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Evolution

Were Cave Men (Our Ancestors) All Trying to Kill Each Other? Part 5

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 4, Darwin’s bulldog, T. H. Huxley, offered a couple of examples of natural selection at work in England. Philosopher David Stove, in his book Darwinian Fairytales, provides yet another example of Huxley’s attempt to show that men are competing  to survive.

A third attempt is this. Huxley implies that there have been “one or two short intervals” of the Darwinian “struggle for existence between man and man” in England in quite recent centuries: for example, the civil war of the seventeenth century! You probably think, and you certainly ought to think, that I am making this up; but I am not. He actually writes that, since “the reign of Elizabeth . . . , the struggle for existence between man and man has been so largely restrained among the great mass of the population (except for one or two short intervals of civil war), that it can have little, or no selective operation.”

You probably also think that the English civil war of the seventeenth century grew out of tensions between parliament and the court, dissent and the established church, republic and the monarchy. Nothing of the sort, you see: it was a resumption of “the struggle for existence between man and man.” Cromwell and King Charles were competing with each other, and each of them with everyone else too, a la Darwin and Malthus, for means of subsistence. So no doubt Cromwell, when he had the king’s head cut off, ate it. Uncooked, I shouldn’t wonder, the beast. And probably selfishly refused to let his secretary John Milton have even one little nibble.

So where do all of Huxley’s failed attempts leave us?

Huxley should not have needed Darwinism to tell him-since any intelligent child of about eight could have told him-that in a “continual free fight of each other against all” there would soon be no children, no women and hence, no men. In other words, that the human race could not possibly exist now, unless cooperation had always been stronger than competition, both between women and their children, and between men and the children and women whom they protect and provide for.

And why was it that Huxley himself swallowed, and expected the rest of us to swallow, this ocean of biological absurdity and historical illiteracy? Why, just because he could not imagine Darwinism’s being false, while if it is true then a struggle for life must always be going on in every species. Indeed, the kind of examples for which Huxley searched would have to be as common as air among us, surrounding us everywhere at all times. But anyone who tries to point out such an example will find himself obliged to reenact T. H. Huxley’s ludicrous performance.

There is (as I said earlier) a contradiction at the very heart of the Cave Man way out of Darwinism’s dilemma: the contradiction between holding that Darwinism is true and admitting that it is not true of our species now. But I should perhaps emphasize that the absurdities which we have just witnessed in Huxley, though they no doubt were generated by that initial contradiction, are additional to it.

And there it is. “Ocean of biological absurdity and historical illiteracy” indeed. Huxley and the Cave Man way out fail to resolve the dilemma. Stove’s key point is that Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” just does not reflect what we actually see among human beings, and surely this is a massive problem for the theory.

Instead of stretching the limits of ridiculousness by re-casting human behavior in terms of nature red in tooth and claw, why can’t we admit what is obvious? Natural selection, taken as the primary mechanism, cannot explain much of what we see today in the human species. In fact, much of what human beings do every day in helping the genetically weaker goes directly against natural selection. It’s time we let this mechanism for human evolution go.

Evolution

Were Cave Men (Our Ancestors) All Trying to Kill Each Other? Part 4

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 3, Darwin’s bulldog, T. H. Huxley, offered the Cave Man explanation to solve the seemingly intractable problem of human beings not currently competing with each other in order to survive. Recall that David Stove, in his book, Darwinian Fairytales, recorded Huxley’s Cave Man gambit:

But in those distant times, Huxley informs us, human beings lived in “nature,” or “in the state of nature,” or in “the savage state.” Each man “appropriated whatever took his fancy and killed whomsoever opposed him, if he could.” “Life was a continual free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence.”‘

Here is Stove’s response:

What . . . is a Hobbesian savage, presumably an adult male, doing with a family at all, however “limited and temporary”? In a “continual free fight,” any man who had on his mind, not only his own survival, but that of a wife and child, would he no match for a man not so encumbered. Huxley’s man, if he wanted to maximize his own chances of survival, and had even half a brain, would simply eat his wife and child before some other man did. They are first class protein, after all, and intraspecific Darwinian competition is principally competition for the means of subsistence, isn’t it? Besides, wives and children are “easy meat,” compared with most of the protein that goes around even at the best of times.

But what other evidence could Huxley provide?

Huxley naturally realized that, as examples of Darwinian competition for life among humans, hypothetical ancient fights between Hobbesian bachelors were not nearly good enough. What was desperately needed were some real examples, drawn from contemporary or at least recent history. Nothing less would be sufficient to reconcile Darwinism with the obvious facts of human life.

Accordingly, Huxley made several attempts to supply such an example. But the result in every case was merely embarrassing. One attempt was as follows. Huxley draws attention to the fierce competition for colonies and markets which was going on, at the time he wrote, among the major Western nations. He says, in effect, “There! That’s pretty Darwinian, you must admit.”

The reader, for his part, scarcely knows where to look, and wonders, very excusably, what species of organism it can possibly be, of which Britain, France, and Germany are members.

Huxley provides a second example:

A second attempt at a real and contemporary example was the following. Huxley says that there is, after all, still a little bit of Darwinian struggle for life in Britain around 189o. It exists among the poorest 5 percent of the nation. And the reason, he says (remembering his Darwin and Malthus), is that in those depths of British society, the pressure of population on food supply is still maximal.

Yet Huxley knew perfectly well (and in other writings showed that he knew) that the denizens of “darkest England” were absorbed around 189o, not in a competition for life, but (whatever they may have thought) in a competition for early death through alcohol. Was that Darwinian?

But even supposing he had been right, what a pitiable harvest of examples, to support a theory about the whole species Homo sapiens. Five percent of Britons around 1890, indeed! Such a “confirmation” is more likely to strengthen doubts about Darwinism than to weaken them.

In part 5, we’ll look at a final example that Huxley offers to bolster Darwinism as applied to human beings, and we’ll see how Stove summarizes all of Huxley’s attempts.

Evolution

Were Cave Men (Our Ancestors) All Trying to Kill Each Other? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In parts 1 and 2, we looked at agnostic philosopher David Stove’s explanation of “Darwinism’s Dilemma” in his book Darwinian Fairytales:

If Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species.

Stove introduced the Cave Man way out of the dilemma whereby Darwinists claim that even though humans are not in a constant and ruthless competition for survival today, they were in the past. Stove, however, thinks this way out is absurd. He writes:

Even if such a tribe could somehow continue in existence, it is extremely difficult to imagine how our species, as we now know it to he, could ever have graduated from so very hard a school. We need to remember how severe the rule of natural selection is, and what it means to say that a species is subject to it. It means, among other things, that of all the rabbits, flies, cod, pines, etc., that are born, the enormous majority must suffer early death; and it means no less of our species. How could we have escaped from this set up, supposing we once were in it?

After 150 years of being inundated with Darwinian theory, we forget how absurd aspects of it are. Stove’s point is staring us in the face. Darwin said that all species are in a brutal struggle for survival: kill or be killed. Yet, that clearly is not the case, today, with human beings. Therefore, Darwin’s theory flies directly in the face of what we know.

At this point, T. H. Huxley enters the scene to help out his friend, Charles Darwin. Stove picks up the story:

Darwinism in its early decades had an urgent need for an able and energetic PR man. Darwin himself had little talent for that kind of work, and even less taste for it. But he found in T. H. Huxley someone who had both the talent and the taste in plenty. Huxley came to be known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” and by thirty years of invaluable service as a defender of Darwinism against all comers, he deserved it. And he provides an unusually explicit example of a high scientific authority who takes the Cave Man way out.

Huxley knew perfectly well, of course, since he was not a madman, that human life in England in his own time did not bear any resemblance to a constant and ruthless struggle to survive. Why, life was not like that even among the savages of New Guinea-nay, even in Sydney-as he found when he was in these parts in the late 184os, as a surgeon on board H.M.S. Rattlesnake. Did these facts make him doubt, when he became a Darwinian about ten years later, the reality of Darwin’s “struggle for life,” at least in the case of humans? Of course not. They only made him think that, while of course there must have been a stage of Darwinian competition in human history, it must also have ended long ago.

So what was Huxley’s proposal?

But in those distant times, Huxley informs us, human beings lived in “nature,” or “in the state of nature,” or in “the savage state.” Each man “appropriated whatever took his fancy and killed whomsoever opposed him, if he could.” “Life was a continual free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence.”‘

It is hard to believe one’s eyes when reading these words. Thomas Hobbes, forsooth! He was a philosopher who had published, two hundred years earlier, some sufficiently silly a priori anthropology. But Huxley is a great Darwinian scientist, and is writing in about 1890. Yet what he says is even sillier than anything that Hobbes dreamed up about the pre-history of our species.

More to come in part 4, as Stove continues to look at how Huxley propounded the Cave Man theory.

Evolution

Were Cave Men (Our Ancestors) All Trying to Kill Each Other? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 1, we looked at agnostic philosopher David Stove’s explanation of “Darwinism’s Dilemma” in his book Darwinian Fairytales:

If Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species.

Stove introduced the Cave Man way out of the dilemma whereby Darwinists claim that even though humans are not in a constant and ruthless competition for survival today, they were in the past. It is crucial to remember that Darwin claimed that within each species, conspecifics are at war with each other for survival. That struggle for survival is what drives natural selection.

Where we left off, Stove argued that “if Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, no species can ever escape from the process of natural selection.” Let’s pick up from there.

So the “modern” part of this way out of Darwin’s dilemma is inconsistent with Darwinism. But the Cave Man part of it is also utterly incredible in itself. It may be possible, for all I know, that a population of pines or cod should exist with no cooperative as distinct from competitive relations among its members. But no tribe of humans could possibly exist on those terms. Such a tribe could not even raise a second generation: the helplessness of the human young is too extreme and prolonged.

If we accept that cave men were all killing each other, how did our species escape this dire situation? Stove continues:

Even if such a tribe could somehow continue in existence, it is extremely difficult to imagine how our species, as we now know it to be, could ever have graduated from so very hard a school. We need to remember how severe the rule of natural selection is, and what it means to say that a species is subject to it. It means, among other things, that of all the rabbits, flies, cod, pines, etc., that are born, the enormous majority must suffer early death; and it means no less of our species.

How could we have escaped from this set up, supposing we once were in it? Please don’t say that a god came down, and pointed out to Darwinian Cave Men a better way; or that the Cave Men themselves got together and adopted a Social Contract (with a Department of Family Planning). Either of those explanations is logically possible, of course, but they are just too improbable to be worth talking about. Yet some explanation, of the same order of improbability, seems to be required, if we once allow ourselves to believe that though we are not subject now to natural selection, we used to be.

The Cave Man way out, despite its absurdity, is easily the most popular of the three ways of trying to get out of Darwinism’s dilemma. It has been progressively permeating popular thought for nearly one hundred and fifty years. By now it is enshrined in a thousand cartoons and comic-strips, and it is as immovable as Christmas. But we should not infer from this that it lacks high scientific authorities in its favor. Quite the contrary, Cave Man has been all along, and still is, the preferred way out of Darwinism’s dilemma among the learned, as well as among the vulgar.

Stove then calls to the stand Darwin’s most able defender, T. H. Huxley, as the foremost proponent of the Cave Man theory. We will look at what Huxley argued in part 3.

Evolution

Were Cave Men (Our Ancestors) All Trying to Kill Each Other? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Agnostic philosopher David Stove opens his book Darwinian Fairytales with the following:

If Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species.

Stove refers to this as “Darwinism’s Dilemma” and he notes that

the inconsistency is so very obvious that no Darwinian has ever been altogether unconscious of it. There have been, accordingly, very many attempts by Darwinians to wriggle out of the dilemma. But the inconsistency is just too simple and direct to be wriggled out of, and all these attempts are conspicuously unsuccessful. They are not uninstructive, though, or unamusing.

One way out this dilemma is what Stove calls the Cave Man way out. Here is the Cave Man explanation offered by some Darwinists:

You admit that human life is not now what it would be if Darwin’s theory were true, but also insist that it used to be like that. In the olden days (this story goes), human populations always did press relentlessly on their supply of food, and thereby brought about constant competition for survival among the too-numerous competitors, and hence natural selection of those organisms which were best fitted to succeed in the struggle for life. That is, human life was exactly as Darwin’s book had said that all life is.

But our species (the story goes on) escaped long ago from the brutal regime of natural selection. We developed a thousand forms of attachment, loyalty, cooperation, and unforced subordination, every one of them quite incompatible with a constant and merciless competition to survive.

We have now had for a very long time, at least locally, religions, moralities, laws or customs, respect for life and property, rules of inheritance, specialized social orders, distinctions of rank, and standing provisions for external defense, internal police, education and health. Even at our lowest ebb we still have ties of blood, and ties of marriage: two things which are quite as incompatible with a universal competition to survive as are, for example, a medical profession, a priesthood, or a state.

Does the Cave Man explanation work, though? Can we really believe that human beings formerly were at each other’s throats constantly in order to survive? And that somehow, while other species were unable to escape this competition, we did? And is this theory really compatible with Darwinism? Stove explains:

This Cave Man story, however implausible, is at any rate not inconsistent with itself. But the combination of it with Darwin’s theory of evolution is inconsistent. That theory is a universal generalization about all terrestrial species at any time. Hence, if the theory says something which is not true now of our species (or another), then it is not true. . . . In short, the Cave Man way out of Darwinism’s dilemma is in reality no way out at all: it is self-contradictory.

If Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, no species can ever escape from the process of natural selection. His theory is that two universal and permanent tendencies of all species of organisms-the tendency to increase in numbers up to the limit that the food supply allows, and the tendency to vary in a heritable way-are together sufficient to bring about in any species universal and permanent competition for survival, and therefore universal and permanent natural selection among the competitors.

In part 2 of this series, we will continue to look at Stove’s analysis of the Cave Man solution to Darwinism’s Dilemma. You’ll want to return, as Stove’s analysis is truly brilliant.