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Daniel S. MiloGood Enough - The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Societyp. 15 |
Darwinian bias toward natural selection is baked into popular understanding
Because the Darwinian bias toward natural selection is now baked into popular understanding of evolution, it is not enough to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, but also to tell the whole truth. Rather than presume and seek out a selectionist explanation for what most likely are neutral traits, biologists might presume the ubiquity of the latter even as they marvel at the exceptions. And they might talk about it in public. Doing so would make an immense difference. Differential algebra, organic chemistry, and optical physics have no impact on our worldview; the theory of evolution does. When specialists in these other fields realize that they have been operating on the basis of unsound presuppositions, the corrections tend to stay “in house.” Their fields are torn down and rebuilt, but the rest of us are unperturbed. By contrast, Darwinian and neo-Darwinian ideas such as survival of the fittest, optimization, adaptation, and Malthusian competition reverberate in the way we experience reality, society, and ourselves. It follows that when these ideas misrepresent nature, they weigh heavily on our self-representation.