The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (35 page)

BOOK: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
4.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Now, there is nothing wrong with being a leading barnacle authority. But some people are capable of greater things. Why Darwin took so long to realize his greatness has been the subject of much reflection. The most common theory is the most obvious: writing a book that affronts the religious beliefs of virtually everyone in your part of the world — including many colleagues and your wife — is a task not to be approached without circumspection.

The task had already been approached by a few people, and the result was never unalloyed praise. Darwin's grandfather Erasmus, a noted naturalist and poet, had himself advanced a theory of evolution in 1794 in the book
Zoonomia
. He had wanted the book to be published posthumously but finally changed his mind, after some twenty years, saying, "I am now too old and hardened to fear a little abuse," which is what he got.
6
Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck's grand exposition of a similar evolutionary scheme appeared in 1809, the year of Darwin's birth, and was denounced as immoral. And in 1844, a book called Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation appeared, outlining
 {231} 
a theory of evolution and making a commotion. Its author, a Scottish publisher named Robert Chambers, chose to keep his name secret, perhaps wisely. The book was called, among other things, "a foul and filthy thing, whose touch is taint, whose breath is contamination."
7

And none of these heretical theories was quite as godless as Darwin's. Chambers had a "Divine Governor" guiding evolution. Erasmus Darwin, being a deist, said that God had wound up the great clock of evolution and let it tick. And though Lamarck was denounced by Chambers as being "disrespectful of Providence,"
8
Lamarckian evolution, as compared to Darwinian, was downright spiritual; it featured an inexorable tendency toward greater organic complexity and more highly conscious life. Imagine, if these men were due a severe scolding, what was in store for Darwin, whose theory involved no Divine Governor, no clock-winder (though Darwin pointedly left open the possibility of one), and no inherent progressive tendency — nothing but the slow accretion of fortuitous change.
9

There's no doubt that Darwin was, from early on, worried about public reaction. Even before his belief in evolution had crystallized into the theory of natural selection, he weighed rhetorical tactics that might blunt criticism. In the spring of 1838, he wrote in his notebook, "Mention persecution of early Astronomers."
10
In later years, Darwin's fear of censure is evident in his correspondence. The letter in which he confessed his heresy to his friend Joseph Hooker features one of the most defensive passages he ever produced — no small achievement. "I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable," he wrote in 1844. "Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to progression' 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals' &c, — but the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his — though the means of change are wholly so — I think I have found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends. — You will now groan, & think to yourself 'on what a man have I been wasting my time in writing to.' I sh'd, five years ago, have thought so."
11
 {232} 

 

 

SICK AND TIRED

 

The theory that Darwin was slowed by a hostile social climate assumes many forms, ranging from baroque to simple, and these depict his delay in various ways, ranging from pathological to wise.

In the more elaborate versions of the theory, Darwin's illness — which was never clearly diagnosed and remains a mystery — figures as a psychosomatic procrastination device. Darwin was feeling heart palpitations in September 1837, a couple of months after opening his first evolution notebook, and his reports of illness are fairly frequent as those notebooks unfold toward the theory of natural selection.
12

It has been suggested that Emma, who held her religion dear* and was pained by her husband's evolutionism, heightened the tension between his science and his social environs; and that, by so devotedly nursing him, she made his unwellness easier than was healthy. A letter to Charles just before their marriage contains a passage to that effect: "[N]othing could make me so happy as to feel that I could be of any use or comfort to my own dear Charles when he is not well. If you knew how I long to be with you when you are not well! ... So don't be ill any more my dear Charley till I can be with you to nurse you...,"
13
These sentences may represent the high-water mark of Emma's premarital ardor.

Not all theories linking Darwin's illness to his ideas imply a subconscious plot to conceal them. Darwin may have simply had what is known today as an emotionally induced illness. Anxiety about social rejection is, after all, an ultimately physiological thing, as Darwin would have been the first to point out. It takes a physiological toll.
14

Some people accept that Darwin had a
bona fide
disease, probably contracted in South America (perhaps Chagas' disease or chronic fatigue syndrome), but say he used barnacles to subconsciously forestall the day of reckoning. Certainly, as Darwin entered his barnacle phase, insisting it would be brief, he had some misgivings about what lay beyond. He wrote to Hooker in 1846: "I am going to begin some papers on the lower marine animals, which will last me some months,
 {233} 
perhaps a year, & then I shall begin looking over my ten-year-long accumulation of notes on species & varieties which, with writing, I daresay I shall stand infinitely low in the opinion of all sound naturalists — so this is my prospect for the future."
15
That's the sort of attitude that could lead to an eight-year barnacle research project.

Some observers, including some of Darwin's contemporaries, have said the barnacles did him a great service.
16
They immersed him fully in the details of taxonomy (good experience for someone who purports to have a theory explaining how all valid taxonomies came to be) and gave him an entire subclass of animals to examine in light of natural selection.

Besides, there were things other than taxonomy that he hadn't yet mastered — which leads to the simplest of all theories about his delay. The fact is that in 1846 — and in 1856, and, really, in 1859, when the
Origin
was published — Darwin had not fully figured out natural selection. And it is only logical, before unveiling a theory that will get you defamed and hated, to try to get it into good shape.

One of the puzzles about natural selection that faced Darwin was the puzzle of extreme selflessness, of insect sterility. Not until 1857 did he solve it, with his precursor of the theory of kin selection.
17

Another of the puzzles Darwin never solved.
18
This is the problem of heredity itself. A great virtue of Darwin's theory is that it doesn't depend, as Lamarck's did, on the inheritance of acquired traits; for natural selection to work, it isn't necessary that a giraffe's stretching for higher leaves affect the neck length of its offspring. But Darwinian evolution does depend on some form of change in the range of inherited traits; natural selection needs an ever-changing menu to "choose" from. Today any good high school biology student can tell you how the menu keeps changing — through sexual recombination and genetic mutation. But neither of these mechanisms made obvious sense before people knew about genes. For Darwin to have talked about "random mutations" when asked how the pool of traits changes would have been like saying, "It just does — trust me."
19

It is possible to assess Darwin's delay from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology. This view doesn't yield a whole new theory about the delay, but it does help drain the episode of some mystery.
 {234} 

It can be best appreciated after the evolutionary roots of his ambitions and fears have become clear. For now, let us leave the story in 1854, when the last of the barnacle books was published and the time had come for Darwin to muster his full reserves of enthusiasm for the coming culmination of his life's work. He wrote to Hooker: "How awfully flat I shall feel, if, when I get my notes together on species, &c. &c, the whole thing explodes like an empty puff-ball."
20
 {235} 

 

 

Chapter 12: SOCIAL STATUS

 

 

Seeing how ancient these expressions are, it is no wonder that they are so difficult to conceal. — a man insulted may forgive his enemy & not wish to strike him, but he will find it far more difficult to look tranquil. — He may despise a man & say nothing, but without a most distinct will, he will find it hard to keep his lip from stiffening over his canine teeth. — He may feel satisfied with himself, & though dreading to say so, his step will grow erect & stiff like that of turkey.

— M Notebook (1838)
1

 

 

 

Among the things Charles Darwin found troubling about the Fuegian Indians was their apparent lack of social inequality. "At present," he wrote in 1839, "even a piece of cloth is torn into shreds and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than another." Such "perfect equality," he feared, would "for a long time retard their civilization." Darwin noted, by way of example, that "the inhabitants of Otaheite, who, when first discovered, were governed by hereditary kings, had arrived at a far higher grade than another branch of the same people, the New Zealanders — who although benefited by being compelled to turn their attention to agriculture, were republicans in the most absolute sense." The upshot: "In tierra del Fuego, until some chief shall arise with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantages, such as the domesticated animals or other valuable presents,
 {236} 
it seems scarcely possible that the political state of the country can be improved."

Then Darwin added, "On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he might manifest and still increase his authority."
2

Had Darwin mulled this afterthought a little longer, he might have begun to wonder whether the Fuegians were, in fact, a people of "perfect equality." Naturally, to an affluent Englishman, reared amid servants, a society never far from starvation will seem starkly egalitarian. There will be no opulent displays of status, no gross disparities. But social hierarchy can assume many forms, and in every human society it seems to find one.

This pattern has been slow to come to light. One reason is that lots of twentieth-century anthropologists have, like Darwin, come from highly stratified societies, and been struck, sometimes charmed, by the relative classlessness of hunter-gatherer peoples. Anthropologists have been burdened, also, by a hopeful belief in the almost infinite malleability of the human mind, a belief fostered especially by Franz Boas and his famous students, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. The Boasian bias against human nature was in some ways laudable — a well-meant reaction against crude political extensions of Darwinism that had countenanced poverty and various other social ills as "natural." But a well-meant bias is still a bias. Boas, Benedict, and Mead left out large parts of the story of humanity.
3
And among those parts are the deeply human hunger for status and the seemingly universal presence of hierarchy.

More recently, anthropologists of a Darwinian bent have started looking closely for social hierarchy. They have found it in even the least likely places.

The Ache, a hunter-gatherer people in South America, seem at first to possess an idyllic equality. Their meat goes into a communal pool, so the best hunters routinely aid their less fortunate neighbors. But during the 1980s, anthropologists took a closer look and found that the best hunters, though generous with meat, hoard a resource more fundamental. They have more extramarital affairs and more illegitimate children than lesser hunters. And their offspring have a better chance of surviving, apparently because they get special
 {237} 
treatment.
4
Being known as a good hunter, in other words, is an informal rank that carries clout with men and women alike.

The Aka pygmies of central Africa also appear at first glance to be lacking in hierarchy, as they have no "headman," no ultimate political leader. But they do have a man called a kombeti who subtly but powerfully influences big group decisions (and who often earns that rank through his hunting prowess). And it turns out that the kombeti gets the lion's share of the food, the wives, and the offspring.
5

And so it goes. As more and more societies are reevaluated in the unflattering light of Darwinian anthropology, it becomes doubtful that any truly egalitarian human society has ever existed. Some societies don't have sociologists, and thus may not have the concept of status, but they do have status. They have people of high status and low status, and everyone knows who is who. In 1945 the anthropologist George Peter Murdock, swimming against the prevailing Boasian current, published an essay called "The Common Denominator of Cultures," in which he ventured that "status differentiation" (along with gift giving, property rights, marriage, and dozens of other things) was a human universal.
6
The closer we look, the righter he seems.

In one sense, the ubiquity of hierarchy is a Darwinian puzzle. Why do the losers keep playing the game? Why is it in the genetic interest of the low men on the totem pole to treat their betters with deference? Why lend your energy to a system that leaves you with less than your neighbors?

One can imagine reasons. Maybe hierarchy makes the whole group so cohesive that most or all members benefit, even if they benefit unequally — exactly the fate that Darwin hoped would someday befall the Fuegians. In other words, maybe hierarchies serve "the good of the group" and are thus favored by "group selection." This theory was embraced by the popular writer Robert Ardrey, a prominent member of the generation of group selectionists whose decline marked the rise of the new Darwinian paradigm. If people weren't inherently capable of submission, Ardrey wrote, then "organized society would be impossible and we should have only anarchy."
7

BOOK: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
4.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Compromised Miss by Anne O'Brien
Fear by Night by Patricia Wentworth
Memorial Bridge by James Carroll
Sea Change by Diane Tullson
Swan Song by Tracey Ward
Savage City by Sophia McDougall
Sexus by Henry Miller
Every Second of Night by Glint, Chloe