ABSTRACT
Evolution cannot furnish a test to resolve our clashes of values. The reason for studying it is not to come up with a simple oneway pointer, but to fill in some of the background necessary for understanding our own nature. That is bound to make us see it as more complex than we thought at the start, since it is the business of any culture to simplify, to narrow down the options considered to those that the times most call for. This point has been obscured during the recent surge of interest in human evolution and animal studies, by the natural tendency of critics to concentrate on the controversial. If someone writes a book, primarily emphasizing the complexity of human nature, but saying that a certain impulse plays a certain rather unexpected part within that complexity, it is the second point that will hit the headlines and polarize the controversy that follows. But what needs attention is still the first. The issue is not between bad guys who use an “adversary” approach and good guys who are scientific and impartial (as Wilson suggests). Everybody, including himself, is partial in the sense of starting somewhere, of selecting something for emphasis. The fatal thing is not this. It is being confused about one’s reasons for doing so. Particular insights and principles of inquiry must be set in the context of other possible alternatives. The reasons that might lead someone to start elsewhere, with different selections and emphases, must be understood and answered. Unfavorable evidence must be dealt with. These are very hard requirements. In this age of intense specialization, when scholars can easily avoid ever speaking to someone in a neighboring field, they seem to many people simply impossible. On balance, I do not think they are any better met by those who regard themselves chiefly as “scientific” than by popular writers. Simply not considering an alternative case is no better than inveighing unfairly against it. And the consequences are worse, since what is unfairly inveighed against does at least get heard of.
