Carl Safina has a provocative essay in The New York Times, Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live. I'm sure others will jump all over this, so I'm not going to go exegetic on the essay. Though I disagree with the overly broad assertions, it is elegantly written and points to a reality: there is a cult of Charles Darwin. Where after all is the cult of Isaac Newton? Albert Einstein week? The remembrance of Gregor Mendel? Ruminations on the legacy of Antoine Lavoisier? But that cult is a reaction to the fact that there exists an organized lobby aimed at tearing down the science which Darwin established.
But I am not clear as to Safina's intended audience. I am curious to find out which evolutionary biologists speak of "Darwinism." The reality is that most of the time evolutionary biologists use the term Darwinism it is when they are addressing Creationists. While evolutionary biologists tend to use Darwinism as a synonym for evolution in a conditional manner, Creationists invariably characterize their opposition as "Darwinists."* It is Creationists, some unwitting elements of the public, as well as intellectuals who work at the interface of the popular domain, the Creationism Wars, and philosophy & history, who join the anti-evolutionists in painting evolution as the child of Darwin alone, in style if not substance.
I know that Richard Dawkins does use the D-words relatively frequently. But even in The Selfish Gene he uses the term "Darwinism" and "Darwinian" 18 and 32 times respectively, and "evolution" in 111 instances. To perhaps make an analogy, perhaps one might think of Charles Darwin as the Steve Jobs of evolutionary theory. But one must never forget the Steve Wozniaks such as R. A. Fisher. And evolutionary biologists certainly do not. In Narrow Roads of Gene Land: Volume 2 W. D. Hamilton refers to Darwin on 61 pages, Fisher 44, Sewall Wright 19, J. B. S. Haldane 55, and so on.
* Eugenics after all was is perceived to be grounded in a "Social Darwinist" context, not a "Social Evolutionary" one. The use of the term is therefore critical to obtain maximum rhetorical leverage before brandishing the inevitability of the gas chambers lest Darwinism reign supreme.... (see the comments for a clarification of what I mean here. I don't really think Darwin had anything to do with Hitler, but many people do, and Creationists use that as rhetorical leverage).
Update: John Hawks gets into the weeds and whacks Safina good. I don't really disagree. I will also repeat what John said abut Darwin having a lot of ideas. His verbal arguments were quite often the starting point for the models of later workers in the field.
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Eugenics after all was grounded in a "Social Darwinist" context, not a "Social Evolutionary" one.
It was? Given that "Social Darwinism" was a term invented by Hofstadter later in the game, after the Nazis had been discovered doing their thing, I rather doubt it. Sure, eugenicists appealed to evolution, and some to Darwin, although most to Galton, but they were not acting in the context of some mythical "social Darwinism", the sole purveyor of which was William Graham Sumner.
Here's the hint: eugenics relies on genetics, not evolution. According to evolutionary theory, anything that does well is fitter no matter how smart or "diseased" it is. But objections to Darwin being applied to humans began with W. R. Greg in 1866, and was the foundation of a social policy that objected to, rather than relied upon, an evolutionary view in the case of humans (something Steve Jones still holds to).
people perceive that eugenics relied on social darwinism, therefore you use the term "darwinist" to evoke that association. i'm aware of the history, so spare me the lecture. we're not discussing intellectual history here, we're discussing why principals in a politically inflected argument debate use the terms they use, not whether the terms have any grounding real events. that's pretty clear from the post, the quotes around the term social darwinist was not an accident. but i've changed the text to make my intent clear.
I don't know who speaks of "Darwinism" besides Dawkins, but for instance the late Michael Majerus said peppered moths are "Darwinian evolution in action", meaning that they are an example of evolution by natural selection. So Safina's rhetorical question "Whatâs the other evolution?" falls flat: the other evolution is of course non-Darwinian or non-adaptive processes, like genetic drift.
Damn me and my skimming - I thought you were talking about Dinara Safina.
Having spent large parts of my childhood entranced by dinosaurs and other paleontological delights, but realizing early that there is no money in it, and having read "Origin" at age 12 in a society where evolution was readily accepted as reality by everyone except the (then) Catholic Church and its adherents, then having moved on to things non-biological but more fiscally rewarding for a very long time, I was somewhat at a loss when I drifted back to the subject and found the term "Darwinism" being bandied about for what I assumed had come to be known and accepted as the development of those ideas into evolutionary theory. The morons I can understand, but the Safina thing is a nonsense - screw Archimedes, in that case. Pointless article by Safina, soap-boxing self aggrandisement.
For what it's worth, plenty of honouring of Newton goes on, just not labelled as Newtonism by a bunch of delusional flying apple believers.
My responses to these responses can be found here:
http://carlsafina.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/you-say-you-want-an-evolutio…