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Peter Singer, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), ix + 70 pp.
The term "Darwinism" is used today to refer both to the main theoretical framework of the biological sciences and also to the typically racist, teleological view of culture and social history associated with the Victorian era. This ambivalence is worth noting whenever the subject of human nature arises in the context of Darwinian theory. It is a paradoxical ambivalence, since these two senses of the word are essentially exclusive. Despite the fact that racist and sexist doctrines have been entertained and in some cases endorsed on the basis of purported scientific proof, wherever such theories have been carefully scrutinized, science has tended to repudiate them.1
In light of the double meaning of "Darwinism," one might expect a particularly well-developed discussion on the political Left, where Darwinism is lauded in one sense and reviled in the other. For the Leftist, there is one Darwin from whose standpoint a naturalistic, universal foundation for the essential similarity and unity of humankind would seem apparent. But there is another Darwin, still invoked by some on the Right to rationalize war and imperialist oppression in 2003 in a manner that can hardly be very different from 1903.
Benjamin Disraeli famously characterized the work of Charles Darwin as forcing upon humanity a choice in its self-understanding between "the side of the apes" and "the side of the angels."2 Our understanding of human biology and evolution has become greatly refined since the Victorian era, but confusion and controversy about what Darwin's theory means for human nature continue. A recent Gallup poll found that "45 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, and 39 percent believe that Darwin's theory of evolution is not supported by the evidence."3 In a nation whose faith and fate are so entwined with those of science, nevertheless, many find it hard to understand and accept what a century and a half of intense scrutiny regards as the most reasonable scientific approach to the question of who we are and how we got to be this way.
But the stakes of this question are quite high, which may help partially...