Yet another Ruse

Book review on

Defining Darwin

by Michael Ruse (2009)

Reviewed by Martin Lockley , 2010 published in Network Review No 102

How would the shy and retiring Charles Darwin have reacted to the hoopla surrounding his 200th birthday party  (also the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species)?  The many authors, institutions and individuals producing Darwin books, exhibits and memorabilia make for a long list of uninvited guests, to say nothing of an army of educators and fans eager to wave the Darwinian flag and proclaim evolution by natural selection as the greatest of all biological paradigms, worthy, as we shall see, of sacred status. Among these devotees it would be unfair to cast Michael Ruse as a gatecrasher. Hypothetically, any professional Darwinian charged with compiling a guest list of living experts would have to include Ruse, the prolific philosophy of biology author, already with many Darwin legacy books to his credit  (e.g., Network 92 and 99). 

Defining Darwin comprises 10 published and unpublished essays woven together with a little editing to reduce repetition. In the first essay on the Origin of Species, we are reminded that Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discovered of 'natural selection' urged the use of Herbert Spencer's term 'survival of the fittest,' instead of selection, to avoid the connotation of a purposeful process. The remaining nine essays are organised in bundles of three around the themes of the Early, Middle and Later years.  In Kant on Evolution we learn that the great philosopher 'was uncomfortable with final-cause talk' implying purpose or divine intervention, because in science 'we are only allowed to talk in terms of material or mechanical causes.' He nevertheless opted for final cause thinking or teleology, because 'one simply cannot do without it in biology.'  Organisms, for example, seem designed to replicate themselves purposefully. In Darwinism and Mechanism, Ruse asks the pertinent question. 'Is science a disinterested reflection of objective reality or is it a social construction, a subjective epiphenomenon on the culture of the day?' The answers Ruse gives, however, are not that clear. Although the definition of 'nature as mechanism' has now become a 'dead metaphor' - no longer meaning 'designed by an intelligence' we are still offered Jerry Fodor's extraordinary statement that 'when you actually start to do the science, the metaphors drop out and the statistics take over.'  [Out of the frying pan into the fire I say].

Science remains as metaphor-laden as ever, and Ruse admits that Darwin went further than his predecessors in regarding nature as a machine, and that the metaphor still thrives today among Neo Darwinians. Kicking against the pricks, the essay on Wallace the rebel disappoints.  The normally even-handed Ruse paints Wallace, in comparison with darling Darwin as uneducated and unprofessional, having never held a steady job. This is unfair, considering Darwin never held a job, and contradictory because Ruse says he was a genius and  'brilliant scientist' but somehow a 'man outside science.'  Wallace worked hard earning a living as a professional collector and writing books, just as Darwin did. To characterise Wallace as a 'crank...part of the great unwashed ...half informed, ill-educated, pandering-to-any-daft-idea brigade'   is,  in my humble opinion,  a gross and prejudicial misreading of Wallace who, after all,  was sufficiently well informed to prompt Darwin into publishing the evolution by natural selection paradigm (jointly), as well as promoting the sexual selection paradigm. Wallace even set the Astronomer Royal Percival Lowell right about his 'daft idea' about canals and civilisation on Mars, as various biographies point out. 

The 'Middle Years' deal with Herbert Spencer's extensive discussions of evolutionary progress which Darwin endorsed with some equivocation. The idea became popular in Britain, America and even China and capitalists happily promoted competitive philosophies (Social Darwinism). Ruse's suggestion that 'professional science' somehow avoided the taint of Social Darwinism and Spencerian thought because of its moral and political agenda (e.g. eugenics) paints too rosy a picture of supposed scientific objectivism. Although the next essay begins with reference to G.E. Moore's critique of Spencer using the so called 'naturalistic fallacy' which demands that ethics be separate from science, Ruse reminds us that both Julian Huxley and George Gaylord Simpson unambiguously agreed the opposite - that Evolution and Ethics must be harmonised and that evolutionary progress is an 'entirely natural objective phenomenon,' a product of evolution.  Furthermore, Simpson held it 'silly' to deny that humans were the pinnacle of evolution with a natural ethical sense that recognises that dignity and integrity are capable of equal development in all. This section's final essay Evolution and the Novel is a lighter diversion, quoting Shaw's tirade against a Darwinian rabble of 'dullards  ...dolts, blackguards, imposters, quacks and liars' who offer us 'epoch-making discoveries...that dogs get weaker and die if you give them no food.'

The final section on the 'Later Years' begins with the comment that 'something as significant to human beings as religion has to have some connection with evolution.' However, the first essay on 'evo-devo' (the hot new science of the 'Evolution of Development') makes no such connections. So I will!  Evo-devo is now showing that what is called the 'formalist' approach -originating with Goethe and other German morphologists, his come back into vogue after long being 'despised' by those of a Darwinian or 'functionalist' persuasion. Much subtle and insightful literature on holistic evolutionary dynamics comes from the biologists working in the 'spiritual science' tradition of anthroposophy, not as advocates of any religion per se, but as practitioners of holistic, participatory, non-reductionist science: see review of Rohen (Network 99), and look out for the extraordinary new book Metamorphosis: evolution in action,  by Andreas Suchantke (Adonis Press 2009).

The next chapter, Darwinism Explains Religion, proves that Darwinism does not really explain religion, and Ruse points out that 'Darwinian would-be explainers of religion are far too given to isolating one bit of history, one place in time and space...[as]...the basis for a whole theory.' We can skip the arguments of Dennett, Dawkins and E. O. Wilson as all-too-familiar capitulation to the extraordinary Wilsonian position that science  'has the capacity to explain traditional religion as ...a wholly material phenomenon.'  Ironically therefore, Ruse's final chapter Evolution as religion (not Ruse's Evolution and Religion, Network  99) converges with the position of friend Mary Midgley (Evolution as a religion, Methuen 1985) and we find him describing the 'Dawkins-Dennett enthusiasm for memes ...[as]... just plain silly.' (Yet again)!  He also laments that, despite the fact that his extensive writings on evolution and creation, generally highlight his fight against 'American Fundamentalism,' far from being 'a hero of the evolutionist' he has in fact been attacked, often quite vehemently, by evangelical evolutionists!  Ruse has learned, therefore, that despite his 'high' philosophical savvy there are those who want the evolution-creation debate reduced to the 'lowest' common denominator. He even says that 'when Jesus died on the cross there was no Christianity. That was for St. Paul to create...[and]...when Darwin wrote the Origin, there was no ...Darwinism. That was for Thomas Henry Huxley to create'' and ultimately like too many others to 'hijack.' (Ruse's term).

While I don't always agree with Ruse, I admire his efforts to be sensibly philosophical. I have occasionally tried to press him on his position on Goethean Science and Anthroposophy, but so far he has been evasive for reasons I cannot pretend to know. However, I did learn that his next book will be on 'Science and Spirituality.' Is he growing more philosophical with every book?  If Darwin were to have appeared as a surprise guest at his own 200th birthday party, I hope he and Ruise would have had a good chat and that the old man would have appreciated and understood Ruse as much as Ruse obviously appreciates him.

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