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Social implications of Darwinism
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Darwin's cousin,
Francis Galton
, proposed that an
interpretation of Darwin's theory was the need for
eugenics
to save society from "inferior" minds.
Since the publication of Origin, a wide
variety of opinions had been put forward
on whether the theory had implications
towards human society. One of these,
later known as Social Darwinism, has
been attributed to Herbert Spencer's
writings before publication of Origin, and
argued that society would naturally sort
itself out, and that the more "fit"
individuals would rise to positions of
higher prominence, while the less "fit"
would succumb to poverty and disease.
On this interpretation, Spencer alleged
that government-run social programmes
and charity hinder the "natural"
g
y
stratification of the populace. But while
Spencer did first introduce the phrase
"survival of the fittest" in 1864, he always
vigorously denied this interpretation of
his works, arguing that the natural course
of social evolution is toward greater
altruism, and that the good done by
charity and giving aid to the less
fortunate, so long as done without
coercion and in such a way as to foster
independence rather than dependence,
outweighs any harm done by saving the
less fit. In any case, Spencer was
primarily a Lamarckian evolutionist;
hence, fitness could be acquired in a
single generation and thus in no way did
"survival of the fittest" as a tenet of
Darwinian evolution predate it.
Another of these interpretations, later
known as eugenics, was put forth by
Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, in 1865
and 1869. Galton argued that just as
physical traits were clearly inherited
among generations of people, so could
be said for mental qualities (genius and
talent). Galton argued that social mores
needed to change so that heredity was a
conscious decision, to avoid over-
breeding by "less fit" members of society
and the under-breeding of the "more fit"
ones. In Galton's view, social institutions
such as welfare and insane asylums
were allowing "inferior" humans to survive
and reproduce at levels faster than the
more "superior" humans in respectable
society, and if corrections were not soon
taken, society would be awash with
"inferiors." Darwin read his cousin's work
with interest, and devoted sections of
Descent of Man to discussion of Galton's
theories. Neither Galton nor Darwin,
though, advocated any eugenic policies
such as those undertaken in the early
20th century, as government coercion of
any form was very much against their
political opinions.
Sexual selection
Darwin's views on sexual selection were
opposed strongly by his co-discoverer of
natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace,
though much of his "debate" with Darwin
took place after Darwin's death. Wallace
argued against sexual selection, saying
that the male-male competition aspects
were simply forms of natural selection,
and that the notion of female mate
choice was attributing the ability to judge
standards of beauty to animals far too
cognitively undeveloped to be capable of
aesthetic feeling (such as beetles).
[42]
Wallace also argued that Darwin too
much favoured the bright colours of the
male peacock as adaptive without
realising that the "drab" peahen's
coloration is itself adaptive, as
camouflage. Wallace more speculatively
argued that the bright colours and long
tails of the peacock were not adaptive in
any way, and that bright coloration could
result from non-adaptive physiological
development (for example, the internal
organs of animals, not being subject to a
visual form of natural selection, come in
a wide variety of bright colours). This has
been questioned by later scholars as
quite a stretch for Wallace, who in this
particular instance abandoned his
normally strict "adaptationist" agenda in
asserting that the highly intricate and
developed forms such as a peacock's tail
resulted by sheer "physiological
processes" that were somehow not at all
subjected to adaptation.
Apart from Wallace, a number of
scholars considered the role of sexual
selection in human evolution
controversial. Darwin was accused of
looking at the evolution of early human
ancestors through the moral lens of the
19th century Victorian society. Joan
Roughgarden, citing many elements of
sexual behaviour in animals and humans
that cannot be explained by the sexual
selection model, suggested that the
function of sex in human evolution was
primarily social.
[46]
Joseph Jordania
suggested that in explaining such human
morphological and behavioural
characteristics as singing, dancing, body
painting, wearing of clothes, Darwin (and
proponents of sexual selection)
neglected another important evolutionary
force, intimidation of predators and
competitors with the ritualised forms of
warning display. Warning display uses
virtually the same arsenal of visual,
audio, olfactory and behavioural features
as sexual selection. According to the
principle of aposematism (warning
display), to avoid costly physical violence
and to replace violence with the ritualised
forms of display, many animal species
(including humans) use different forms
of warning display: visual signals
(contrastive body colours, eyespots,
body ornaments, threat display and
various postures to look bigger), audio
signals (hissing, growling, group
vocalisations, drumming on external
objects), olfactory signals (producing
strong body odors, particularly when
excited or scared), behavioural signals
(demonstratively slow walking,
aggregation in large groups, aggressive
display behaviour against predators and
conspecific competitors). According to
Jordania, most of these warning displays
were incorrectly attributed to the forces
of sexual selection.
[47]
While debates on the subject continued,
in January 1871 Darwin started on
another book, using leftover material on
emotional expressions, which became
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