Darwinism and Philosophy is a many-sided reflection on the philosophical implications of Darwinism, or modern evolutionary biology. Since its inception, philosophers and scientists (including Darwin himself) have sensed the far-reaching explanatory power of this conceptual scheme, and not without good reason, for if Darwinism is true, then its theoretical claims seem to imply certain ontological commitments, certain facts about the structure of reality and the nature of human beings. And given the crucial dependence of the main branches of philosophy on ontology, particularly on ontological facts about the nature of human beings, it seems reasonable to suppose that Darwinism would have significant philosophical implications. Many scholars have attempted to spell out those implications, yet arguably only in the past few decades has the topic received the kind of rigorous discussion it deserves. The present volume substantively adds to that discussion with refreshing diversity and insight.
A serious plus of the book is its diversity. Diversity may not be good for diversity's sake, but it can be instrumentally good, and it is instrumentally good in this volume for the multiplication of ideas that seems to be a necessary condition for both scientific and philosophical progress. Philosophers, scientists, and historians form the diverse group of contributors, and of the philosophers, a good portion of them adopt continental approaches or are deeply familiar with continental (German) philosophy of biology. This continental emphasis is refreshing, given that the philosophical literature in the English-speaking world (especially the literature relevant to the biological sciences) is thoroughly dominated by the analytic approach and tradition. Many of the continental contributors will probably be unfamiliar to readers of English journals, but as their papers demonstrate, I think we would do well to seriously consider their work here and elsewhere.
Among the many important questions that the contributors grapple with, a few of them take center stage: What, if any, are Darwinism's ontological commitments? Is a non-naturalistic interpretation of Darwinism possible, and perhaps plausible? What relevance does Darwinism have for epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind?
Peter McLaughlin and Michael Ruse raise the interesting question of whether Darwinism is committed to metaphysical naturalism and both answer in the negative. Ruse goes further and, picking up themes from one of his recent books, shows how a Darwinist can accept traditional theistic beliefs that are widely thought to be inconsistent with Darwinism, such as beliefs concerning miracles, the nature of God, and human nature.
German contributors Dieter Wandschneider and Vittorio Hösle, steeped in the continental traditional and taking continental approaches, heartily agree with McLaughlin and Ruse that Darwinism is not tied to metaphysical naturalism and accordingly suggest idealist interpretations of Darwinism that they believe to be philosophically superior to their naturalist counterparts. Wandschneider's discussion was somewhat disappointing to me, since he did very little in the way of supporting the broad Hegelian metaphysical picture he proposed, yet he does offer an insightful discussion of the sense in which the human mind may be said to be the goal or end of biological evolution. Hösle admittedly does little in the way of providing justification for his objective idealist interpretation, but nevertheless argues for conclusions that are not insignificant. He argues that naturalism cannot provide satisfying accounts of the “transcendentals”—the true, the good, and the beautiful—and suggests that since alternative non-naturalist interpretations (namely, his objective idealist interpretation) are compatible with evolutionary biology and do not reduce the transcendentals to empirical states of affairs, we should give them serious consideration.
Philip Sloan and Robert J. Richards complicate our understanding of Darwin's conception of nature by showing, historically and exegetically, that Darwin did not have a nonteleological, mechanical philosophy of nature, as has been thought by one recent and prominent historiographic tradition, but rather had a rich teleological view of nature that has interesting connections to the German Romantic tradition.
German philosopher Bernd Graefrath contends that the project of a biologistic reductive naturalism is a misguided project: Biology and philosophy should remain autonomous disciplines, but nevertheless, biology can still have important implications for philosophy. His argument takes concrete form in his discussion of evolutionary ethics. He thinks Darwinism can enhance our understanding of human behavior, but can never justify that behavior—the naturalistic fallacy, the jump from “is” to “ought,” is a real fallacy, and the implication is that philosophical ethics cannot be reduced to empirical findings. But nevertheless, Graefrath insists that sociobiological findings can still be relevant for ethics in several ways. For instance, sociobiologists might well discover that our moral intuitions, which undoubtedly play a fundamental justificatory role in post-Rawlsian philosophy, are just sentiments or feelings brought about by evolutionary processes. Such a finding could move us to accept a Humean sentimentalist approach to ethics over a Kantian approach (372). Graefrath insists, too optimistically in my view, that, in spite of such a challenge to the reliability of our moral intuitions, we would not have to swallow a fatal relativism and there would still be room for moral argumentation and moral progress.
My selective discussion should not be taken as a mark against the value of the other ten papers in the present volume. In particular, let me highlight two papers worth digging into: David Depew's illuminating discussion of the rhetorically persuasive work of the iconic meaning of Darwinism and Marcel Weber's evaluation of the question of determinism and the nature of probability in evolutionary theory.
Darwinism and Philosophy is a unique and welcome addition to the debate on the implications of Darwinism for philosophy. Though the contributors do not come to a consensus, an unsurprising fact given the plurality of approaches, the present volume does succeed, in my view, as well as in the view of the editors, in highlighting many of the plausible implications of Darwinism and in showing that Darwinism is compatible with a range of philosophical positions (9). The fruitfulness of its interdisciplinary approach should prove to be a useful corrective to those of us who think our discipline has little to nothing to do with other disciplines, and even within the discipline of philosophy, many of the papers demonstrate the importance of taking German philosophy of biology seriously. Many German philosophers of biology seem to be well-versed in the philosophical literature of the English-speaking world, but I suspect that most philosophers working in the analytic tradition are not similarly well-versed in the German literature. This book gives us good reason to correct the asymmetry and dig into the German literature.
