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Darwinian evolution
DARWINIAN
EVOLUTION
1
Social Policy and Social Theory Series
David Marsland, Series Editor
Transforming Men, Geoff Dench
The Australian Nation, Geoffrey Partington
Darwinian Evolution, Antony Flew
DARWINIAN
EVOLUTION
SECOND EDITION
Antony Flew
With a new introduction by the author
TRANSACTION PUBLISHERS
New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)
New material this edition copyright © 1997 by Transaction
Publishers, New Brunswick, Newjersey 08903. Originally
published in 1984 by Paladin Books, Granada Publishing
Ltd.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-Ameri-
can Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,
or any information storage and retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquir-
ies should be addressed to Transaction Publishers,
Rutgers—The State University, New Brunswick, Newjersey
08903.
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 97-3659
ISBN: 1-56000-948-9
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flew, Antony, 1923-
Darwinian evolution / Antony Flew ; with a new in-
troduction by the author. — 2nd ed.
p. cm. — (Social policy and social theory series)
Originally published: London : Paladin, 1984. With
new introd.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56000-948-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Evolution (Biology) I. Title. II. Series.
QH366.2.F565 1997
576.8'2—dc21 97-3659
CIP
Allen County Public Library
900 Webster Street
P0 Box 2270
Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE
TRANSACTION EDITION vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxiii
I FROM DARWIN’S ORIGIN TO TODAY’S
SYNTHETIC THEORY 1
1. Charles Darwin (1809-82) 2
2. The Argument of The Origin of Species 10
3. Blending Variation and/or Saltatory
Mutation? 20
4. Difficulties, Objections and Some Answers 23
II THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS 32
1. The Logical Structure and Functions of
Darwin’s Theory 33
2. The Challenge to Religious Assumptions 51
III SOCIAL SCIENCE, EVOLUTIONARY
BIOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY 73
1. Malthus: Powers, Checks and Choice 74
2. Making Visible the Invisible Hands 83
3. An Atheist Providence Guaranteeing
Utopia? 92
4. The Challenge of Sociobiology 113
IV PROGRESS, SOCIAL DARWINISM AND
AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE 120
1. A Guarantee of Progress? 121
2. From Is to Ought 124
3. Seeing in an Evolutionary Perspective 129
BIBLIOGRAPHY 133
INDEX 145
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INTRODUCTION TO THE
TRANSACTION EDITION
Darwinian Evolution was originally published in 1984 in a
series concerned with “Movements and Ideas.” Its scope
and limitations are indicated by that title and that inclu-
sion. The key word is “evolution” and the starting point is
Darwin. So chapter 1 begins with an account of Darwin’s
own life and work, followed by a summary of his theory
as it was first publicly presented in The Origin of Species.
From a consideration of the difficulties and objections
raised then and in the following years it proceeds to ex-
plain how these difficulties have been overcome by the
progress of research and the consequent development of
the Neo-Darwinian Synthetic Theory.
The second chapter follows that prefatory first by closely
examining the deductive core of Darwin’s theory, and by
discussing generally its actual and alleged philosophical
presuppositions and philosophical implications. Chapter
3 deals with three major movements and ideas topics: the
relations and lack of relations between the ideas of Dar-
win and those of such predecessors as David Hume, Adam
Smith, Adam Ferguson, and Thomas Malthus; the con-
tention that Marx achieved in sociology what Darwin
achieved in biology; and the prospects of the projected
science of sociobiology. Finally, chapter 4 examines the
suggestions that Darwin’s theory provides a guarantee of
progress and a foundation for an evolutionary ethics.
Although both these suggestions have to be dismissed,
this chapter argues that we both can and should see many
of the great issues of our time in the perspective pro-
vided by that theory. Indeed it is imperative for anyone
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Darwinian Evolution
wishing to form a comprehensive and rational world
outlook to take account of and to come to terms with it.
The purpose of Darwinian Evolution is to help readers to
do this.
Since it was written more than a dozen years ago some
updating is required. The main need is to draw attention
to two different tendencies among both professing social
scientists and those who aspire to form and/or promote
social policies under the guidance of what are taken to be
findings of social science. One is to assume that there is
no such thing as human nature, drastically limiting the
possibilities of improving human societies by implement-
ing suitably enlightened social policies. The other is to take
no account of the possibility that the sets of individuals
which such people distinguish may differ relevantly, at least
on average, in ways which are at least in part genetically
determined.1 (By Cantor’s Axiom for Sets, the sole essen-
tial feature of a set is that its members have at least one
common characteristic, any kind of characteristic.)
Readers of Darwinian Evolution should see realizations
of these tendencies as cases of refusal to accept a most
important implication of Darwin’s theory. That most im-
portant implication is that our own in several ways unique
species evolved from what we may, not altogether with-
out reason, rate as inferior forms of life. This was the
particular implication which—as can be seen from pp. 55-
56 below—Christian believers, when The Origin of Species
was first published, found most difficult to accept. There
is, therefore, much mischievous satisfaction to be obtained
from contemplating failures or refusals to accept and be
guided by that implication on the part of certain secular
contemporaries of ours who feel themselves entitled to
despise those who reject the theory of evolution for no
other or better reason than that it is inconsistent with the
account of the creation of our first ancestors given in
chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis.
The original inspiration of the two tendencies just de-
scribed is found in the writings of the French encyclope-
dist Claud-Adrien Helvetius. In 1758, in his De Tespirit
vm
Introduction to the Transaction Edition
{Concerning Mind), he maintained that: “All men are born
equal in mental capacity; the manifold differences that
seem so conspicuous result from nothing but the inequali-
ties in men’s social condition and opportunities.” Hav-
ing been issued nearly two centuries before the discovery
of genes this proclamation was, though altogether unwar-
ranted, scarcely scandalous.
Fifteen years later, in his De Lhomme {ConcerningMan),
the watchword of Helvetius became “l’education peut
tout” (education can do everything). So he was, in one of
today’s two senses of that word, an environmentalist. He
believed, that is to say, that differences between either
human individuals or sets of human individuals are to be
explained exclusively by reference to their different envi-
ronments. In our century the boldest, most boastful state-
ment of this doctrine of educational omnipotence was
made byj. B. Watson, the behaviorist psychologist: “Give
me a dozen healthy infants, and my own world to bring
them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random
and train him to become any type of specialist you like to
select—doctor, lawyer, merchant, soldier, sailor, beggar-
man or thief.”2 Written by one of Watson’s followers rather
later in the nineteen twenties, but still appearing in the
1930-35 edition of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,
the article “Behaviorism” asserts without qualification that
“at birth human infants, regardless of their heredity, are
as equal as Fords.”3
It was in hopes of her establishing just how completely the
behaviour of adolescents is shaped by the cultures in which
they have been socialized that in 1925 Franz Boas—a pro-
tagonist for nurture in the great nature/nurture contro-
versy-dispatched his doctoral student Margaret Mead to
the South Seas. Her mission resulted in the publication
three years later of the all-time anthropological best-seller
Coming of Age in Samoa, significantly subtitled “a psycho-
logical study of primitive youth for western civilization.”
This book has had an enormous influence. It appeared
not only decisively to confirm the environmentalist preju-
IX
Darwinian Evolution
dices of the anthropological profession but also to give
the authority of authentic scientific discovery to proposi-
tions which much of the general public both in the United
States and in the many other countries in which the book
was extensively circulated and read was eager to believe.
But Mead’s findings are now totally discredited. Many of
the most exciting are, and—if only she and her fellow an-
thropologists could have brought themselves to consult
any of the abundantly available but anthropologically lay
sources—would from the beginning have been known to
be, the diametric opposite of the truth.
As it was the discrediting was delayed for 55 years, un-
til Derek Freeman published his Margaret Mead and Sa-
moa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). This
publication outraged almost all members of the Ameri-
can Anthropological Association, and the author was sub-
jected to torrents of bigoted and mendacious abuse.
At the time that he wrote this book he and all the
Samoans whom he had consulted were strongly inclined
to believe that the then twenty-four-year-old Margaret
Mead had been the eagerly credulous victim of exercises
in “recreational lying.” This is, apparently, something
which goes on all the time in Samoa. Samoans of all
ages engage in it, both with other Samoans and with
outsiders. They tell tall stories, especially about sex, and
try to get their hearers to believe these stories.
In 1987 what previously had been no more than a very
well grounded suspicion was at last decisively proved. For
during that year Fa’apu’a Fa’amu, who is listed in Coming
of Age in Samoa as one of Mead’s principal informants,
came forward to confess that in March 1926 she and her
friend Fofoa had indeed told Mead, when she questioned
them, totally false stories about their own sexual behav-
ior and that of their Samoan contemporaries. When at
very long last Fa’apu’a Fa’amu learned of the vastly ex-
tended unintended consequences of her innocently in-
tended adolescent actions, she was appalled. As always a
devoutly believing and practicing Christian, she at once
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