In my work, I have been very
critical, and will always be critical, of the way Charles Darwin introduced
racism into evolutionary theory. The evolutionists who preceded him, such as
his own grandfather, did not do that. They were holists and saw the evolution
of the whole in which each part, small and great, weak and strong, played a
vital role. From the point of view of the whole, there really is no such thing
as being small or great. All the parts are equal in the service they give.
Charles Darwin, on the other hand, replaced this approach with a belief in
hierarchy in which each species is ranked.
But enough about that, for the
time being. Darwin did sometimes get things right. It is interesting how Darwin
admirers and followers do not listen to some of them. Earlier this year, Edward
O. Wilson published The Origins of
Creativity. I usually quote directly from the source, but this time I am
going to the New York Times Book Review (Jan. 14, 2018) for a quote from his
book: “It is becoming increasingly clear that natural selection has programmed
every bit of human biology—every toe, hair and nipple, every molecular configuration
in every cell, every neuron circuit in the brain, and within all that, every
trait that makes us human.” So says Wilson.
But Darwin warned against such
thinking, which he admitted he had been guilty of. In The Descent of Man, he said he had been led to “my tacit assumption
that every detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special,
though unrecognised, service.” And so he had “extend[ed] too far the action of
natural selection.” In other words, it is possible to overdo explanation for
“every toe, hair, and nipple,” to use Wilson’s example.
What is more interesting still is
Darwin’s insight into why he had made this mistake. He had retained a belief in
special creation: “I was not, however, able to annul the influence of my former
belief, then almost universal, that each species had been purposely created.” Believing
in the purpose of each “toe, hair, and nipple” was just another version of
believing in the special creation of each species.
This means that many Darwinists
today, including Wilson, are believers in an intelligent designer. I am sure
they would furiously object. But whether you call your intelligent designer God
or natural selection, it comes to the same thing. Darwin’s point was that to be
supremely careful (and Darwin often failed in this), we must remember that
natural selection does not design anything. It eliminates mutations that are
injurious to an organism, but it does not create beneficial mutations, except
by accident, and it certainly does not create the optimum design that would
serve an organism well. Almost any natural organism could have been designed
much better for its environment. No organism follows the best design possible,
which is why new organisms, introduced from another environment, often decimate
native populations; they just happen to be an even better fit in that
environment.
That is not the only issue on
which Darwinists have failed to follow Darwin. There is another story to tell
about how far apart Darwinists and Darwin are in belief in randomness. Darwin
disparaged chance, often calling it “so-called chance.” He believed in
determinism all the way, “fixed and immutable laws” as he once put it. But that
is a story for another time.
© 2018 Leon Zitzer
