Darwinian evolution=Armageddon?

From: Michael Ragland (ragland37_at_webtv.net)
Date: 06/25/04 

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 05:28:53 +0000 (UTC)

I disagree with Mr. Buck who is not a scientist but I like his spirit.
(his brief article is below) He is a socialist and of course if one does
subscribe to biological determinism then the idea of socialism is
shattered. But its interesting to note there appears to be two camps
among followers of biological determinism. The first camp sees nothing
wrong with biological determinism. It's a part of our Darwinian nature
and should be fully expressed rather than attempted to be thwarted or
suppressed. The second camp, among which I include myself, acknowledges
biological determinism but don't think it should be fully expressed but
don't believe ultimately it can be thwarted. This camp seems to be in
the minority. There is a third camp which takes the middle road which
neither believes our Darwinian nature should be fully expressed but that
it can be sufficiently controlled. This is probably the majority camp.

That is why I advocate genetic engineering of people. Because I do agree
generally with people like Pinker. I think if Darwinian evolution is
permitted to continue it will result in our destruction as a species.
Aggression is a salient component of Darwinian evolution. Will anybody
seriously question that. Can anybody seriously question the continuation
of extreme violence around the world which is not primarily culturally
fueled but a part of our biology. I realize some would take issue with
this and state such violence was primarily culturally fueled but I don't
believe that.

I'd welcome a response from the likes of Wilkins, Atmar, Moran,
Felsenstein, Dr. Hayes, etc. whether they consider the continuation of
Darwinian evolution (assuming there is no genetic intervention) to
ultimately lead to the destruction of our species. I know nobody has a
direct crystal ball to the future but I'm requesting a projection based
on our evolutionary history up to the present and projecting into the
future. Based on what Wilkins has recently stated regarding NS it would
certainly seem that is a possibility. But I'm hopefully looking for more
than just a possibility. I guess I'm asking for your personal opinion as
opposed to your scientific expertise. The may not be warranted in this
group but I'd sure be curious.

I'm also curious where you all fall on the biological determinism
debate. My "guess" is most of you are neither hardliners or the opposite
where there is no aspect of our biology which isn't somewhat
biologically determined. The question is how determined and under what
circumstances it can internationally violently flare up.

I think I might hear the echoes of the Grand Canyon.
  
Michael Ragland

Evolutionary pseudo-psychology

Is competition, leadership, aggression, possessiveness, and social and
sexual inequality inevitable? Are they part of our
biologically-determined human nature?

Socialists have seen it all before. First it was the Social Darwinists,
then it was the Nazis, then in the 1960s books appeared with such titles
as The Territorial Imperative, On Aggression and The Naked Ape, then
there was sociobiology, now there's "evolutionary psychology". All put
over the same basic message: competition, leadership, aggression,
possessiveness, social and sexual inequality are inevitable; you can
never have a society without them as they're part of
biologically-determined human nature.

In reply, socialists have pointed out that the people concerned were not
writing as competent scientists but as ideologists serving privileged
interests and/or pandering to popular prejudice. In fact the real
scientific evidence proved the opposite: humans were of course the
product of biological evolution but their particular evolutionary
inheritance in the form of a complex brain allowed them to learn and
live out a great variety of different behaviour patterns; one key
feature of human biological nature was precisely this capacity for
flexible behaviour, the capacity to adapt human behaviour to cope with
the challenges presented by the natural and the social environments
which humans had to live in.

Humans can be competitive, aggressive, possessive, etc but we can also
be—and are—co-operative, friendly and sharing. Groups of humans have
lived in conditions of social equality in the past and so could do so
again.
The basic position of the so-called evolutionary psychologists is put by
one of their gurus, Steven Pinker, in his book, How The Mind Works:

"For ninety-nine percent of human existence, people lived as foragers in
small nomadic herds. Our brains are adapted to that long-vanished way of
life, not to brand-new agricultural and industrial civilisations. They
are not wired to cope with anonymous crowds, schooling, written
language, government, police, courts, armies, modern medicine, formal
social institutions, high technology, and other newcomers to the human
experience"

If this figure of 99 percent is meant to be taken literally, and
assuming that human societies practising agriculture first came into
being 10,000 years ago, the "people" Pinker is talking about would be
those living about 1 million years ago. These were certainly members of
the genus homo, but of the long-extinct species homo erectus rather than
our own species homo sapiens. In fact modern humans are generally
regarded as not having evolved until some 100,000 or perhaps 150,000
years ago.
 
Human embryo: inherently greedy?

The argument is not that the human brain is not a biological adaptation
that better fitted humans for surviving, but whether this adaptation was
just best for living as foragers on the African savannah or whether it
was a more general capacity to adjust to whatever environment humans
found themselves living in.

The fact that even homo erectus left Africa to settle and survive in
different environments suggests the latter. This is strengthened by the
fact that the evolutionary psychologists have failed to come up with any
credible theory as to how complicated behaviour patterns such as they
speak of could be governed by genes. For that's what their argument
amounts to—that the behaviour pattern appropriate to a foraging life
on the African savannah somehow got imprinted on the brains of the
species that immediately preceded us and which we modern humans have
inherited through our (and their) genes. In fact, it amounts to a
revival, with regard to mental characteristics, of the long-discredited
theory that acquired characteristics can be inherited.

As a number of contributors to Alas, Poor Darwin. Arguments Against
Evolutionary Psychology (ed. Hilary and Steven Rose, Jonathan Cape)
show, this is not how the brain works. It has long been known that the
18th century materialist view such as that of Robert Owen of the mind as
a blank *** on which the environment can imprint anything is wrong;
the brain plays a much more active role in the learning process. We also
know, thanks to recent advances in genetics and neuroscience, that some
capacities (such as the ability to distinguish faces or to tell distance
and perspective) correspond to certain parts of the brain. It is this
that the evolutionary psychologists—and others who believe that
complex behaviour patterns are innate and that there is, for instance, a
gene for aggression or for homosexuality—latch on to, but what they
ignore is that the brain is not fully "wired up" (to use one of their
favourite metaphors) at birth but that this "wiring up" is a process
that takes place as we grow up and learn and in fact continues
throughout our lives. We are not born with pre-programmed patterns of
behaviour.

We learn how to behave after we are born (indeed, this starts while we
are still in the womb) and in so doing "programme" or "wire up", or
whatever metaphor you want to use, our brains. We are animals that are
capable of adopting a great variety of behaviour patterns.

The nature of our brain allows us, as participants in a particular
system of society, to "programme" ourselves, in ways that neuroscience
is beginning to understand in more detail, for living in that society.

This means that it is just as natural for us humans to live in a society
with written language, formal social institutions and high technology as
on the African savannah. If Pinker and his followers really believe that
they are better adapted genetically to living on the African savannah
than in contemporary capitalism or future socialist society then there
is an easy way to test this: dump them naked in East Africa and see
whether or not the "basic instincts" they suppose themselves to have
allow them to survive better there than in Boston or Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, Alas, Poor Darwin cannot be recommended as a fully
effective presentation of the case against evolutionary psychology. Some
of the contributors do set out cogently enough the points made in the
previous paragraphs but, unfortunately, some of the other "arguments
against evolutionary psychology" are trivial or wrong. For instance, the
first contributor merely criticises the form in which evolutionary
psychologists present their arguments while the second (a raving
postmodernist) criticises not just biological determinism but all
determinisms including therefore social determinisms such as the
materialist conception of history. Even Steven Rose himself questions
the reasonable assumption—in fact the only reasonable assumption of
evolutionary psychology—that humans won't have changed genetically
since we modern humans first evolved some 100,000 years ago. And a
contribution from a physical anthropologist is a glaring omission..
Someone like Richard Leakey could have delivered a knock-out blow
against the evolutionary psychologists in the first round.

ADAM BUICK

A professor asked a student, "If you had a choice between the oppressed
and the oppressor which would you choose." The student replied,
"Neither". The Professor shook his head and stated, "You don't have a
choice." The student paused and said, "The oppressed".

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