[asa] Celebrating Darwin's Errors

An article is due for publication in Jan. 2009 in the American Biology Teacher, but it is already available on-line at Douglas Allchin's website: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~allch001/papers/darwin-errors.pdf
 
In it Allchin suggests: "we may wish to commemorate Charles Darwin's bicentennial by celebrating his errors."
 
Aside from the delicious irony that this journal is the same one wherein Theodosius Dobzhansky published his now infamous paper "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" and that the section in this biology journal where Allchin's paper will be published is titled "Sacred Bovines," this celebration of Darwin's errors is a welcome gift for the Darwinian iconoclast on the eve of the bicentennial.
  
I'd like to just mention two errors mentioned in the paper, which may not be that interesting for people on this list, yet as a human-social scientist, they are indeed significant. First, "ranking races biologically." This move established Darwin's linkage with civilizational racism, hierarchical-cultural discrimination based on his assumption of moral evolution. The skinheads who are condescending upon (and sometimes attacking) the foreigners of Asian and African descent in the city where I now live are applying such an ideology in their present day views. Those who attempt to strongly separate Darwin from social Darwinism are likely to be surprised by Allchin's open recognition of the links.
 
Second, "Darwin overstated the role of competition." In today's discussion of evolutionary biology, from the small part I read of it, there doesn't seem to be much discussion of 'struggle for life' or 'competition-ism,' yet this was clearly part of Darwin's ideology. The line is especially effective: "economic ideology reflected in Darwin's theory," though it may disagree with for those who would defend Darwin's views as biology-only or even as natural science-only.
 
There are great consequences of competition-ism (my term, not Allchin's) applied to human-social life, wherein a conflict mentality can grow to replace a cooperative one. I could say more, for example in highlighting the theory of 'mutual aid' (Kessler-Kropotkin) and note how the sociobiologists and ethologists have highjacked the concept of 'altruism' to give it an unnatural naturalistic bent. But Allchin's article stands on its own for its contribution in an American biology journal.
 
Let me just add a small Grrr... for one thing that Allchin wrote, which you all here know is a linguistic fetish of mine to comment on. Allchin writes: "Darwin's many mistakes also offer valuable lessons about the nature of science." Of what sense does it contribute to add the words 'the nature of' in front of science? Anything? Without 'the nature of' the sentence would make just as much sense and in any case several other words could be substituted that would offer the same meaning. 'The character of' science is plainly an adequate substitute. Thus, 'the nature of' is linguistically unnecessary and only contributes to the myth of naturalistic ideology where in fact it can be destructive of human self-understanding.
 
In any case, let this linguistic squabble not detract from the article, which I hope may draw some interest from the ASA list, across a range of academic disciplines.
 
Cheers,
Gregory __________________________________________________________________ Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com

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Received on Mon Nov 17 18:57:26 2008