Evolution can shed light on the human condition. But skepticism is needed when bleak claims are declared from the armchair.

BY ILARI MÄKELÄ

As a scientific theory, evolution by natural selection is a historic success. Its use in human affairs has a murkier history. In Darwin’s time, evolutionary theory was distorted by philosophers such as Herbert Spencer, famous for coining the phrase “survival of the fittest.”

Spencer was not primarily interested in evolution as a biological theory grounded in natural history. Rather, he saw in Darwinism a novel method of promoting his political ideas with the authority of scientific language. Appropriately, his slogan “survival of the fittest” became a justification for views ranging from laissezfaire capitalism to eugenics and pseudoscientific racism. In Spencer’s Social Darwinism, such measures were allowed to hurt the weak, for “the whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, to make room for better.”1 From the comfort of his armchair, Spencer turned Darwinism from a science of the curious into a philosophy of the powerful.

Not all accepted Spencer’s ruthless worldview. Some found themselves in favor of social solidarity and sympathy for the weak. A major spokesperson for the alternative view was the Christian orator and three-times Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, best known for his vehement anti-Darwinism stance in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In his time, Bryan helped fuse creationism into the American mainstream. When faced with a false choice between evolution and humaneness, Bryan chose humaneness.2

Keeping Our Own House Clean

The case of Social Darwinism serves as a warning. To promote Darwinism, we must keep our own house clean. Naturally, mistakes are part of any science.

But overconfidence about ideological views must be avoided.

Extra care should be paid to cases where Darwinism is used to justify bleak claims about the human condition. Yet instead of more care, they seem to receive less. Many popular writings on evolution are marred with cynical claims about human nature backed solely by a careless application of evolutionary terms. An oft-quoted example comes from Richard Dawkins’s masterpiece The Selfish Gene: