the scientific
community at the time to accept HIS concept of change: that natural selection was the
major cause of evolution.
In the twentieth century, the Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and 40s reconceptualized Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection using the tools of
modern population genetics. Because of its explanatory power and synthetic scope, the
theory attained virtually universal acceptance in the life-science community and has
continued to extend its explanatory reach.
Among the most important components in both Darwin’s theory and the Modern
Synthesis is the concept of race. Were not for Homo sapiens, race would be regarded as
just another term in the arsenal of research tools used in biology. But, in attempting to
use the term “race” to characterize groups of humans, biologists and anthropologists have
experienced enormous difficulty and considerable controversy. More recently, due to
new techniques and research on the human genome, many in the biomedical community
have attempted to rethink what “race” could mean. And, historians and philosophers of
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science have also been revisiting the long and troubled history of the concept of race in
biology and anthropology. [So—lively topic]
What I would like to do this afternoon is to look at some of the writings about
race by Charles Darwin, and Theodosius Dobzhansky in order to explore some of the
issues on 1) how the theory of evolution has altered our definition of race, and 2) how our
use of categories, like “race” or “gender,” carry social values into our picture of nature. I
have chosen Darwin for obvious reasons, and will look at Dobzhansky because he was
one of the principal architects of the Modern Synthesis and is representative of the
perspective common to most of the founders of the modern theory of evolution.
DARWIN
I’ll start with Darwin. In the first half of the nineteenth century “race” was an important
topic in natural history. Naturalists were coming into possession of vast quantities of
data due to increased exploration, colonization, and the resulting expansion of natural
history collections. Work done in the field added to the information available in cabinets
and museums. One of the consequences of this increase of information was an
appreciation of the range of variability within species. Instead of a single specimen as an
exemplar, many collections now contained multiple specimens of the same species, and
by comparing the specimens, naturalists noted variations in color and size, seasonal
changes, life stage differences, sexual differentiation, and geographical sub-groups.
Naturalists like Darwin’s correspondent in India, Edward Blyth, for example, devoted
considerable time and effort in trying to work out definitions to encompass various
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patterns of difference that were to be found in nature and to distinguish minor variations
among individuals from more significant varieties of species.
Naturalists, like Blyth, were particularly interested in varieties or, as they were
also called, “races,” of organisms. These referred to groups of organisms that possessed
some physical characteristics that distinguished them from the more common “type.”
The varieties were usually geographically separated from other members of the species,
and therefore were often termed “geographical races.” Naturalists sometimes had
difficulty in determining if the varieties constituted different species, or were merely a
subspecies (or a smaller sub-division). These were routine, day to day problems with
which virtually all those engaged in classification (and that would be a majority of the
naturalists) had to contend with in the decades straddling the middle of the nineteenth
century.
Darwin grappled with these problems in the 1850s while he was working out the
classification of barnacles. More important, for Darwin, understanding varieties, and
their origins, became the key to unlocking “the mystery of mysteries”: the origin of
species. Let us remember that the full title of his most famous book, reflected the
importance of the subject: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or
the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
As we know, Darwin believed that natural selection was largely responsible for
the origin of new varieties and the subsequent new species they had the potential to
become. He emphasized geographical isolation and divergence as important for the
process. But, the process was complex and it WAS often quite difficult to distinguish
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between a variety and a new species. Which made sense: they were part of a continuum,
after all.
What about humans? Were the races of man varieties or species? Although
Darwin avoided the subject in the Origin he discussed it extensively in The Descent of
Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. (1871) He had multiple motives for discussing
race. The book was, as Moore and Desmond have argued in Darwin’s Sacred Cause
(2009), partly an argument against polygenism, the position that human races were
different species, an opinion that had been used by Europeans and New World writers to
justify slavery. Darwin, in The Descent of Man presented an extended argument for
monogenism instead, the view that human races were varieties of one species. Of equal
importance (although less appreciated by Moore and Desmond), the book was a
continuation of Darwin’s broader agenda to convince his contemporaries that the theory
of evolution could account for the all phenomena encompassed by natural history. Much
of the Origin was an attempt to do so, and some of the grand synthetic nature of Darwin’s
theory resulted from his persistent efforts to demonstrate that his theory of the origin of
species was consistent with the known facts, indeed, explained them. He, therefore, had
to discuss races, and in particular, human races.
Darwin described how similar in most physical and mental aspects human races
are, and how they graduate into one another, a strong argument in his mind against the
idea that the races of man are different species. How did they originate? He evaluated a
number of possibilities that might have given rise to different skin colors, different hair
texture, etc., but concluded that “the races of man cannot be accounted for in a
satisfactory manner by the direct action of the conditions of life, ....”1 Nor, he also
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concluded, can natural selection account for the external differences among the races of
man. This would appear to be a major obstacle for Darwin and for his larger ambition to
provide an explanatory and synthetic theory for natural history. His options were limited:
special creation of the different races of man (that is, creation by Divine intervention
which was popular with many of his contemporaries) was an unacceptable explanation
for him because Darwin sought naturalistic causes for phenomena. Separate creations
had the additional problem for him that polygenists could use it to support their claims,
and therefore they could employ it in their defense of slavery, a position Darwin found
especially repugnant.
Darwin’s solution to the problem of explaining the origins of human races was to
elaborate on another “important agency,” sexual selection. In the Origin, he gave a brief
account of sexual selection which he summarized in the following manner: “when the
males and females of any animal have the same general habits of life, but differ in
structure, colour, or ornament, such differences have been mainly caused by sexual
selection; that is, individual males have had, in successive generations, some slight
advantage over other males, in their weapons, means of defense, or charms; and have
transmitted these advantages to their male offspring.”2 In the Descent of Man Darwin
elaborated on the subject. In fact, almost 70% of the two volumes that comprise the
Descent of Man is devoted to a comprehensive examination of sexual selection in the
animal kingdom, and Darwin used this survey to make his point that sexual selection is
common in nature and explains many of the secondary sexual characteristics one finds in
the animal world. After 500 pages on sexual selection in animals, Darwin turned to
humans and explained how many of the physical characteristics that naturalists use to
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distinguish human races—skin color, absence or abundance of body hair, form of
features, etc.—can also be attributed to the action of sexual selection. He reminded his
readers that in his discussion of sexual selection in mammals, he had established that
many characters developed by way of sexual selection are inherited equally by the males
and females. Non-adaptive traits, therefore, can become common in a sub-group of
humans. He wrote:
Let us suppose the members of a tribe, practicing some form of marriage, to
spread over an unoccupied continent; they would soon split up into distinct hordes,
separated from each other by various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant
wars between all barbarous nations.[I’ll get back to these “barbarous nations” in a
moment]….each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of
beauty; and then unconscious selection would come into action through the more
powerful and leading men preferring certain women to others. Thus the differences
between the tribes, at first very slight, would gradually and inevitably be more or less
increased.3
Darwin had to do a bit of fancy footwork to make this all come out the way he
wanted. In his earlier discussions of sexual selection in animals, he had emphasized
female choice—it accounted for the elaborate ornamentation in male birds, for example.
But, with humans, Darwin stressed mostly male choice. One might expect that this
would lead only to “beauty” in the females (the parallel of ornamentation in male birds).
He conceded that “ [men] should have transmitted beauty in a somewhat higher degree to
their female than to their male offspring, and thus have become more beautiful, according
to general opinion, than men.” However, he quickly qualified this, and added that
women “transmit most of their characters, including some beauty, to their offspring of
both sexes; so that the continued preference by the men of each race for the more
attractive women, according to their standard of taste, will have tended to modify in the
same manner all the individuals of both sexes belonging to the race.”4 Some male
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characteristics of the race may be due to female choice, of course. The beards in some
races, he thought may have been selected for by females.
The main point, however, was that sexual selection could account for the
characteristics that we use to differentiate the races of man. Most notable was skin color.
Darwin noted that “the colour of the skin is regarded by the men of all races as a highly
important element in their beauty, so that it is a character which would be likely to have
been modified through selection….[and then added:]..It seems at first sight a monstrous
supposition that the jet-blackness of the negro should have been gained through sexual
selection; but this view is supported by various analogies, and we know that negroes
admire their own colour.”5
Darwin’s move to explain the origin of race was an ingenious, if problematic, one.
His contemporaries were already uncomfortable with Darwin’s reliance on natural
selection as an agency of creative change, and it is not surprising that they found sexual
selection a questionable force to account for human diversity.
Historians have carefully
analyzed the arguments and subsequent attempts to provide adequate answers for the
objections to Darwin’s theories. However, I want to call attention to something else that
was interesting about his theories—what he took to be the accepted “facts” of his
argument (whether you accepted his conclusions or not).
All through his career, Darwin had amassed “facts.” The accepted “inductive”
mode of doing natural history in his day demanded it, and British intellectuals highly
regarded the inductive method. Darwin was a formidable empiricist, and following
Alexander von Humboldt and John Herschel as guides, he tried to subsume vast
quantities of information under broader theoretical explanations or generalizations. Like
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all synthetic thinkers, however, he was at the mercy of what went for established fact.
He had been able personally to observe 10,000 barnacles for his impressive systematic
survey of the Cirripedia, but when it came to the entire animal kingdom and the vast field
of ethnographic research, he had to depend upon the available literature in his day, in
other words, on the writings of others. By the standards of his time, he was a rigorous
and a careful scientist, but from a modern perspective, he could be uncritical. Although
he had traveled extensively, he repeated without hesitation the naïve judgments of his
contemporaries on human difference. Reading his work today, we see that he reflected a
Victorian perspective on gender and race that influenced him to accept what went for
common knowledge. In describing the differences between the two sexes, for example,
Darwin repeated what was “self-evident” at the time: “The chief distinction in the
intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man’s attaining to a higher eminence, in
whatever he takes up, than can woman—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or
imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands...[and concluded]….”the average
of mental power in man must be above that of woman.”6
We have become sensitive to such hasty generalizations about gender, but in
considering these obvious Victorian blind spots, we can also see how even educated,
well-meaning people could easily read their social values into nature when it came to
discussions of gender. Darwin, and his contemporaries, were similarly biased when it
came to race. His casual and unselfconscious use of the term “savages” reveals a lot.
Darwin believed that among mankind, as in other animals—there existed a continuum of
intelligence and sensibility, on which selective forces operated. These selective forces
could lead to dramatic changes. The fossil record, for example, demonstrated that many
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animal groups have gone extinct, replaced by others. For Darwin, a parallel conclusion
led him to hold that “savage races” could go extinct. “Extinction,” he wrote, “follows
chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race,” …..When civilized
nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short.”7 Reflecting his Imperial
British perspective, he contended that natural selection would guarantee the success of
higher civilizations and that in time the “savage races” of man would melt away. In part,
Darwin was reading human history through his evolutionary lens, but he was also
reflecting a Victorian perspective that accepted progress as a fact of human history and
regarded the vanguards of industrial Europe as the natural leaders of human civilization.
His comments on the differences in taste among peoples reflected his unapologetic and
unreflective Eurocentrism. He noted: “the different races of man differ in their taste for
the beautiful…it is well to compare in our mind the Jupiter or Apollo of the Greeks with
the Egyptian or Assyrian statues; and these with the hideous bas-reliefs on the ruined
buildings of Central America.”8
What is instructive for us about Darwin’s unguarded comments on “savages,” and
his patronizing views of their art, is how he saw their lower status in scientific terms.
Darwin was attempting to explain human difference by reference to natural causes, and
with the same concepts he used to explain animal differences. In broad outline, he used
natural selection and sexual selection to explain how different races came into being and
continued to develop. But in so doing, he also inserted British social values to describe
and to evaluate the cultures and physical appearance of human races. His contemporaries
didn’t notice his conflation of cultural and biological dimensions of human groups, and
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like Darwin they accepted them as the basic “facts” from which to build broader
generalizations.
DOBZHANSKY
Let me now turn to the more modern evolutionary story and consider the work of
Theodosius Dobzhansky. Like Darwin, Dobzhansky paid considerable attention to the
concept of race because it held a central place in his biological investigations. His
extended research project on Drosophila had its origins in his interest in some peculiar
characteristics that he encountered in races of Drosophila pseudoobscura. Two races of
this fruit fly, which inhabits the southern and western parts of the US and extending down
into Mexico, were known to exist, and Dobzhansky found an aspect of these races
intriguing. Although individuals from the different races appeared morphologically the
same, when crossed they produced sterile males (although the females were fertile).
Since the ability to produce viable offspring had long been a criterion for distinguishing
individuals of different species, these two races should have been able to interbreed and
produce fully fertile offspring. Dobzhansky’s study of this anomalous situation in D.
pseudoobscura led him to believe that he had caught “evolution in action.” In his
research he discovered that the genetic characteristics of the races of pseudoobscura
varied over time and distance, and that by collecting in the field he could demonstrate
those changes. It was this work that provided him the information and perspective to
formulate, “the biological species concept”—the view that species are sets of populations
that interbreed. Races, for Dobzhansky, should be defined as populations that differ in
some gene frequencies from other populations of the same species. Races are in flux and
are constantly exchanging genes—that is, they are continually mixing. They comprise
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the same species, unless reproductive isolation develops, in which case the race becomes
a different species. Dobzhansky viewed races as important repositories of variation that
can be “tapped” to “respond” to environmental changes. Within a race, variation is often
extensive, more so, even, than between races.
From this population genetics perspective, a hierarchy of races (be it among flies
or humans) made no sense. Variation is enormous within races, and genes are constantly
being exchanged. Dobzhansky did recognize that races can develop gene complexes
(sets of interrelated genes) that can have adaptive value. But, even so, the adaptation of a
population is relative to its environment (and environments change) so there is no outside
framework from which to judge or rank races in absolute terms.
So what does this mean when we get to humans? Dobzhansky was very clear that the
traditional classifications of humans used by cultural and physical anthropologists do not
denote biological races. The commonly used groups by cultural anthropologists were too
diverse, and relied on many cultural factors such as language, dress, and food in their
descriptions. Physical anthropologists had labored to identify the physical characteristics
of different racial “types,” but these, also, according to Dobzhansky were not valid
categories. To clarify “racial types,” physical anthropologists had amassed sets of
measurements, and from those they had generalized the mean values of the sets of
physical traits that defined individual races. They were using a method zoologists had
used to define types for much of the nineteenth century, especially those in the tradition
of the great comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier.
Dobzhansky’s evolutionary perspective, informed by population genetics,
undermined that tradition: populations contain significant amounts of variation, and,
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indeed, all traits are subject to variation. One could pick a set of traits and claim they
represented a biological race, but doing so raised a host of problems. Many human traits
vary independently, and using different traits one would define altogether different
biological groups. A classification based on skin color, for example, would differ
significantly from one based on blood type. Dobzhansky held a pragmatic approach to
classification, in that he believed that one could define groups based on selected traits,
and that the choice of traits depended on the classification’s goal. For Dobzhansky,
however, there was no obvious, single, preferred classification of humans.
In that sense, the word “race” had lost much of its biological meaning for human
classification. Some anthropologists and biologists, at the time, suggested that the term
be dropped. Dobzhansky disagreed. In fact, he carried on an extended argument with the
prominent anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, who wanted to eliminate the term, “race”
from anthropology altogether. In the aftermath of the second world war and the excesses
of Nazi racial “science,” fully exposed, Montagu believed that the concept of “race”
carried too much toxic baggage. But, Dobzhansky didn’t see the point in eliminating a
term just because it had been abused. For him, scientists should work to clarify our
picture of nature, rather than to change our language. Moreover, he argued, a change in
terms was unlikely to eliminate discrimination and social abuse. If we substituted the
term, “ethnic group” for “race” (as Montagu suggested), we would then have
discrimination against “ethnic groups,” as opposed to discrimination against “races.”
That is, a change in language was not likely to alter deep seated social injustices.
Dobzhansky wrote a lot on the topic of human race. He was not living in the
Victorian Age, and didn’t assume the old hierarchies of race that Darwin and his
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contemporaries did. Dobzhansky’s writings on race, in fact, are highly nuanced.
Although he recognized that sub-populations could develop different frequencies of
certain variations, and appreciated that different cultural settings could contribute to
genetic difference--that is, he accepted that differences exist among human populations-he was adamant that the individuals of all races be treated equally. Along with fellow
Columbia geneticist, L.C. Dunn, and physical anthropologist,Ashley Montagu,
Dobzhansky took part in drafting a UNESCO document on race that stressed the equality
of humankind. This document was written as a reaction to the racism of the 30s and 40s,
and for that reason had a European focus. For example, it stressed that the commonly
considered European“races,” (e.g., French, German) were not biological races, nor, could
they be ranked into a hierarchy.
This more egalitarian stance did not suggest to Dobzhansky that all individuals
had equal ability or equal intelligence. Equality for Dobzhansky was a social term, not a
biological one. He felt, nonetheless, that lessons could be drawn from biology that had
social significance. Along with Montagu, he argued that the quality most consistently
favored in humans by natural selection was educability: that is, the capacity to profit by
experience, adjust to surroundings, and train for whatever occupation or profession the
society has available. Moreover, he stated: “educability….is not concentrated in any one
caste or class. It is not concentrated in any one race either.”9
Dobzhansky claimed that a population perspective fundamentally altered how
race was to be regarded: race differences are differences between populations, not
between individuals. Individuals from a particular race could differ more than between
races. Dobzhansky concluded from his study of race that from a biological and cultural
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perspective equality of opportunity should be promoted. For Dobzhansky, the clear path
to the future was in fostering equality of opportunity which he defined as, “every person
may, without favor of hindrance, develop whatever socially useful gifts or aptitudes he
has and chooses to develop. Civilization fosters a multitude of employments and
functions to be filled and served—equality of opportunity stimulates the division of
labor...it enables, however, a person to choose any occupation for which he is qualified
by his abilities and his willingness to strive.”10
He argued, that such “social mobility will in general favor genetic progress and its
absence will slow it down.”11
Did he derive all his views from empirical observations on Drosophia? Well, to
some extent he did—his appreciation of the importance of variation in a population grew
out of his research on how sub-populations of Drosophila have to cope with an ever
changing environment. But, it doesn’t take a century of hindsight to detect the strong
Enlightenment philosophy that informed his ideas of equality of opportunity. And, what,
after all, does “genetic progress” mean in this context? In a world of constantly shifting
gene pools, it is not clear that progress is a meaningful biological concept. Although
most of the founders of the Modern Synthesis accepted the idea of progress, it is unlikely
they were led to the idea by studying fruit flies, or the behavior of birds.
Dobzhansky, like Darwin, reflected the social group in which he lived. His
egalitarian commitment, although couched in biological terms, fit the liberal thinking of
post-World War, New York intellectuals, like L.C. Dunn. And like them, he could be
quite patronizing in his liberalism. For example, in describing how “members of
yesterday’s ‘inferior’ and ‘subject’ races now attend universities together with sons and
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daughters” of the previous “masters” he commented at “many of the former [i.e., the
members of yesterday’s inferior races] “do not do badly at all.”12 Statements like that I
suspect will be looked at by historians in a century, the way we regard some of Darwin’s
off hand remarks about gender and race that reflected the biases of his day.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THESE EXAMPLES??
Historians of science have shown that naturalists have used, and continue to use,
“race” for classification, and race has been and is an important category in evolutionary
biology. In Darwin’s day, this new way of conceptualizing race clarified some earlier
confusion in classifying, and later, for Dobzhansky the study of race gave him an entrée
into dealing with the differentiation of populations over time and distance.
But, when applied to humans, “race” has been a deeply problematic concept
because, historically, naturalists and anthropologists have constructed races,
incorporating elements of biology, geography and culture. Until recently, terms like, the
“French” race and the “German” race appeared regularly in descriptions of the people of
Europe. These were, however, linguistic groups, even if anthropologists and life
scientists had attempted to refine the definitions of these groups using the tools of
anatomy and occasionally physiology. On examination, it is now clear that much of what
they accepted as“ facts,” were socially constructed entities with embedded values.
The use of cultural markers as part of the definitions of race goes back a long
time, largely because humans are cultural animals. And, historically it has been difficult
for, not only the lay public, but also naturalists and anthropologits to distinguish cultural
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from biological characteristics. Further complicating the issue, is the problem of
separating the “nature” from the “nurture” elements in human groups, that is, the
environmental factors. Even when these distinctions are recognized, many continue to
use racial thinking in differentiating groups. The tensions in Central Europe, the Middle
East, and Africa demonstrate the point in a rather grotesque manner.
So where does that leave us regarding race? Geneticists can identify a number of
Mendelian populations among humans—that is, groups of humans who have closely
interbreed for a significant period time and have built up some greater frequencies of
specific genes. Similarly, physical anthropologists who investigate certain problems such
as historical migration patterns, refer to different “races” or to what they call “ancestral
populations” to describe these distinct human groups. More recently, the Human
Genome Project has unleashed a wave of new work on “race,” and biomedical
researchers are using Ancestry Information Markers (AIMS), a technique for allegedly
reading race in DNA, to assess risks for diseases of particular populations, and to trace
ancestry. But, these narrowly defined groups are far from the conventional
understanding, or the government’s classification of “race” for purposes of the U.S.
Census or Affirmative Action.
The reason, as Dobzhansky fully grasped and described, is that Human Mendelian
populations don’t map very well onto cultural groups. Cultural anthropologists long ago
dropped “race” as a biological category—since the biological groups that could be called
races didn’t match the human groups that identified themselves as separate “races.” To
be sure, forensic and medical anthropologists continue to use traditional, lay, “racial”
categories, and they are pragmatically useful in some situations, but these uses lack the
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scientific rigor and universality that biologists expect. Biologists, generally, avoid the
concept when discussing humans, and are highly critical of blatantly racist attempts to
resurrect the use of the term.
Although evolutionary biology suggests that human racial groups can be defined,
in the discussions over what that can mean, it is important not to lose sight of a larger
issue, and that is that the human groups that mostly concern us are cultural groups. What
divides us, and contributes to vast suffering, are cultural barriers, not biological ones.
Therefore, Race in evolutionary terms is real, but mostly irrelevant. That is the first
lesson we can take away from this brief discussion. The attempt to essentialize
difference is a human failing, and the related scientific racism has a long and
undistinguished history, which would be better not repeat. If we are looking to divide
populations along lines that convey historical affiliations and cultural ties, perhaps we
should skip evolutionary theory and DNA, and focus on language, dress, food,
institutions, and geographical divisions., etc. That is, if we are going to be good
naturalists, let’s go back to the basics when we deal with human cultural groups, and let’s
liberate ourselves from the legacy of typologies and dated concepts like blood lines or
mythical ancestors. We need to keep this in mind for the simple reason (the second major
lesson) that it is all too easy to read our values and beliefs into nature, only to
discover them there. We see this in too many evolutionary scenarios, from speculative
constructions of evolutionary ethics, to pop psychology that “explains” everything from
men’s alleged preference for women with specific waist to hip ratios, to the advice that
we would be healthier if we ate a Stone Age diet. Historians of science have expended
considerable time and effort in uncovering and explaining how those studying living
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organisms, as far back as Aristotle, have often, unconsciously, ascribed their cultural
preconceptions to animals, in general, not just humans. Such embedded values have
reinforced cultural biases by describing characteristics as “natural” or “unnatural”—
everything from male supremacy to homosexuality. But, it is in the domain of human
biology that the reading into nature the values that we want to derive from it where the
issue becomes especially blatant and potentially damaging, as we now recognize in the
case of “race” in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The third lesson we can take away from our brief glance at evolutionary biology
and race is that attempts to uncover the objective characteristics of human nature
using evolutionary biology is a perilous undertaking. It is all too easy to read our own
values into nature and take as facts what are deeply cultural artifacts. If serious scientists
like Darwin and Dobzhansky had difficulty separating their cultural perspectives from
their sets of “observations” then we need to be especially skeptical of plausible, but
unverified or unverifiable evolutionary stories that define, justify, or explain human
“nature” or difference. It is not that we are incapable of being objective, but that it is
difficult to see beyond our cultural lenses.
So, in conclusion, I would argue, that although evolution, both Darwin’s theory
and the modern one, has been enormously powerful in explaining the facts of natural
history, and has guided research into fruitful avenues of investigation, it has done little to
elucidate the cultural questions that also fascinate and concern us: human nature and
human difference. Biology can provide useful background information, and can supply a
fund of material on limitations and tendencies, and it generate interesting studies of
related animals that display social behavior in ways that are suggestive. I don’t think,
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however, that the grand questions that have occupied the humanities and social sciences
can be turned over to the biologists for clarification and resolution. And, if history is any
guide, the attempt to derive values from nature is fraught with peril. We can easily
discern the problem when examining 19th-century writers, and with a little effort in the
writings of responsible scientists of fifty years ago, but only with difficulty can we
discern the embedded values in the writings of contemporaries. We need to be alert to its
likely existence, however, and try not to repeat the unfortunate missteps of the past (in
order not to duplicate the unfortunate missteps of the past).
1
Descent of Man, p. 229.
Ibid, pp. 137-8.
3
Ibid. p. 664-5.
4
Ibid., 666.
5
Ibid. 673.
6
Ibid., 629.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid. 648-9.
9
Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving, p. 286.
10
Ibid., p. 243.
11
Ibid., p 245.
12
Ibid., p. 286.
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