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Steven Pinker and
original sin
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Steven Pinker and the limitations of Darwinian theory
The
limitations of the theory of natural selection in this respect were not
always recognised by Darwin himself and they have certainly not always
been recognised since. These limitations have frequently led to the
formulation of extreme hereditarian theories of human behaviour such as
the ‘hard-core’ model of human nature which was put forward in
uncompromising terms by the biologist C. D.
Darlington: Owing
to inborn characters we live in different worlds even though we live side
by side. We see the world through different eyes, even the part of it we
see in common ... The materials of heredity contained in the chromosomes
are the solid stuff which ultimately determines the course of history’
(C.
D. Darlington, quoted in T. H. Dobzhansky , Mankind Evolving: The
Evolution of the Human Species, Yale University Press, 1962, p.
54). In
recent years a number of influential ethologists and sociobiologists have
attempted to explain human behaviour in terms of similarly narrow
hereditarian categories. In doing so they have contrived – as scientists
frequently do – to disregard what some would see as one of the most
important of all scientific principles. For instead of sceptically testing
out their theories against the hardest and most refractory forms of
evidence, some biologically oriented thinkers have sought out just those
aspects of human behaviour which can be fitted most easily into crude
forms of genetic determinism. Ethologists frequently observe that primates
copulate; they do not frequently observe that some primates publish
poetry, that other primates worship the Virgin Mary, and that others still
are professional philosophers. It is just such facts as these, however,
which remain anomalous and unaccounted for in neo-Darwinian biology. If we
wish tacitly to maintain a theistic view of the world, this will not, of
course, disturb us. But if we wish to use the theory of natural selection
in order to illuminate human nature, then it is just these mysteries which
must be turned into problems. Alex
Comfort is undoubtedly correct when, writing as a biologist, he reminds us
that ‘if we reject Mendel as bourgeois, we find that we have no
beef’
(Darwin and the Naked Lady: Discursive Essays on Biology and Art,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961, p. 8). But
what we must always bear in mind is that Mendel’s theories were designed
to explain how the peas in his monastery garden reproduced their species,
and not why the monks in the chapel within had renounced the opportunity
to reproduce theirs. The fact that neither our ascetic and religious
behaviour nor our complex non-reproductive sexual behaviour can be
explained by the existing theory of natural selection appears to indicate
that some crucial element is missing from that theory. It
should be said that one of the factors which has made it easier for some
theorists to put forward extreme versions of genetic determinism
successfully has been the biological naivety of many social scientists in
the first half of . the twentieth century. In what has been called the
‘Standard Social Science Model’, championed by many influential
anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists, including Margaret Mead
and J. B. Watson, human nature was held to be almost infinitely malleable.
Human beings were treated as though they were biologically empty, their
behaviour and temperament being almost entirely the product of culture.
To
say all this, however, is not to accept Pinker’s argument in its entirety.
One of the most questionable parts of his book is that in which he uses
his carefully worked out argument about language as the basis for a series
of speculations about other specialised neural networks which he believes
may have evolved within the human brain. He suggests that there may be
‘innate modules’ or ‘families of instincts’ for many facets of human
behaviour including ‘intuitive mechanics: knowledge of the motions,
forces, and deformations that objects undergo’ and ‘intuitive biology’. He
even suggests that there may be a brain module for ‘justice’ through which
human beings inherit a specific neural basis for a ‘sense of rights,
obligations and deserts’ (p. 420). Not
all Pinker’s guesses about the genetic make-up of human nature should, I
believe, be dismissed out of hand. But the suggestion that there may be
something which resembles a ‘gene for justice’ is one which many will find
alarming. One of the great dangers of indulging in this kind of genetic
guesswork is that what Pinker presents as speculation will be treated by
others as science. Unsubstantiated speculations such as those he presents
only play into the hands of those who advocate the kind of extreme genetic
determinism whose excesses Pinker himself generally manages to avoid. In
particular they are liable to lend support to a tendency which seems to be
widespread among biologically orientated thinkers who make pronouncements
about human nature – the tendency to assume that the aspects of human
behaviour which can be shown to be genetically determined are the ‘real’
substratum of human nature, and that what is added by nurture is little
more than a superficial cultural ‘dressing’.
………………………………………………………… © Richard Webster, 2002
www.richardwebster.net
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