The social scientists respond that culture is uniquely human because we created it. But the Darwinians reject that answer as a fudge: if we created culture, what explains our capacity to create it? The answer is that this capacity evolved. Culture is therefore an adaptation, which exists because it conferred a reproductive advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. According to this view, many of our cultural traits are local variations of attributes acquired during the Pleistocene age and now "hard-wired in the brain." But if this is so, cultural characteristics may not be as plastic as the social scientists suggest. There are features of the human condition, such as gender roles, that people have believed to be cultural and therefore changeable. But if culture is an aspect of nature, "cultural" does not mean "changeable." Maybe these controversial features of human culture are part of the genetic endowment of mankind.
If I understand all this correctly -- and I may very well not -- evolutionary theory posits that everything can be explained in terms of the need for the organism to reproduce. This is, I presume, a blind drive, having nothing to do with the desirability of being alive. But life qua life once achieved is one thing. One could say that once life makes its entrance there is no getting it off the stage. But evolutionary theory is also supposed to explain -- indeed that is the point of it, is it not? -- the diversity of species. And the mere drive to reproduce doesn't seem to me to fit the bill. Why exactly go beyond the uni-cellular? If the sine qua non of life is reproduction, well, there you have it with the first single cell: simple and efficient, even conveying a kind of immortality, since the original cell just splits in half and becomes two and those two do the same and so on ad infinitum. What precisely is the reproductive explanation of the origin of species, of the diversification into so many different franchises? Why does life need more than one species?
This is right. I have always wondered about how sociobiology could ascribe to the gene the "desire" to reproduce -- which it does; The genes "desire" to spread itself and reproduce comes from where exactly? Essentially sociobiology ascribes a metaphysical "desire" to the gene, or, even if viewed as a mechanical process, reproduction is contained where in the AGCT pairs?
ReplyDeleteHope you are doing well Frank!
If you ask a Darwinist that, he is likely to tell you that evolution is non-teleological and without purpose or direction. But slip away to the bathroom for a few minutes and you may come back to hear him explain how it's all about increased complexity and improvement.
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