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Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism

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Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism This View of Life Special Edition Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism This View of life is an online magazine that reports on evolution the way that Darwin imagined it—as a theory that applies to all aspects of humanity in addition to the rest of life. TVOL makes modern evolutionary science accessible to the public on topics that are vital to our personal and social wellbeing, including health, education, environment, economics, politics, culture, and the arts. It shows what Darwin meant when he wrote “There is grandeur in this view of life…” www.evolution-institute.org/this-view-of-life Contents Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism by David Sloan Wilson and Eric M. Johnson ............3 Social Darwinism: Myth and Reality by Paul Crook .....................................................................5 The Case for Rescuing Tainted Words by David Sloan Wilson...................................................... 9 Social Darwinism: A Case of Designed Ventriloquism by Adriana Novoa .................................... 12 When the Strong Outbreed the Weak: An Interview with William Muir by David Sloan Wilson .... 21 Was Hitler a Darwinian? No! No! No! by Robert J Richards with David Sloan Wilson .....................29 Was Dewey a Darwinian? Yes! Yes! Yes! An interview with Trevor Pearce by David Sloan Wilson ......67 Why Did Sociology Declare Independence from Biology (And Can They Be Reunited)? An Interview with Russell Schutt by David Sloan Wilson ......................................................74 The New Social Darwinism by David Sloan Wilson and Eric Michael Johnson .............................. 85 The Authors clockwise from top left: Adriana Novoa David Sloan Wilson Eric Michael Johnson Robert J Richards William Muir Trevor Pearce Russel Schutt Paul Crook 2 Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism by David Sloan Wilson and Eric M. Johnson CHARLES DARWIN’S theory has revolutionized biology, impacting every aspect of the modern life sciences. However, some applications of his theory to social policy have left us with a legacy that is both shameful and chilling. Today, the term “Social Darwinism” is associated primarily with the moral justification of inequality, resulting in policies such as withholding welfare for the poor, colonialism, eugenics, and genocide. This View of Life would like to confront this legacy directly. A thorough examination is needed for the old Social Darwinism to be laid to rest and replaced with a new set of associations so that modern evolutionary science can be used in a positive sense to understand and improve the human condition. This is similar to the truth and reconciliation commissions that enable nations such as South Africa to acknowledge and move beyond past injustices—hence the title of our theme. To that end, we will feature articles and interviews on both the historical and contemporary applications of Darwin’s theory to human life. The story that we plan to tell is complex, as befits the actual history of the subject. The tapestry that we weave will include the following threads: ■ In some cases, evolutionary theory has indeed been used to justify inequality, as typically associated with the term Social Darwinism. These cases need to be acknowledged and understood against the background of their times. ■ Evolutionary theory has also been used to promote cooperation and equality from the beginning, including Darwin himself. These cases also need to be acknowledged so that the impact of Darwin’s theory on human affairs is not seen as entirely negative. ■ In some cases, evolutionary theory is falsely accused of being used to justify inequality. There is little evidence that it played a role in Nazi war policy, for example. In these cases, truth and reconciliation means absolving evolutionary theory of these particular injustices. Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism 3 ■ The uses and misuses of evolutionary theory need to be weighted against the uses and misuses of other worldviews, such as religious, tribal and national identities, “blank slate” theories of human nature, and economic theories that justify laissez faire policies. Is evolutionary theory especially prone to misuse, or do we need to be vigilant about the justification of inequality in a more general sense? ■ The uses and misuses of any human worldview need to be weighted against the dynamics of cooperation and competition in all social species. The evolutionary distinction between proximate and ultimate causation is important in this regard. The social arrangements recognized as just or unjust in human terms are favored by ecological conditions in humans and nonhumans alike (ultimate causation). Species differ in the psychological mechanisms that cause them to behave as they do and symbolic belief systems (worldviews) operate more strongly in humans than most other species (proximate causation). To focus only on worldviews in humans is to ignore the ultimate causes of inequality in all species. ■ Major architects of the human social sciences had their own reasons to divorce their disciplines from “biology” that had little to do with misuses of evolutionary theory. These factors need to be understood and addressed for evolutionary theory to play the same role in the human-related sciences that it does in the life sciences. ■ The reason to thoroughly revisit the past is to maximize the positive use of evolutionary theory and guard against injustices in the present and future. Our theme will therefore end with ethical considerations for the modern-day application of evolutionary theory to understand and improve the human condition. Leading historians and evolutionary thinkers will help us tell this complex but fascinating story. The interviews and articles will be substantive enough to help shape professional discourse but accessible enough to attract the interest of the general public. It is our goal to make contemporary researchers aware of the pitfalls that history teaches at the same time that we offer a vision for how evolutionary biology can be utilized in a positive direction for our society. Darwin spoke of grandeur in this view of life and it is our mission to insure that his legacy lives up to this high standard. ♦ 4 Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism Social Darwinism: Myth and Reality by Paul Crook WHEN I first encountered Social Darwinism as a student, my first reaction, I’m afraid, was something like this: Oh, Social Darwinism, wasn’t that used to justify ruthless capitalism, militarism, imperialism and racism, using Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”? something that ended up in Nazi eugenics and the elimination of the Jews in the death camps? One would have hoped that these simplistic stereotypes would have been supplanted by more nuanced views in this day and age, at least in academic circles. Sadly, it seems not. I have heard such clichés hurled around almost as knee-jerk reactions at history conferences, whenever Darwinism is evoked in debate. Hopefully symposia such as this one will help to rectify the situation. One can always hope. But I am struck by the resilience, the sheer survival power, of such stereotypes, even when contradicted by overwhelming scholarly evidence. The question that needs to be asked, it follows, is what social and cultural conditions reinforce and serve to preserve such misconceptions. I know that there are young scholars attempting to plumb such depths at the moment. Darwin’s concept of struggle was fascinatingly complex, full of ambivalences. He recognised that it was multi-layered. I am using it, he said, not in a rigorous scientific sense (which he regretted) but “in a large metaphorical sense”. He distinguished many types of struggle, ranging from violent predation and savage killing of prey, to struggle for resources, to ecological dependence: “I shall use the word struggle…including in this term several ideas primarily distinct, but graduating into each other, as the dependency of one organic being on another…the agency whether organic or inorganic of what may be called chance… and lastly what may be more strictly a struggle, whether voluntarily as in animals or involuntary as in plants”. Thus in the Origin we are given many possibilities: conflict, dependence, chance; not only brutal victory or dominance, but also coadaptation and coexistence. He used vivid metaphors such as the web of nature, the tree of life, the tangled bank to represent a grand and integrated biological system that was life, holistic and interdependent as well as undeniably “red in tooth and claw”. His struggle metaphor, Truth and Reconciliation for Social Darwinism 5 as that luminous thinker Gillian Beer put it, ”expresses his unwillingness to give dominance to a militant or combative order of nature”. If there was grandeur in this view of life, as he famously said, there were also myriad usages, validations, interrogations, illuminations, subversions that filtered from it into politics, religion, social thought and philosophy, to name a few discourses. Because of its ambivalences, Darwinism was infinitely adaptable for use in an amazing galaxy of ideas, agendas, and ideologies. They ranged from the epistemically pure and supposedly “hard science” to pseudo- science and outright propaganda. Darwinian science was undeniably culturally conditioned to start with—Darwin took "Darwin’s concept many metaphors and terms from industrial and imperial Britain—and the Social Darwinisms that followed were also of
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