HUMAN NATURE AFTER DARWIN: A Philosophical Introduction

HUMAN NATURE AFTER DARWIN: A Philosophical Introduction.

By Janet Radcliffe Richards. Routledge. 336 pp. $65

Richards, author of the much admired The Skeptical Feminist (1980), takes a philosophical approach to the perennial wars over Darwinism, with an emphasis on the bitter hostilities now being fought over sociobiology (and its equivalents under other, and safer, names, such as evolutionary psychology). The book, which grew out of her university teaching, uses modern Darwinism as a heuristic for identifying and defining the main subdisciplines of philosophy, and as object material for teaching the elementary operations of logic. The argument is supported, as in any good course of study, with practical exercises—and with answers thereto. These etudes are fascinating in their own right. Thus, what must have begun as a generous handout for a college-level course emerges as a lucid treatment of one of the most important intellectual (and political) conflicts of our time.

Human Nature after Darwin begins, as it should, with a short, reliable summary of the pertinent science. This is also the author’s opportunity to introduce some key concepts from the epistemology and philosophy of science. She follows with a taxonomy of influential commentary on Darwinian evolution and its implications, ranging from the radical, reductionist evolutionary claims, through the various categories of skepticism, and finally to the outright rejection of evolutionary biology, and hence of essentially all modern biology. She takes up the key arguments and reduces them to sets of clear statements that can be assessed in a straightforward manner. This is applied philosophy at its best.

Though Richards is sympathetic toward modern evolutionary science, she never proselytizes. The exposition identifies all weaknesses and ambiguities in the philosophical stands she favors as well as in those she rebuts. But her rebuttals are devastating. To begin with, she pays scrupulous attention to what the belligerents actually say, and the results sometimes surprise even the author. She writes, "If you follow up in detail any of the claims about what opponents [of one position in the controversy] are supposed to have said . . . you may be quite startled by the extent of misquoting, quoting out of context, looking for the worst interpretation of what is said, and flagrant misrepresentation that goes on."

Largely, though, she concentrates on the logical validity of the complaints against Darwinism in general and sociobiology in particular. Not surprisingly, a central chapter addresses the common assertion that a radical Darwinian, materialist view of the world (and hence of human origins and behavior) requires the conclusion that there is no such thing as objective moral truth. The corollary is, of course, that some form of spirit or deity is needed if we are to have any moral universals at all. Richards’s persuasive refutation of this claim should give comfort not only to biologists but to honest religionists as well. This book is a course that everyone with an opinion about Darwinism ought to take.

—Paul R. Gross