This year sees the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ – arguably the singly most important scientific work of the modern era.  Channel Four have just finished screening Richard Dawkins’ ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’ in celebration of that fact. Steve Arnott reviews.

Let me begin with an apology. No, two apologies.

The first, purely personal, apology is to those readers who were awaiting the first in a series of essays, trailed in the June issue of DGS magazine on the modern neo-darwinian synthesis and its implications for socialism. What has Darwin ever done for us? (the title is, of course, ironic) has been delayed because I’m currently living in temporary accommodation while my humble Invernessian abode is renovated. Consequently, my library of books are packed away in boxes and I’m unable to access them as freely or as easily as I would like.  I’m also not connected to the internet. Unable to research or reference in the normal way I thought I would leave the article to a later issue and do it proper justice.  When it does come along I hope you will find it worth the extra wait.

My second apology is both political and scientific in nature.

For many years as an active Marxist on the left I happily went along with the broad consensus that, in the nature vs. nurture debate, that nurture won out every time; that human beings were essentially a ‘blank slate’ upon which a new socialist world could be written or engineered, and that there was no such thing as ‘human nature’, or, if there was, it was relatively unimportant in our life and development compared to the underlying economic or social conditions of society.  Gould and Rose, not Dawkins or Dennett, were the authors to be read, and Not in our Genes was the equivalent of the Holy Bible when it come preparing socialist educationals on the subject. Mere mention of evolutionary psychological explanations for human behaviour or ‘selfish genes’ meant you could be frowned upon as a political apostate. And I should know – I was often the one doing the frowning.

Let me say now, quite clearly and unequivocally, that I was wrong, both politically and scientifically.

Why?

I can only give the honest Dawkinsian scientific rationalist answer: the evidence.

That evidence – that there definitely and profoundly is such a thing as human nature; that our genes are as critical at least to who we are as our socio-economic environment is; that Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest in political economy) is wrong both morally and scientifically; and that human nature, far from being essentially selfish, is inherently hardwired for co-operation and empathy  - was available by the bucket load in Richard Dawkins superb new Channel 4 series, The Genius of Charles Darwin.   The three part series, screened in July to coincide with the 150th anniversary of publication of Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species, is Dawkins third outing for general for Channel 4 and in my view, the best, and most important of his television work so far. And that may be making some claim, because the first series The Root of All Evil gave us The God Delusion, possibly the most important and widely read intellectual work since, well…The Selfish Gene.

Richard Dawkins

In the series Dawkins and his director set out and achieve their stated aims with both great clarity and chutzpah, and a fair seasoning of good humour and humanity.

In the first episode, Dawkins outlines Charles Darwin’s journey to the theory of evolution by natural selection, from his straightforward, standard religious and socially conservative upbringing, and limited ambition to be a country pastor, to his historic journey on the Beagle, his gradual accumulation of fossil and scientific evidence from around the globe, and the eventual publication of The Origin of Species itself. Dawkins uses modern technology and documentary film making techniques to illustrate Darwin’s lucid, careful and sometimes almost poetical prose from the text of Origins itself. He sets out to show, by a masterly exposition both of the evidence for and the logic of Darwinism that evolution by natural selection is not just a theory, but a proven fact.  Consequently, attempts to denigrate it as reality are, at best, misguided cultural relativism, and at worst, politically motivated dogma from the religious right that feeds on irrational, unsupported belief and amazing scientific ignorance.

In a particularly memorable moment, Dawkins, having shown us museums full of detailed fossil evidence for the transition down the line of time of one species’ to another, tells us that even if all of that evidence were to disappear over night, the evidence of the relationship of each species to every other and the evolutionary selection of genes over time is now unquestionably supported from an even stronger source – the DNA evidence now gathered in extraordinary detail in laboratories across the world.

The logic of Darwinism always indicated it, and now the facts are crystal clear. We are not just descended from apes but from the first primordial replicators that swum in the chemical soup of earth’s oceans over 3 billion years ago. To deny this, or claim it is only a ‘theory’ is like denying that Napoleon was once Emperor of France, or that Gordon Brown is Prime Minister of Britain, or that the Moon orbits the Earth.  Indeed, there is much more evidence for evolution – many museums worth more - than there is that Napoleon was Emperor of France!

If socialist aliens landed tomorrow and made me benevolent dictator of the world, my first act would be to make this one hour episode compulsory viewing in every class room on the planet!  (My second act, as a not-quite-consistent democrat, would be to resign, of course!)  Quite simply, it was one of the best pieces of pedagogical television I have ever seen.

The third and final episode saw Dawkins return to the fray against religious attempts to undermine or absorb Darwinism, and against the prevailing cultural relativism that insists on treating science as just ‘another’ way of seeing the world, rather than humanity’s supreme cultural achievement, and the consequent ‘privileging’ of religion within society. Much of this ground is excellently covered in the eminently readable The God Delusion.  If you are one of the few people who haven’t read it yet – go treat yourself.

The second episode in the series, however, was probably the most important for those serious socialists who seek to reconcile their socialism with the scientific facts revealed by the modern Darwinian synthesis, and its young offspring, evolutionary psychology, and for that reason I want to concentrate on it.

Dawkins begins the second episode by asking a series of questions.  Can Darwinism be used to justify a dog-eat-dog society and unrestrained capitalism? How can survival of the fittest in nature give rise to human behaviours such as kindness and co-operation? How can I reconcile my liberal political views with my scientific view of evolution arising through competition in nature?  Dawkins answers to these questions hold out great hope to those of us fighting for a better and fairer world, and a progressive, enlightened human society.

The answer to the first question was an unequivocal no.  To draw conclusions about the way society should be run socially, morally or economically from a biological fact of nature in that way would be illogical as well as grossly simplistic – what philosophers call a category error. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop many distortions of Darwin’s ideas being promulgated in the Twentieth century – often with disastrous effect. Just as the totalitarian Stalinist dictatorships of last century used the language and iconography of Marxism, but not the substance, to help opportunistically consolidate their political rule, Social Darwinism, the compulsory eugenics movement, ‘scientific’ racism, and Nazism all peddled ‘survival of the fittest’ in an extremely one sided and twisted way to justify their innately political agendas.

Charles Darwin

Even pro-capitalist gurus who use ‘survival of the fittest’ and Darwinian language in their corporate books and language admit that it is largely allegory, analogy and metaphor, rather than sound science. Dawkins had one go-getting entrepreneurial apologist freely admitting that capitalist success was really a question of luck and population thinking, rather than ‘fitness’. Stick 10, 000 business people in an economy and the bell curve will inevitably produce a few that are highly successful: it’s a question of statistics.

Human beings are capable of being a nasty lot, but by and large we don’t go about killing and eating each other – at least not when there are other alternatives available. As Dawkins points out, the big question for Darwinism to answer is why – in evolutionary terms – does kindness, empathy, co-operation and solidarity with other human beings, and, often, other species, exist at all?

The answer lies in understanding that ‘survival’ in Darwinian terms means surviving long enough to breed and pass on your genes. ‘Fitness’ means fitness to do so in a particular environment. If one set of genes within a particular group of animals confer a slight advantage – say enabling gazelles to run faster or bats to echolocate slightly better, then, in a predatory world, those animals possessing those genes will be more likely, statistically speaking, to pass them onto the next generation. It is the genes, as the root unit of selection, that are ‘selfish’, not individual organisms.

In fact, throughout the animal kingdom, and including primates, all the available evidence indicates that co-operation and altruism are widely selected for. What is known as kin and reciprocal altruism (sometimes known by its game theory tag of ‘tit-for-tat’) is capable of explaining a wide range of animal behaviours. Darwin trumps Hobbes decisively. The natural state is not ‘a war of all against all’. Natural selection finds millions of ways to confer survival advantages on living creatures, and one of those survival advantages is co-operation; another is reciprocation. Indeed, it could be argued that these are amongst natural selection’s finest unintelligent designs. That is why lions operate in prides, dogs in packs, bait in a ball, geese in flocks, monkeys in troops, and humans in societies.  Working co-operatively with others can increase the chances of an individuals genes being passed on; reciprocal altruism or trading favours does the same.

Intelligentsia apologists for capitalism used to argue that socialism – while it might be a nice idea – was impossible because of human nature. Human nature was portrayed as intrinsically greedy and selfish.

Now - of course - human beings are capable of greed, selfishness and egoism. These things are potentialities within our nature because, under certain conditions, they might confer survival advantages. But the evidence that is now in from modern biological research is overwhelming; we are also hardwired for social co-operative behaviour, reciprocal altruism and empathy.

These hardwired behaviours are so hardwired they can extend to people outwith or kin group or immediate circle, to people on the other side of the world, people we have never met, people in the abstract or people who are fictional characters. They can also extend to members of other species.  In one memorable sequence, as Dawkins is discussing this fact with a fellow scientist at a scientific gorilla reserve in Holland, he throws a red ball at a gorilla, who catches it and throws it back. Dawkins becomes distracted for a moment as he is speaking, but the camera focuses on the gorilla, who, arms outstretched, is pleading for the ball to be thrown back. The point is brilliantly made; we in the audience can’t help but identify with the gorilla’s frustration and want the ball thrown back to her.  The ability to empathise with someone who is not us and who might not be a direct genetic relative is part of what we are - universally so - and it is so because of natural selection.

Next time your dog offers a paw and you go get it a treat, or your cat meows and you get up from watching your favourite telly program to let it out ask yourself – am I really just a product of Skinnerian operant conditioning? Or is there something much deeper, at the level of thousands of years of natural selection going on here?

It is Darwin, not God, or Skinner, that explains human nature – both the nasty side and the good side, and in particular modern Darwinian research has shown itself capable of a scientific evolutionary explanation of what my old philosophy Professor, Neil Cooper, used to call the ‘amiable virtues’ – kindness, empathy, civility and promise keeping.

Dawkins concludes that evolution has developed a human brain of sufficient plasticity and power to imagine a different world and to make moral choices about how we want to live. The facts of natural selection can’t tell us how we should live, either as individuals or as a society, but it does free us to make that choice for ourselves. For Dawkins, as a progressive social liberal this points to a kinder, gentler society.

As socialists we can conclude that a socialist society – provided it leaves room for the full expression of human nature – is certainly possible from a scientific point of view i.e. there is nothing intrinsic in human nature that would prevent the creation of a genuinely progressive, rational and libertarian socialism.

As indicated at the top of this article, these themes and others – nature and nurture, not nature vs. nurture; human consciousness and evolutionary psychology vs.

‘blank slate’ theories of social engineering; Darwinism and social issues such as abortion rights, gender equality and sexuality; and Darwinism and Marxism will be returned to in greater detail in future issues of the DGS magazine. In the meantime, readers could do worse than watch ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’ as an excellent primer in the fundamental theory.  If you missed them the first time round I believe they can be ordered from channel4shop.com. 

And of course, there’s the link to the Richard Dawkins website on the homepage of this very mag!