Yet more on Darwin

Continuing my posts here, here, and here, on The Origin of Species, I have been thinking about how Darwin is misunderstood. Social Darwinism -- alive and well -- is the theory that social and economic mechanisms follow Darwinian processes and that, to improve the race, one must leave unconstrained those seeking to control wealth. This theory misunderstands Darwin in many ways, including: (a) a culturally self centered idea of "improve the race", (b) a confusion of being highest on the food chain, with most successful, and (c) ignorance of the fact that, in many species collaboration rather than indivual-to-individual competion that gives one group the edge. But, one thing I learned from my current listen is that explaining social and economic behavior in Darwinian terms is circular reasoning. Darwin's theory is, more than anything, an attempt to explain certain difficult aspects of the Natural world by analogy to the human social and economic world. Social Darwinism is circular reasoning that somehow manages to distort and pervert the cocial world as it comes back around.

On the other side of the coin, eco-activists defend Darwin with zeal, but don't appear to understand his theory, either. The necessity and importance of protecting endangered species may be real for social and moral reasons, but it cannot find a home in Darwinism. Darwin recognized that extinction and supplantation of one species in a region by another were quite natural events and important for the development of new species.

- J