Michael Ruse

Evolutionary ethics, the idea that the evolutionary process contains the basis for a full and adequate understanding of human moral nature, is an old and disreputable notion. It was popularized in the 19th century by the English general man of science, Herbert Spencer, who began advocating an evolutionary approach to ethical understanding, even before Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Speciesin 1859 (Spencer 1857, 1892). Although it was never regarded with much enthusiasm by professional philosophers, thanks to Spencer’s advocacy the evolutionary approach to ethics soon gained wide popularity, both in Britain and towards the end of the century, even more in the United States of America (Ruse 1986; Russett 1976). It became transformed into a whole sociopolitical doctrine, known somewhat inaccurately as ‘Social Darwinism.’ (Scholars have long debated as to whether Darwin himself was truly a Social Darwinian, and the answer seems to depend on which of his works you read. If you look at theOrigin of Species, he certainly is not. On the other hand, if you look at theDescent of Man, there are good reasons for thinking that he was not unsympathetic to the idea.

This Element is a philosophical history of Social Darwinism. It begins by discussing the meaning of the term, moving then to its origins, paying particular attention to whether it is Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer who is the true father of the idea. It gives an exposition of early thinking on the subject, covering Darwin and Spencer themselves and then on to Social Darwinism as found in American thought, with special emphasis on Andrew Carnegie, and Germany with special emphasis on Friedrich von Bernhardi. Attention is also paid to outliers, notably the Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace, the Russian Peter Kropotkin, and the German Friedrich Nietzsche. From here we move into the twentieth century looking at Adolf Hitler - hardly a regular Social Darwinian given he did not believe in evolution - and in the Anglophone world, Julian Huxley and Edward O. Wilson, who reflected the concerns of their society.

In successive issues of this journal Ronald Munson [2] and I [4] have made, quite independently, conflicting claims about the relationship between biological adaptation and biological function. I state, admittedly without proof, that “a functional statement in biology draws attention to the fact that what is under consideration is an adaptation or something which confers an ‘adaptive advantage’ on its possessor”. This was an identity claim. Munson claims, with proof, that “adaptation and function are not identical”. In this discussion note I want to examine the three arguments Munson gives in support of his claim, and I shall try to show that they do not hold.

he history of evolutionary theory is a little bit of a puzzle. Charles Darwin, the author of the Origin of Species in 1859, was the man who made evolutionary ideas reasonable—ideas that were generally accepted—and it was Darwin who provided the major mechanism of natural selection. He was not the first evolutionist, however. For at least one hundred and fifty years, starting with people like the French encyclopediast Denis Diderot, people had been speculating that organisms had a natural origin, from primitive forms. But why did these speculations have to wait this long? It is true that Christianity, incorporating as it did the creation stories of Genesis—what the nineteenth-century English essayist Thomas Carlyle called "Jewish old clothes"—was not going to be friendly towards evolution. But what about the Greeks? Did not they get into such ideas?As a matter of fact we all know that they did, a bit. Empedocles had some fanciful ideas about pieces coming together to make functioning organisms, but these were ideas for which he was roundly scolded by Aristotle. Why? Ernst Mayr, the distinguished, twentieth-century evolutionist, used to argue that Plato was the culprit. Supposedly, the theory of forms precluded any sort of developmentalism. Jellyfish are jellyfish and cows are cows and humans are humans, and that is an end to it. But many have long suspected that Mayr is probably not

This is a book about laws. Not, however, about the laws of which we learned in science classes at school: “scientific laws”. It is rather about those universalities which govern the world of facts, what Swartz calls “physical laws”—although this language is slightly misleading because the term is intended to cover the living as well as the non-living world. Of course, it may well be that a scientific law does capture the essence of a physical law, but not necessarily or usually. A physical law by definition can never be false, whereas almost paradoxically nearly all scientific laws are false.

Philosophical analyses of science tend to ignore illustrations, implicitly regarding them as theoretically dispensible. If challenged, it is suggested that such neglect is justifiable, because the use of illustrations only leads to faulty reasoning, and thus is the mark of bad or inadequate science. I take as an example one of the most famous illustrations in the history of evolutionary biology, and argue that the philosophers' scorn is without foundation. I take my conclusions to be support for a naturalistic approach to philosophy.

In this paper I consider the problem of man's evolution - in particular the evolutionary problems raised when we consider man as a cultural animal as well as a biological one. I argue that any adequate cultural evolutionary theory must have the notion of ‘adaptation’ as a central concept, where this must be construed in a fairly literal (biological) sense, that is as something which aids its possessors (i.e. men) to survive and reproduce. I argue against theories which treat adaptation in a metaphorical sense, particularly those speaking of the ‘adaptation’ of cultures without reference to men. Iron tools per se are not better adapted than bronze tools - it is the men with iron tools who are better adapted than men with bronze tools. I show that by taking the approach that I do, one can apply at once in a fruitful manner some conclusions of biological evolutionary theory directly to men and their cultures. I conclude with a brief discussion of methodological issues raised by cultural evolutionary theories, particularly those of confirmation and falsification.

In evolutionary theory, the idea of organic evolution is linked to the social doctrine or ideology of progress. This chapter explores the relationship between evolution and the idea of social progress by first considering the definitions of evolution, social or cultural progress, and providence. It then comments on the science of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, which it argues was not perfect because Darwin encountered a lot of problems with heredity and with the fossil record. Physicists argued that the earth's lifespan is not long enough to accomodate a leisurely process such as natural selection. In general, however, the Origin of Species is a pretty good attempt at producing epistemically satisfying science. The emergence of Mendelian genetics, the building of population genetics, and the work of the empiricists fleshing out the theoretical skeleton gave rise to modern evolutionary biology.