On 11 February 2009 Stephen Black wrote with reference to the special "Nature" supplement on Darwin: >Of particular interest are the freebies: >http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457792a.html >A review of that new book on Darwin and slavery by Desmond and Moore >that we previously discussed on TIPS >together with >http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457763a.html >a stirring editorial on it
I have not done more than skim through *Darwin's Sacred Cause*, so the following comments are not comprehensive. Of the 375 pages of text, the last 177 relate to the period after Darwin had written his first detailed draft of "Origins" in 1844, the great bulk of it relating to the anti-slavery movement in the United States. The previous 198 pages are filled with a great deal of interesting material about the views of Darwin on slavery, and the occasional reference to such in his various writings, but overwhelmingly are about the views and activities of his extended family, colleagues and acquaintances, and a host of other people. Some more general comments: In regard to both his scientific achievements and his personal life, Darwin was an exceptional person, and my admiration of the former in particular has increased steadily over the decades as I have learned more about his work. But it doesn't follow that, as so many of Darwin's admirers seem to be doing, one has to jump onto the Desmond and Moore bandwagon and believe that at the root of his scientific endeavours was a great moral cause. The fundamental elements of his theories firmly stand on his *scientific* premises, and neither these, nor his consuming interest in natural history, need a moral underpinning. (Except for people like Desmond and Moore, for whom a socio-political explanation for the source of basic ideas in science is a fundamental presupposition. In their 1991 biography of Darwin they take as given that "We can trace the political roots of his key ideas" [p.xx]. As the good book almost says, in such endeavours among a wealth of material, "Seek, and with sufficient determination to demonstrate a presupposition, plus tendentious selection, ye shall find." And so it is with Desmond and Moore.) Most reviewers of *Darwin's Sacred Cause* are strong Darwinians and are happy to go along with the idea that there was a strong humanitarian impulse at the root of his theory and of his desire to demonstrate it in meticulous detail. Dare I suggest that Stephen encapsulates this sentiment when he describes the brief Nature editorial promoting Desmond and Moore's thesis as "stirring". The subheading to W. F. Bynum's review of the book in Nature has Darwin's theory as "A vision of humanity united", making Darwin's life work sound rather like a moral crusade as much as a scientific endeavour. While undoubtedly Darwin had a strong revulsion towards slavery, strengthened by his glimpses of its cruelties in South America, I was unable to find among his letters in Darwin Online a single mention of slavery from the time he left the Beagle to his writing the first full sketch for "Origins" in 1844, the period during which he was supposed to have been inspired by his views on slavery to arrive at his theory of descent and found in them the driving force for his life work. The Nature editorial claims (or should I say proclaims?): "When Darwin sketched life's common descent as a family tree, it was because he believed in a family tree for humans - a belief in common kinship that was not a disinterested scientific finding, but rather an expression of moral and political persuasion. Darwin's thought always extended beyond the natural world. His ideas always had, and were meant of have, a social dimension." I find it fascinating (and rather appalling for a prestigious scientific journal) how what can only be a theory is already here presented as a statement of fact by the editors of Nature. Darwin as a moral (and political!) proselytizer, from which his science stemmed. As all too many reviewers seem to have succumbed to the thesis (another feather in Darwin's cap? Good-oh!), here are some more critical comments. First from me! Some revealing quotes from an interview with D&M posted online by Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLD55838020090123 James Moore: "This is not a reductionist argument. We are making the case that it was necessary for Darwin to believe in 'brotherhood science' in order to see common descent. We can't figure out where else he got it from." Well, leaving aside other possibilities from his observations of nature, how about from his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin: "...would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great first cause endued with animality...?" (Zoonomia, 1795, section 39, "Generation"). (On p. 40 in *Darwin's Sacred Cause* the authors note that in 1826 Darwin "reread and 'greatly admired' the Zoomania.".) Adrian Desmond: "Darwin came home from the Beagle voyage and in months he plumped for the common descent view of evolution," said Desmond (i.e., this must have been a consequence of his pondering the unity of the human race because of what he recognised from observing the primitive lives of the Fuegans, and slavery in Brazil)." Well, maybe he "plumped for common descent" in nature as a result of some or other of the myriad of things he wrote about in his four Beagle notebooks. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLD55838020090123 A similar sceptical view to mine is taken by the first person to add a comment on an article by Desmond in the current issue of "Prospect": http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10581 "Jon" writes: >Mr. Darwin's book was "proudly" reasoned, I learn from the authors of Sacred Cause. He had good reason to be proud of his reasoning. His theory was carefully constructed, [and] supported by evidence and an objective (relatively so) view of the natural world... Moral beliefs do not inhibit good scientific theorizing, but they don't "drive" the theories either. At best, they are one of many influences that contribute to forming a mind capable of generating a thought. The authors take a strong view of moral causes in Darwin's case. What could be less likely than that views of abolition "drove" Darwin to see the world in terms of natural selection? Isn't this placing the lowest agent in Darwin's thinking at the top of the list? One reads these attempts to find moral drivers in the backseats of great thinkers with a sense of wonder. Why? Is this some kind of attempt to humble reason (from failing to distinguish it from calculation, perhaps?)? Or, maybe, the idea of morals generating great thoughts provides a kind of consolation. Who knows? All I know is that it is poor reasoning. Here is the line from "Sacred Cause" that speaks volumes: 'But many naval naturalists had seen as much as Darwin had and not cried "Evolution!"' What strangely vehement diction. That's right - there's no such thing as a superior ability to synthesize knowledge. It must have been the morals... >Here's another choice bit: "The answer is clear. Primed by his anti-slavery heritage and horrifying experience of Brazilian slavery, Darwin returned to England in 1836 and immediately conceived an image of common descent." Yes - and perhaps an angel visited him while he was jarring beetles...< Now Richard J. Richards (Morris Fishbein Professor of Science and Medicine, Professor of History, Philosophy and Psychology, University of Chicago), reviewing the fifty page Introduction to the 2004 Penguin edition of *The Descent of Man* in which Desmond and Moore first proposed their thesis: >This account of Darwin's motivation for his theory of human evolution does suffer the inconvenience of being unsupported by any evidence...< [...] >But driven by their own ideological concerns, the authors read Darwin's account as 'legitimizing the virtues by which upper-class Victorians placed themselves at the apex of civilization' (p. xxxix). They portray Darwin as simply adjusting his selection theory to the 'racial measuring rod [of] the Benthamite "greatest happiness of the greatest number" ideal of his Whig party' (p. xxxix). They fail to mention that Darwin explicitly rejected Benthamite utility as the moral motive; he construed the social instincts in animals and man 'as having been developed for the general good rather than for the general happiness of the species' (p. 145). Moreover, the solution to the problem of altruism directly derived not from a desire to enshrine Whig virtues but from Darwin's earlier solution to the like problem of the evolution of the instincts of the lowly social insects - worker ants and bees who could not reproduce their kind because they were neuters. Community selection of insect hives furnished a model for community selection of human tribes (pp. 83, 157-8). When humans acted morally they thus harboured no secret motives for selfish advantage or even for general happiness but expressed innate desires for social cooperation and community good (in terms of health and welfare) - at least that was Darwin's stated message (pp. 144-5).< http://home.uchicago.edu/~rjr6/articles/British%20Journal--Darwin.pdf Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
