The Body Has Morals, Too : THE MORAL ANIMAL; Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, <i> By Robert Wright (Pantheon: $27.50; 466 pp.</i>
In “The Moral Animal,” Robert Wright is concerned with the nature of human nature. How do we shape our own lives; in fact, do we shape them at all, or are we driven by biological imperatives? Evolutionary psychologists consider our “mental organs” and their various behaviors to be products of natural selection--that is, to have evolved along lines that maximize survival. Charles Darwin himself foresaw this application of his theory: at the close of “Origin of Species,” which otherwise steers clear of speculations about humanity, he predicted that the study of psychology would eventually “be based on a new foundation.”
Wright, a senior editor at the New Republic, is the quintessential intelligent layman--a gifted writer with a keen interest in and understanding of the scientific enterprise. His 1988 book, “Three Scientists and Their Gods,” explored the revolutions wrought by sociobiology and information theory; here he examines, and embraces, the “new Darwinian paradigm,” a worldview in which the gene is the prime mover.
The paradigm is Darwinian because its firm foundation is the theory of natural selection; it is new because when Darwin formulated his theory nothing whatever was known about the gene. It is new, too, in that its subscribers look at evolution from the point of view of the survival of genes rather than of species. In the “ancestral environment,” those animals who were successful at the daily grind--who successfully selected mates, say, and reared their young successfully--perforce passed their genes along, and the failures did not; we are, in effect, mere vessels for genes.
The new Darwinism should not be confused with the coldblooded doctrine of social Darwinism, which held that the ruling class deserved to rule and the world’s downtrodden were downtrodden because they were innately “unfit”; this is a democratic world view, in which we are all equally at the mercy of our genes. In stressing their paramountcy in the creation of the human psyche, Wright dispels an older paradigm, which held that our natures are chiefly formed by cultural and environmental influences. He supports his points with episodes from the life of Darwin himself, a sweet-natured Victorian who embodied qualities--scrupulousness, generosity, humility--that are thought to separate us from “the brutes.”
His presentation is lucid and compelling, and only occasionally does the case for the genetic origin of human nature look like a stretch (as when he writes, “You could say that low self-esteem evolved as a way to reconcile people to subordinate status when reconciliation is in their genetic interest.”)
At the core of the book is the contention that the conscience, the seat of our moral sense, evolved as a survival mechanism. When, for example, we feel guilt because we have harmed a sibling, it is because we have thereby imperiled the proliferation of our genes. When we feel guilt because we have harmed someone outside the family circle, it is because we have potentially damaged our own (survival-enhancing) status. Wright notes that some neo-Darwinians see the conscience “as the administrator of a savings account in which moral reputation is stored,” and he entertainingly illustrates this by describing Darwin’s moral struggle when he discovered that he might be beaten to the punch in describing the theory of natural selection.
The young unknown British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had sent Darwin a paper outlining the theory in terms nearly identical to his own. This was the summer of 1858, and Darwin, partly because he was reluctant to offend Victorian sensibilities, had kept his theory quiet for two decades. And here was Wallace’s obviously publishable paper. What to do? Guilelessly--or at least with unconscious guile--Darwin appealed to his friend Charles Lyell, the celebrated geologist and fellow member of the Royal Society, in a letter that Wright interprets in brackets:
“I should be extremely glad now to publish a sketch of my general views in about a dozen pages or so; but I cannot persuade myself that I can do so honorably. (Maybe you can persuade me.) Wallace says nothing about publication, and I enclose his letter. But as I had not intended to publish any sketch, can I do so honorably, because Wallace has sent me an outline of his doctrine? (Say yes. Say yes.) . . . Do you not think his having sent me this sketch ties my hands? (Say no. Say no.)”
Abdicating his own moral responsibility, Darwin allowed his good friends Lyell and J. D. Hooker, both of them scientific giants of the day, to handle the question of theory authorship. Without consulting Wallace, who was splashing around in the Malay archipelago at the time, Hooker and Lyell decided to introduce Wallace’s paper at an important scientific meeting, along with an earlier sketch of the theory by Darwin and an extensive 1844 draft that Darwin had let Hooker see. These would, of course, establish Darwin’s priority. Wallace, for his part, was thrilled when he heard of the attention he was getting. From the Tropics he wrote to his mother:
“I sent Mr. Darwin an essay on a subject on which he is now writing a great work. He showed it to Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, who thought so highly of it that they immediately read it before the Linnean Society. This assures me the acquaintance and assistance of these eminent men on my return home.”
Wright calls this letter “one of the most poignant passages in the history of science,” in light of the fact that Wallace “had just been taken to the cleaners,” and remarks that “ever since, observers have been calling the episode yet another example of (Darwin’s) superhuman decency.” In Wright’s view, it is a much better example of the self-interested “savviness” of the human conscience.
It would be interesting to know whether Wright suffered any pangs before the publication of “The Moral Animal” similar to Darwin’s trepidation before the publication of “Origin of Species.” The ideas in this thought-provoking and impolitic book are not likely to be any more popular with many of his contemporaries than Darwin’s were with the Victorians. Wright points out that the neo-Darwinian view of human nature is even more cynical and reductive than that of Sigmund Freud, who believed that each of us has a potentially heroic ego, intermittently suborned by the subconscious mind. Evolutionary psychology not only does away with the Freudian excuse of civilization and its discontents but also denies us the hope of ever wrenching free of the history of the body. In the new Darwinian paradigm, the concept of truth itself is meaningless, for “we believe the things--about morality, personal worth, even objective truth--that lead to behaviors that get our genes into the next generation.”
As though to lighten this bleak view of humanity, Wright suggests that once we recognize “the moral biases built into us by natural selection” we can correct them: “Go above and beyond the call of a smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren’t likely to help you in return, and do so when nobody’s watching. This is one way to be a truly moral animal.”
But is such independent behavior likely to last? Wright also concludes that free will is “an illusion, brought to us by evolution.” Whether it is environment or heredity that makes us do what we do, he says, the compulsion is effected biochemically. We need to believe ourselves capable of free will, however, and so we do--since belief in any sort of determinism, “by eroding blame, threatens society’s moral fiber.” This part of Wright’s argument is the most troubling, and it is also the weakest: Qualifications mount, and you get the sense that Wright’s heart is not really in it. And indeed, in an appendix entitled “Frequently Asked Questions,” in which such apparently non-Darwinian behaviors as suicide, laughter and homosexuality are discussed, Wright notes (about people who decide not to have children, thus thwarting the propagational imperative) that “we can choose to short-circuit the ultimate goals that natural selection ‘intended’ us to pursue.”
There are instances of the action of conscience that the new Darwinian paradigm does not cover. While natural selection does appear to have given us the equipment, it was fashioned, as Wright emphasizes, in the “ancestral environment,” not in the present one. Our mental organs may be the creation of our genes, but our thoughts are still our own.
