AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Thematic Areas: Evolution: Perspectives Ethics and Values in

Biological and Cultural Evolution

DOBZHANSKY, THEODOSIUS. 1973. Ethics and values in biological and

cultural evolution. Zygon, 8: 261-281.

The problem of biological foundations of ethics and values is a relatively new one. For
centuries and millennia, ethics and values were believed to stem from God's
commandments. Having revealed his will, God exacts compliance. He rewards
righteousness with bliss and wickedness with suffering. In the words of Paul Ricoeur,
God "corrects the apparent disorder in the distribution of human fortune. The law of
retribution makes of religion not only an absolute foundation for moral law but also a
world view, a speculative cosmology." (1)
But why does God command doing certain things and prohibit others? Can the
wisdom of God's commands be demonstrated rationally? God's purposes need not be
all inscrutable, still less contrary to human reason, which is in itself God's gift to man.
Already medieval theologians, notably Saint Thomas Aquinas, sought to discover
rational bases of the moral law. His premise was that since man is created in God's
image, all humans have the same nature, and this nature is the source of the same
moral law.
The problem acquired a new dimension in the light of Darwin's theory of evolutionary
ascent of man. Man has evolved from ancestors who were not human. Unless human
nature and moral law were implanted suddenly and in their present state, they too
must have evolved. Moreover, there is no single human nature common to everybody
but as many variant human natures as there are men. These findings lead to many
new questions. And these questions are no longer only theological or philosophical.
Some key ones are biological questions. Since the creation of God's image in man is
not an event but a process, the moral law is a product of an evolutionary
development.
What causes brought about this development? This development is the key to
understanding of the unique human evolutionary pattern. Biological evolution formed
the foundation for the development of culture, including some aspects of ethics and
morals. The development of culture led to the emergence of other kinds of ethics and
morals, independent of and sometimes even contradictory to the purely biological
ones. Teilhard de Chardin saw this clearly when he wrote: "The ethical principles
which hitherto we have regarded as an appendage, superimposed more or less by our
own free will upon the laws of biology, are now showing themselves--not
metaphorically but literally--to be a condition of survival of the human race. In other
words, evolution, in rebounding reflectively upon itself, acquires morality for the
purpose of its further advance." (2)
EVOLUTIONARY TRANSCENDENCE OF MAN
Darwin (3) showed that man is a part of nature, a descendant of living beings who
were not human, and a biological species related to other species of the order of
primates. This discovery, so shocking and upsetting to so many of his contemporaries,
is by now almost a truism. However, the nature of human nature, or rather of human
1
natures, is not always clearly understood even by those quite familiar with Darwin's
thought. In Julian Huxley's words: "Man's opinion of his own position in relation to the
rest of the animals has swung pendulum-wise between too great and too little a
conceit of himself, fixing now too large a gap between himself and the animals, now
too small.... The gap between man and animals was here reduced not by
exaggerating the human qualities of animals, but by minimizing the human qualities
of men. Of late years, however, a new tendency has become apparent.'' (4)
The reason for the pendulum-wise swings is simple. The key problem for nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century evolutionists was to assemble incontrovertible evidence
that man is a product of evolutionary development. Similarities between the human
and the nonhuman evolutionary patterns were overstressed, and differences de-
emphasized. To some people and for some purposes, especially to racists and for
justification of race and class biases, the slogan "man is nothing but an animal" was
and still is quite convenient. Failure to realize man's special position has misled also
not a few philosophers and ethicists. No doubt, man is subject to nature's biological
laws, but he is as well subject to quite different laws stemming from his cultural
evolution which are meaningless except in human contexts.
That man is an animal is platitudinous, but, as Simpson says, he is "not just another
animal. He is unique in peculiar and extraordinarily significant ways." (5) What are
these ways? Man's bodily structures are distinctive but not extraordinary. They
warrant the human species being placed in a zoological family by itself with no other
living but several fossil species. What is unique about man are his mental abilities. He
is the only being that lives in the world of culture as well as in the physical world. He
communicates with other member's of his species by means of symbolic language. He
is capable of abstraction, and prevision of future. He possesses the objectively or
scientifically elusive but subjectively and existentially irrefutable quality of self-
awareness, which makes him a dweller in what Eccles (6) calls World 2 and World 3,
while animals dwell only in physical World 1. And finally man has a death awareness.
All animals die, but man alone knows that he will inevitably die. (7)
Whether or not traces or rudiments of the unique human characteristics and abilities
are found in animal species other than mankind need not concern us here. Be that as
it may, the constellation of these characteristics makes man an altogether unique
form of life. The appearance of man brought into existence a being which, in its
mental capacities, differs from all other animals more radically than animals differ
from
each other. In this sense, man is outside or, if you wish, above the rest of the living
world. Human evolution has transcended biological evolution. This statement does not
imply any kind of philosophical transcendentalism or intervention of supernatural
forces. It does mean that with the appearance of mankind a new dimension or level of
being was added to the previously existing ones. The other major evolutionary
transcendence was the origin of life from inanimate matter. Whether evolutionary
transcendence is a happy phrase may be questioned. I must however insist that the
idea of radical novelty of human evolution emerging from biological evolution, is
essential for clear thinking about human problems.
VALUES AND ETHICS IN EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT
The problem that interests us here is the evolutionary origins of ethics and values.
Has the biological evolutionary development which made the ascent of man possible
endowed mankind with ethics? Or has it merely made all nonpathological members of
2
the human species capable of being taught various kinds of ethics and morality, and
to be trained for various kinds of behavior? These are very different propositions, and
yet in some discussions of the alleged biological basis of ethics they are confused.
An analogy with human symbolic language will hopefully make the difference plain.
Some congenitally malformed infants excepted, any human baby is born with a
genetically vouchsafed capacity to learn a language. By contrast, nonhuman primates,
even so close a relative of man as the chimpanzee, do not have this capacity. Though
their voice organs seem to be capable of uttering most sounds of which human
language is composed, the impediment to learning resides in the structure of the
brain. On the other hand, in man there are no genetic predispositions to learning a
particular kind of language. All nonpathological humans can, at least during
childhood, learn any of the hundreds of existing language families. A Bushman child
learns the Bushman language with its peculiar "click" sounds just as easily as he
could learn, say, the English language, and a European child can learn the Bushman
language. Human genes evidently enable us to speak, but they have nothing to do
with what particular language we utilize in speaking. Even less do they determine just
what any of us chooses to say in any language.
Biological evolution is, by and large, utilitarian. It is not programmed inside the
organism; neither mankind nor any other species was foreordained to evolve. This
does not mean that mankind arose by "pure chance," as Monod claims in his now
famous book. The role of so-called chance in evolution is outside the framework of
this article. Evolution is a creative response of living matter to its environment: it
maintains or improves the adaptedness of a living species to its surroundings.
However, evolutionary changes are not imposed on the organism by the environment.
The environment, the outside world, presents challenges to the species living in it. A
species may or may not respond by adaptive genetic changes. Failure to respond may
lead to diminution of abundance and eventually to extinction. Successful responses
allow the species to survive and to expand.
Adaptation to the same environment may however occur by different means. For
example, some desert plants cope with dryness by various devices which reduce
evaporation, while others grow, flower, and mature seed very rapidly when moisture
is available. Our apelike ancestors were not bound to respond to the challenges of
their environments by becoming human; they might just as well have become other
species of apes. In reality, they did however respond by evolving the genetic basis of
culture, language, and ethics. The environments, which are "natural" for mankind in
the sense that the human species is biologically committed to live in them, are
environments contrived by man's cultures. Mankind could not survive for long in the
environments of its ancestors of ten thousand years ago, not to speak of a million
years ago. It is egregious nonsense to call these environments "natural," and yet this
is a cliché frequently used.
More than a century ago, Darwin concluded that "moral sense or conscience"
developed in human evolution as an outgrowth of what he called "social instincts."
Considered purely biologically, mankind has become by far the most successful form
of life evolution ever produced. Mankind has inherited the earth; it has no serious
competitors, and other biological species exist on its sufferance; unlike most other
biological species, it is unlikely to become extinct, except through some kind of
suicidal readiness. In the words of Hallowell: "Man, unlike his animal kin, acts in a
universe that he has discovered and made intelligible to himself as an organism not
only capable of consciousness but also of self-consciousness and reflective thought.
3
But this has been possible only through the use of speech and other extrinsic
symbolic means that have led to the articulation, communication, and transmission of
culturally constituted worlds of meanings and values. An organized social life in man,
since it transcends purely biological and geographical determinants, cannot function
apart from communally recognized meanings and values.'' (8)
Meanings and values are "culturally constituted." They are communicated and
transmitted from generation to generation by instruction and learning from parents,
teachers, playmates, books, and are nowadays called "media." There are no genes for
meanings and values; yet it is the human genetic endowment which makes
articulation and transmission possible. Human infants are born with a capacity to
become, in Waddington's words, "ethicizing beings," that is, with a capacity to acquire
ethics and values but without any specific innate ethics or values. Furthermore, "it is
only man who becomes an 'ethicizing being' and 'goes in for ethics.'" (9)
Do animals other than man lack capacity for ethics? Students of animal behavior as
eminent as Rensch and Thorpe (10) believe that rudiments of something like moral
sense may be present. For example, dogs may behave as though they have guilt
feelings and bad conscience. Yet I agree with Simpson that "it is nonsensical to speak
of ethics in connection with any animal other than man.... There is really no point in
discussing ethics, indeed one might say that the concept of ethics is meaningless,
unless the following conditions exist: (a) There are alternative modes of action; (b)
man is capable of judging the alternatives in ethical terms; and (c) he is free to
choose what he judges to be ethically good. Beyond that, it bears repeating that the
evolutionary functioning of ethics depends on man's capacity, unique at least in
degree, of predicting the results of his action." (11)
The Book of Genesis gives an unexcelled poetical account of the decisive evolutionary
step from animal to man: "And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one
of us, to know good and evil." (12) The capacity to know and to foresee the
consequences of one's own and of other people's actions is, indeed, the fundamental
biological precondition for becoming an ethicizing being. Both as an individual and as
a species, man acquires ethics when he gains knowledge about the world and his
place therein, and when this knowledge gives him foresight. He is held responsible for
his actions if he knows their consequences. It is futile to look for special genes for
ethics or for values. It is the genetic endowment as a whole which makes us human.
Not special genes but the total genetic system of our species makes us capable of
symbolic thought, of acquisition and transmission of knowledge by means of
language, of self-awareness and death awareness, and hence makes us ethicizing
beings.
IS MAN INHERENTLY GOOD OR INHERENTLY EVIL?
As indicated above, it makes no sense to ascribe ethics to animals other than man.
Nevertheless, one may say without contradiction that certain kinds of behavior found
in animals would be ethical or altruistic and others unethical and egotistic, if these
behaviors were exhibited by men. For example, the behavior of workers and soldiers
among ants and termites strikes us as a model of unselfish devotion to a common
cause; by contrast, the exclusion of many males of red grouse from feeding grounds
by the more successful males strikes us as cruel because the excluded individuals are
effectively condemned to die. Examples of this sort can be multiplied indefinitely.
Some nineteenth-century writers and also biologists were fond of describing nature as
"red in tooth and claw."

4
The behavior of animals, no less than their anatomies and physiologies, is shaped by
natural selection in the evolutionary process. It is therefore not inconceivable that
man could have some behavior patterns and proclivities built into his genetic
constitution during his evolution. The evidence of such genetic programming, residing
ultimately in the DNA of the sex cells, is in many ways confusing and contradictory. It
would be out of place to discuss it here in detail, but certain features are relevant to
our subject. First of all, men are not genetically uniform in their temperaments and
inclinations. Though the evidence is not as complete and detailed as we may wish it
to be, it is safe to say that there are genetic variations in intelligence, temperament,
special abilities, tastes, and consequently in behavior. A tall, muscular, athletic boy
with features conforming to the popular ideas of good looks may be expected to
behave differently from a not so well formed or physically weak individual. An
individual with an obvious musical talent, or mathematical ability, or aptitude for
painting or versifying may well choose a different lifework or career from individuals
not so endowed.
However, it cannot be insisted too strongly that all these variations condition one's
behavior, bias one's choices, but they do not amount to rigid determination. Moreover,
and this is crucial, the manifestation of a genetic endowment depends on the social,
economic, and educational environment in which its carrier is placed. We all know
edifying stories of poor but talented youngsters working their way toward
achievement; no stories are written about the equally talented ones who did not
succeed. The basic fact is still that most humans can be brought up and trained for
many or most professions and occupations which the society needs. This statement
does not contradict the recognition that some people are more easily trained than
others for some occupations, and that there are some callings, such as conductor of a
symphony orchestra, for which only a small minority of individuals are qualified by
their genetic endowments.
An appalling amount of printed paper, time, energy, and words have been wasted on
disputes of whether aggression and violence, or amity and kindness, are biologically
given, inborn, genetic drives, instincts, or imperatives in the human species.
Ethnologists, students of animal behavior, have described a wonderful variety of
aggressive behaviors, threat displays, dominance rivalries, pecking orders, and
territorial defenses in many animals, including primates, the nearest relatives of man.
It is no wonder that even so outstanding a scientist as Konrad Lorenz (13) succumbed
to the temptation of ascribing to man some of these things as innate instincts. Of the
ways the findings of ethology have been twisted by some sensationalist popular
writers on alleged territorial imperatives, the less said the better.
Lorenz's argument is briefly as follows. Aggression in animals is usually ritualized; a
threat of violence from a stronger dominant animal is answered by a weaker
subordinate one by an innately fixed gesture of submission. This gesture of
submission acts as biological lightning rod -- the threat is not followed by an attack.
Thus the threat of aggression rarely overgrows into actual attack, and neither the
aggressor nor the aggressed suffers bodily harm. The trouble with man is that he has
invented powerful means of aggression, from stones to knives to bullets to hydrogen
bombs, and no corresponding ritualized behavior to appease the aggressor. The really
astonishing thing to me is that Lorenz, while he is of course fully aware of the
psychological restructuralization which conferred on mankind mental abilities which
none of its ancestors had, failed to see that these can function to defuse aggression.
A male baboon or a wolf who threatens to use his canine teeth to sever the jugular of

5
another individual has not learned the commandment "Thou shalt not kill"; still less
can he foresee the effects of killing on baboonkind wolfkind. When I am occasionally
mad at somebody, I do not want to kill him even if appeasement gestures are not
forthcoming. Apart from foreseeing unpleasant consequences of doing so, the
abhorrence of any such act against another human being is a firmly rooted part of my
cultural heredity.
The theory of innate goodness and gentleness of man is just as far off the mark.
Montagu assures us that "babies are born good, and desirous of continuing to be
good." (14) It is an evil society which frustrates their desires to be good and makes
them grow into varying degrees of badness. I really do not know how to elicit an
inborn moral philosophy from a baby; in my limited experience I find babies usually
desirous of much simpler and matter-of-fact benefits. Anyway, if it is true that a good
society makes babies become good men, and a bad one makes them bad, then I
conclude that babies are born neither good nor bad. They are born with the
potentialities of developing into good or into bad men according to the circumstances
which they encounter. This is, of course, just what the evolutionary view of human
nature lends support to. (15)
I do not feel qualified to judge to what extent this view may be in agreement or in
opposition to the insights of various psychoanalytic schools. Of the Freudian triad id-
ego-superego, the last is the most recent in evolutionary development, the genetic
basis for which exists presumably only in the human species.
It is a part of man's most fundamental adaptation, which is culture. Culture is not
inherited through genes, although the capacity to acquire culture is so inherited. The
acquisition of culture occurs through learning and education. Educability, or
indoctrinability as Campbell (16) prefers to call it, is therefore the paramount
genetically established human capacity. Educability does not mean only getting good
grades in school; this concept is much more inclusive -- it means the ability to learn
whatever is necessary to function as a member of a human society. Educability is
unfortunately not as selective as one might wish it to be. People learn bad habits and
ideas as easily as good ones.
One can be brought up to be gentle or violent, peaceful or aggressive.
Anthropologists have ample evidence to show that cultures of different peoples
demand different modes of behavior in their members, and that these demands are
usually complied with. Some cultures encourage extroversion and others introversion,
combativeness or meekness, swagger or modesty, profligacy or parsimony. What
some admire others find ridiculous or obnoxious. On the other hand, some persons
seem to be predisposed to learn certain kinds of behavior more readily than others,
and the predisposition may be genetic. Human males, and especially young males,
are more prone to externalize aggressive and violent impulses than are females. To
some extent this may be culturally rather than biologically determined--boys are
expected to develop what corresponds to the popular idea of manliness, and girls to
behave in "feminine" fashion. Yet at the base there is still this ineluctable
chromosomal difference -- two X chromosomes in the female, one X and one Y
chromosome in the male.
LIMITATION OF BIOLOGICAL ETHICS
Evolution by natural selection has made man neither good nor bad, addicted neither
to lofty nor to base values. It has instead conferred upon man his educability,
plasticity of behavioral characteristics. It has made man an ethicizing being, capable
6
of learning, and perhaps of discriminating and of choosing more or less freely among
different ethics. Natural selection has acted as it did because educability is the key
adaptation in a being that lives in culture-created environments and that fully
depends on culture for survival and for biological as well as spiritual welfare.
One may, however, ask a naïve but in spite of this reasonable question: Would it not
have been even more advantageous if, in addition to educability, mankind had been
endowed with antlike or termitelike, genetically fixed, selfless devotion to the good of
the species? Perhaps this would have been good indeed, but doing so is unfortunately
beyond the capability of natural selection. Let it always be remembered that natural
selection is not some sort of divinity or a good spirit which can invariably achieve
what is in the best interest of the species on which it acts. Its inherent limitation is
that it has no foresight; in a brazenly opportunistic manner, it enhances the
adaptedness of a population or of a species in the environment that exists where and
when it acts, even if the genetic changes it produces will be maladaptive in the future.
It should never be forgotten that by far the commonest finale of most evolutionary
lines is extinction, and that the evolution of the lines that became extinct had been
controlled by natural selection.
What is referred to as unselfishness or altruism the human level, and ostensibly
similar kinds of behavior in animals other than man, can be achieved by natural
selection only with difficulty and under special circumstances. This problem was first
submitted to analysis by Haldane in 1932 and by Wright in 1949. (17) For this
analysis, altruism is defined as behavior which benefits other individuals but harms or
places at a disadvantage the altruist. An obvious example is a person who tries to
rescue a drowning man at the risk of drowning himself. In contrast, selfishness or
egotism is behavior directed exclu sively to the benefit of the egotist, refusing to help
other individuals except at a price advantageous to him. The extreme of selfishness is
criminal behavior, which harms somebody else for the criminal's gain. Suppose now
that a large population contains a certain proportion of individuals genetically
predisposed to altruism and some predisposed to egotism or criminality, all as defined
above. The result will most likely be that the incidence of the genes for altruism will
dwindle and those for egotism will increase because of the disadvantages or
advantages incurred by the respective behaviors.
There are however ways to escape the impasse. As Haldane pointed out, if individuals
who benefit are relatives of the altruist, they are likely also to carry genes for
altruistic behavior. Therefore, even if the altruist is incapacitated or loses his life,
genes that resemble his may be conserved or multiplied. The most obvious example
is self-sacrifice for the benefit of one's progeny. This is not at all uncommon among
animals, parents risking their lives to defend their children against predators or other
dangers. Such behavior makes obvious biological sense, and it is not difficult to
envisage its origin by natural selection. This is especially true in long-lived animals
which breed repeatedly; the value of an individual to the species gradually decreases
with increasing age. Postreproductive individuals can most readily afford being
altruists, by assisting the young at whatever risk to themselves. On the other hand,
self-sacrifice for relatives less closely related than parents and children makes little
biological sense, unless very many are likely to be saved by an altruistic act. Self-
sacrifice the benefit of the progeny of other individuals is uncommon. Likewise, while
parents run risks for the benefit of children, children, as a rule, do nothing for their
parents, even if they are physically capable of being of service to them.

7
Some human behavior patterns which, in man, are charged with ethical evaluations
can reasonably be supposed to have been shaped in evolution under control of natural
selection. Not surprisingly, these behavior patterns are exactly the ones which most
resemble the behaviors of animals other than man. The human family is perhaps the
oldest social institution, having also the most evident biological function. Motherhood
has always been esteemed a virtue, even in societies in which women were
subjugated and treated little better than slaves. Children have always been cherished
and loved; parents often and willingly suffer discomfort, self-abnegation, and self-
sacrifice for the benefit of their own children, less often for those of their relatives,
and still less for unrelated children. Desire to have children is regarded as "natural"
and good, although abstinence from parenthood no longer meets censure and
disapproval. However, failure to take care of children once they are born and to
provide for their sustenance exposes the parents to condemnation: it is regarded as a
sign of moral turpitude. Infanticide, which has been practiced in many societies, is
considered hateful and horrifying, although in some situations it was virtually
indispensable for self-preservation of the family (the parents and other children left
alive) and of the tribe.
All these attitudes and evaluations are consistent with the demands of natural
selection acting on the individual level. This can hardly be said of many other ethics
and values that are recognized in most, if not all, human societies as valid at least in
theory (if not always in practice). For example, it is wrong to steal, or swindle, or rob
or waylay, or murder other people, especially members of one's own group or society
and, by extension, any human being. This is wrong even if so doing is profitable, the
misdeed is undetected, and no vengeance or retribution is to be feared. On the
contrary, generosity, rectitude, and veracity are praiseworthy, especially so if they
bring hardships to persons who practice them. Human life, that of a stranger no less
than that of a relative, is sacred (except in war). Life is to be preserved at all costs
(including that of incurably ill persons whose existence is sheer misery). At the
summit of ethics, we have the commandments of universal love, including of one's
enemies, service to others, and nonresistance to evil.
At the risk of oversimplification, we may distinguish two kinds ethics: family and
group (or species) ethics. Family ethics are shared by man with at least some
animals; they usually are genetically conditioned dispositions (although they can be
overcome by exercise of man's will); and they can be envisaged as products of
natural selection which promoted the genetic bases of these ethics in our ancestors as
well as in other animal species. Group ethics are products of biological but of cultural
evolution. They confer no advantage and may be disadvantageous to individuals who
practice them, although they are indispensable to human societies which could not
endure without them. Originating human group ethics through natural selection on
the individual level seems to be impossible, and through group selection improbable,
as we shall presently see.
GROUP SELECTION
Altruism is a paradigm of a behavior pattern disadvantageous individuals but
beneficial to groups, Mendelian populations, in which it occurs. Except when practiced
among family members, altruism will be discriminated against within a population
while egotism will be promoted by natural selection. But, as emphasized particularly
by Sewall Wright (18) about forty years ago, many species are arrays of semi-isolated
colonies, some consisting of small numbers of breeding individuals. Populations of
colonies in which some individuals carry genetic predispositions toward altruistic
8
behavior will be at an advantage compared with colonies consisting of egotists.
Furthermore, a colony which includes an altruist is likely to contain other individuals
with similar genes. Such colonies may increase and spread at the expense of those
lacking altruists or composed of egotists. Competition of colonies, populations,
groups, may conceivably lead to spread of altruistic predispositions to the whole
species.
Whether such group selection occurs at all is under debate. It is surely not common,
except under very special circumstances. Ants, termites, and other social insects are
striking examples of altruistic behavior, which some philosophers and naturalists have
naïvely advanced as models that human societies ought to emulate. The catch is that
the worker and soldier "castes" of social insects do not as rule reproduce. The
reproductive function in an ant colony is relegated to fertile females, so-called
queens, and fertile males. A sterile worker or a soldier who perishes for the benefit of
the colony does not risk being outbred by his more cowardly relatives. The contrary is
true--a sacrifice which promotes the welfare of the society as a whole, including the
reproductive "caste," promotes also the spread of the genes that favor self-sacrificial
behavior. Conversely, cowardice may save a worker or a soldier but hurt the society.
The species is selected in favor of what on the human level would be called altruistic
and counterselected against egotistic behavior. (19)
The evolutionary patterns of social insects are utterly different from those of mankind
and other animals. We have no sterile castes whose genes are not transmitted to
posterity. The Scottish zoologist Wynne-Edwards nevertheless argued with great
eloquence that group selection may be taking place. In red grouse, and probably in
many other birds and mammals, some members of a colony refrain from reproduction
when the population reaches the limits of its environmental resources. Wynne-
Edwards (20) believes that group natural selection has caused these individuals to
sacrifice their procreational potential for the benefit of the colonies and of the species.
Wynne Edwards's claims were severely criticized by Hamilton, Williams, and Lewontin,
(21) who found that group selection of the kind envisaged by Wynne-Edwards is very
rare, if it exists all. In Hamilton's words, "The social behaviour of a species evolves in
such a way that in each distinct behaviour-evoking situation the individual will seem
to value his neighbors' fitness against his own according to the coefficients of
relationship appropriate to that situation." (22) Human universalistic ethics must have
a source other than biological natural selection.
EVOLUTION AND HUMAN GROUP ETHICS
A perceptive analysis of the problem of evolutionary ethics has been given by
Simpson: "There are no ethics but human ethics, and a search that ignores the
necessity that ethics be human, relative to man, is bound to fail.... The means to
gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and cultural evolution, but human
choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution. It is futile to
search for an absolute ethical criterion retroactively in what occurred before ethics
themselves evolved. The best human ethical standard must be relative and particular
to man and is to be sought rather in the new evolution, peculiar to man, than in the
old, universal to all organisms. The old evolution was and is essentially amoral. The
new evolution involves knowledge, including the knowledge of good and evil." (23)
There is an interesting and suggestive difference between what we have called family
ethics and group ethics. The former are or less universal in mankind, while the latter
vary greatly in different cultures. For example, despite many differences in child-

9
rearing techniques, parental love and often self-sacrificial devotion of parents on
behalf of their children are universal. In contrast, the approved or even prescribed
way of conduct in some cultures is aggressive and in others submissive, warlike or
peaceful, extrovert or introvert, loquacious or reticent, sexually free or straitlaced.
Some societies enjoin marriage to be monogamous, while others regard polygamous
or polyandrous marriage fit and proper. The contrast is explicable if family ethics are
genetically and group ethics culturally conditioned. The former are products of natural
selection and the latter of cultural tradition. Ethical relativism, which for a time was
fashionable among some anthropologists and sociologists, went even further. The
concepts of good and bad, right and wrong were declared devoid of any objective
meaning; they express simply emotional attitudes implanted by social pressures,
especially during child socialization and training. Ethical relativism gives warrants to
those who choose to rebel and reject the ethics and values of their societies.
Many thinkers have endeavored to show that ethics and values are not entirely
arbitrary and that one is not free to accept or reject them according to one's caprice.
As mentioned it the beginning, Saint Thomas Aquinas held the moral law to be
immanent in human "nature." Pragmatists such as John Dewey and utilitarians such
as Moore held that some human acts and the state of affairs which they produce are
good and right while others are bad or wrong, regardless of whether some people
hold them appealing and others repugnant. Unfortunately, a variety of criteria are
proposed to distinguish the right from the wrong, and nothing like unanimity is
reached. Thus, greatest happiness of the greatest number of humans, greatest total
amount of happiness or well-being, satisfaction of not merely the actor's own desires
but also of those of all others who are affected by his actions, love of other persons,
of mankind, and of God, have all been recommended.
It has also been claimed that, although ethics and values are not necessarily
fashioned by natural selection, criteria for their validation can be found in general
trends of biological evolution. In his new religion called evolutionary humanism, Julian
Huxley avoids proposing any new ethics and accepts by implication the ethical system
evolved by Judeo-Christian religious thought, which he nevertheless denounces as a
delusion. However, he puts forward a criterion by which one can evaluate rules of
behavior and judge them to be good or bad. This is the criterion of "evolutionary
direction." In his words, "Anything which permits or promotes open development is
right, anything which restricts or frustrates development is wrong." (24)
Waddington's views have a greater clarity and precision. Man is born with "a certain
innate capacity to acquire ethical beliefs but without any specific beliefs in particular."
Ethical beliefs can be validated through evolutionary studies: "The processes of
evolution have produced the phenomenon that the human race entertains ethical
beliefs. Man can then, not so much through experiment but rather by taking account
of its results, use evolution to guide the way in which those beliefs will develop in the
future." The function of ethicizing is, he thinks, "to mediate the progress of human
evolution." Waddington then defines wisdom "as a belief which fulfils sufficiently the
function of mediating evolutionary advance. One could, therefore, not question the
wisdom of evolutionary advance since that is a matter of definition." (25)
This, I fear, is altogether too easy. No directions or trends in evolution are really
general or universal. Trends vary from group to group and from time to time.
Although every biologist intuitively feels that evolution has been on the whole
progressive, nobody has succeeded in defining what constitutes evolutionary progress
or advancement. But this is not the most serious objection to the Huxley-Waddington
10
evolutionary ethics. Suppose that we do find that biological evolution in general, or
human evolution in particular, has been going in a certain direction. Why must we
necessarily consider this direction good? Why must wisdom be, and that by definition,
helping the evolutionary process to go on as it went in the past? To quote Simpson:
"It is reasonable to consider capacities for feeling, knowing, willing, and
understanding as improvements, and if that highly restricted definition is agreed
upon, the matter can be discussed clearly in those terms." (26) The wisdom of
considering just these capacities as improvements is not, however, deducible from our
knowledge of the evolution; it comes from the general body of human wisdom, much
of which has evolved even before biology as a science started to exist. To be sure,
one biological species, mankind, which developed these capacities to the greatest
extent is biologically the most successful of existing species. However, is this
pragmatic test an irrefutable validation of ethics? Is success always right?
Mankind has discovered that it is a product of evolution
and that evolution is an ongoing process. By this
discovery, man has gained the right to judge the merits
of evolution. The past can not be changed regardless of
our judgment, but man is no longer obliged to accept
future evolution caused by blind and impersonal forces
of nature. Evolution may eventually be managed and
directed. Must it go in the same direction in which it
went in the past? Possibly so, yet only provided that
this direction appears, in the light of human wisdom,
good and desirable. It is not good by definition. (27)
GROUP ETHICS AND THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE
The conclusion is warranted that group ethics are not built into the human genotype
by natural selection. Nor can they be validated through knowledge of the direction of
the biological evolutionary development, even if we could unambiguously establish
what that direction was or is. Group ethics are products of evolution of human
culture, at least largely, if not entirely, evolution on an extrabiological (or, if you
prefer, suprabiological) level.
Attempts have nevertheless been made to envisage the shaping-up of the systems of
group ethics and values by a process analogous to natural selection, but taking place
on the social rather than the biological level. I choose the recent article of Burhoe
(28) as perhaps the most interesting and radical effort of its kind. Burhoe speaks of
"natural selection of the culturetype" (which Burhoe believes to be analogous to
genotype on the biological level), "natural selection in the brain," and "natural
selection in a community of brains." New ideas, or new variants of old ideas, behavior
patterns, ethics, cultural or technological inventions, and "culturetypes" are
analogized with mutations on the biological level. Some of these variants prove
"viable," and they spread and eventually replace the old ideas and ethics as
components of the "culturetypes" in human populations. Burhoe postulates "the
equivalence of the mighty acts of God in history with the operation of natural
selection," and believes that "if you trust in the Lord of natural selection, you need
not fear that the wicked will triumph." (29)
11
Alas, I trust in the Lord of natural selection no more than in the lords of the Pentagon.
Reference has already been made to the fact that natural selection on the biological
level eventually results in a decided majority of evolutionary lines in extinction of
these lines. There is no valid reason to assume that the lines that become extinct
could not perfectly well survive and even flourish in some environments that
happened to be inaccessible to them. They could have survived also if they possessed
more ample supplies of genetic variance at the critical time. Is the so-called natural
selection on the sociocultural level any more trustworthy? There is no question that
some sociocultural traits make their individual carriers, as well as populations in which
they occur, successful and other traits unproductive in a cultural, economic, as well as
plain biological sense. The worldwide spread and dominant position of peoples of
European extraction were due not to their biological superiority (although some of
them liked to claim just that) but rather to their possession of efficient weapons and
technologies. On the opposite side of the ledger, the religious sect of Shakers
considered sex so sinful and wicked that it enjoined abstinence from sex on all its
members. As a result, very few Shakers are left. Whether or not goodness and
honesty triumphed, and evil and wickedness lost, in human history, not only always
but even as a rule, is for historians to decide. I am far from convinced that this happy
idea is valid. Some biologists like to restrict the term "evolution" to biological
evolution only. This is unnecessary if evolution is defined as a theory which maintains
that "the current state of a system is the result of a more or less continual change
from its original state." (30)
Evolution has taken place on the cosmic, biological, and human levels, and these
three kinds of evolution are parts of one grand process of universal evolution. This
conception makes sense scientifically, philosophically, religiously, and aesthetically.
Recognition of the universality of evolution obliges us to exercise the greatest caution
in studies of the phases or subdivisions of the evolutionary process. Processes,
mechanisms, and methods whereby evolution is brought about on the inorganic,
biological, and human levels ought not be confused but clearly and unambiguously
distinguished. Natural selection is differential reproduction of living systems. It
changes the instructions for developmental patterns coded in DNA. Changed ideas,
ethics, technologies, etc., are transmitted by teaching, example, imitation, learning,
rather than through the genes. Burhoe is aware of this distinction, but he finds
analogies between "natural selection" of ideas and ethics and natural selection of
genotypes irresistibly seductive. I believe that the differences are, in this case, far
more important than analogies. Any experienced teacher knows that analogies are
valuable pedagogical devices. They are, however, treacherous taken literally. I do not
accept the idea that "the process of natural selection may be said to be a reformation
of the doctrine of god" (31) (either with a capital or a small G).
Campbell takes a somewhat different view of the problem of origin of group ethics.
His approach is made clear in the title and in of the subtitles of his article: "On the
Genetics of Altruism and the Counter-hedonic Components in Human Culture," and
"On the Conflict between Social and Biological Evolution of Man." (32) Family ethics
have been shaped in man by natural selection, like the homologous behavior patterns
in many animals other than man. Altruistic dedication of parents to the welfare of
their children is an example of such behaviors. However, natural selection also favors
egotism, hedonism, cowardice instead of bravery (except in defense of one's children
and perhaps other relatives), cheating and exploitation of other persons (again
excepting one's family), etc. And yet, in all human societies one finds group ethics
that tend to counteract or forbid such "natural" behaviors and to glorify their
12
opposites: kindness, generosity, and even self-sacrifice for the good of others, of
one's tribe or nation, and finally of mankind.
What human societies attempt to achieve through nongenetic group ethics social
insects have achieved by genetic means. Campbell rightly infers that "man can have
achieved his social insect-like degree of complex social interdependence only through
his social and cultural evolution, through the historical selection and cumulation of
educational systems, intragroup sanctions, supernatural (superpersonal,
superfamilial) purposes, etc." And further: "The commandments, the proverbs, the
religious 'law' represent social evolutionary products directed at inculcating tendencies
that are in direct opposition to the 'temptations' representing for the most part the
dispositional tendencies produced by biological evolution.'" (33)
Campbell's argumentation is, I think, flawless. I would however stress more than he
does that natural selection has not made man inherently evil (as so readily assumed
by believers in original sin and territorial and other "imperatives"). Whatever
proclivities to selfishness and heedless hedonism man may have, he also has a
genetically established educability which permits him to counteract these proclivities
by means of culturally devised group ethics. Natural selection for educability and
plasticity of behavior, rather than for genetically fixed egotism or altruism, has been
the dominant directive agency in human evolution. Furthermore, the genetically
conditioned family ethics bear a greater resemblance to the nongenetic altruistic
ethics than they do to egotistic proclivities. Love and dedication to the welfare of
one's children and other close relatives become extended in cultural evolution to
include wider and wider circles of people, eventually mankind as a whole. All
members of the human species should be loved as children or brothers or sisters.
Here, then, is the Christian commandment of universal love.
CONCLUSIONS
Man is an ethicizing being. Ethics are human ethics. They are products of cultural
evolution. The evolution of culture is, to be sure, made possible by the evolution of
the human genetic endowment, but it is not imposed or rigidly determined thereby.
Systems of ethics and values are distillates of human wisdom and of the experience of
living, not products of human genes. These systems are not identical in different
societies and
cultures, although some basic features are cultural
universals. One need not be a cultural relativist to
recognize that the variable features are often adaptive
to requirements of particular societies. As Durkheim
pointed out long ago, "The idea of society is the soul
of religion." But he recognized, as many other thinkers
did, the need for a universal ethical system capable of
securing allegiance of all mankind. Unfortunately, many people consider only their
own society's ethics suitable for universal acceptance. Some scientists would derive
all ethics from science, artists from aesthetics, traditionalists from traditional
religions. Yet what is needed is a synthesis. This cannot be based only on science,
only on aesthetics, only on mysticism or on revelation. Nothing less than a synthesis
of all these can be acceptable. We, scientists, should be particularly aware that life
rigidly determined by rational constraints evokes protest and rebellion in some
13
people. Dostoevsky described this rebellion with unsurpassed force in his Notes from
the Underground. The Underground Man declares that "I quite naturally want to live
in order to satisfy my entire capacity to live and not in order to satisfy only my
rationality, which may account for only one-twentieth of my capacity to live." Worse
still, if it were proved to him that inexorable laws of nature make it sensible and
advantageous for him always to act in a certain way, the Underground Man will
choose to be a madman, merely to insist that he is free to live according to his
"stupid will."
This revolt is perverse and destructive in my opinion. However, those who strive for a
religion in an age of science had better be aware of the fact that this perversity is no
longer hidden in undergrounds. It has become worldwide, especially among the
young, and is spreading. It has opened a gulf between generations which is wider
than a father-son dissension generally is. Fathers are blamed for bequeathing to their
children a society so depraved that their offspring reject it out of hand and embark on
a futile search for delusory substitutes. Lionel Trilling has devoted a book to the thesis
that this revolt of the young and the hippie movement have their roots in attitudes
like those of the Dostoevskian Underground Man.
The answer to the revolt against the alleged tyranny of rationality is not irrationality.
It is rather demonstration that rationality is compatible with human freedom. A man
who was a senior contemporary of many of us made an attempt to achieve a
synthesis, the main features of which may be acceptable in an age of science. I refer
to Teilhard de Chardin. His is not a new religion. It is a theology of nature rather than
a natural theology. Teilhard was a Christian, a mystic, and a scientist. He was accused
by some of his scientific critics of trying to invent scientific proofs of his religious
beliefs. This is sheer misunderstanding: nothing was more remote from Teilhard's
intentions. But in his view the evolutionary development has a religious meaning. In
his words: "To our clearer vision the universe is no longer a State but a Process. The
cosmos has become a Cosmogenesis. And it may be said without exaggeration that,
directly or indirectly, all the intellectual crises through which civilization has passed in
the last four centuries arise out of the successive stages whereby a static
Weltanschauung has been and is being transformed in our minds and hearts, into a
Weltanschauung of movement." (34) Even more emphatically: "By definition and in
essence Christianity is the religion of the Incarnation: God uniting Himself with the
world which He created, to unify it and in some sense incorporate it in Himself. To the
worshipper of Christ this act expresses the history of the universe." (35)
What does this have to do with the biological basis of ethics and values? Teilhard's
answer is as follows: "For the man who sees nothing at the end of the world, nothing
higher than himself, daily life can only be filled with pettiness and boredom." But "it is
mankind as a whole, collective humanity, which is called upon to perform the
definitive act whereby the total force of terrestrial evolution will be released and
flourish; an act in which the full consciousness of each individual man will be
sustained by that of every other man, not only living but the dead." (36)

NOTES

1. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, trans. Charles Kelbley (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co.,
1965).

14
2. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Bros.
1959).
3. Charles Darwin, The Decent of Man (London: Murray, 1871).
4. Julian S. Huxley. Man in the Modern World (New York: New American Library,
Mentor Books, 1948), pp. 7-8.
5. George Gaylord Simpson, This View of Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1964), p. 24.
6. John C. Eccles, Facing Reality: Philosophical Adventures of a Brain Scientist (New
York: Springer-Verlag, 1970). See also Eccles, "Cultural Evolution versus Biological
Evolution," this issue.
7. Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biology of Ultimate Concern (New York: New
American Library. 1967).
8. A. I. Hallowell, "Culture, Personality, and Society," in Anthropology Today, ed. A. L.
Kroeber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
9. C. H. Waddington, The Ethical Animal (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960; New
York: Atheneum, 1961). p. 100.
10. B. Rensch, Biophilosophy, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971); W.H.
Thorpe, Learning and Instincts of Animals (London: Methuen & Co., 1963).
11. George Gaylord Simpson, Biology and Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1969), pp. 143, 146.
12. Gen. 3:22.
13. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966).
14. A. Montagu, The Direction of Human Development (New York: Harper & Bros.,
1955).
15. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York:
Columbia University Press. 1970); "Unique Aspects of Man's Evolution." in Biology
and the Human Experience, ed. J. W. S. Pringle (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972).
16. Donald T. Campbell, "On the Genetics of Altruism and the Counter-hedonic
Components in Human Culture." Journal of Social Issues 28 (1972): 21-37.
17. J. B. S. Haldane. The Causes of Evolution (London: Longmans Green & Co.,
1932); Sewall Wright, "Adaptation and Selection," in Genetics, Paleontology and
Evolution, ed. G. L. Jepsen, George Gaylord Simpson, and E. Mayr (Princeton, N.
J.: Princeton University Press, 1949).
18. Sewall Wright, "The Roles of Mutation, Inbreeding, Crossbreeding, and Selection
in Evolution," Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Genetics (1932),
pp. 354-66.
19. E. O. Wilson, The Insect Societies (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1971).
20. V. C. Wynne-Edwards, Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior
(Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962).
21. W. D. Hamilton. "The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour - I," Journal of
Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): 1-16; G. C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural
Selection (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1966); R. C. Lewontin,

15
 "The Concept of Evolution," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed.
David L. Sills. 17 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 968), 5:202-10.
22. W. D. Hamilton. "The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour - II," Journal of
Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): 19.
23. George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution (New York: New American
Library, Mentor Books, 1951 ), pp. 15~56.
24. Julian S. Huxley, Evolution in Action (New York: Harper & Bros., 1953), p. 167.
25. Waddington (n. 9 above), pp. 26. 59, 176.
26. Simpson (n. 11 above), p. 142.
27. Dobzhansky (n. 7 above).
28. Ralph Wendell Burhoe, "Natural Selection and God," Zygon 7 (1972): 30-63.
29. Ibid.. pp. 39, 56.
30. Lewontin (n. 21 above). p. 203.
31. Burhoe. p. 35.
32. Campbell (n. 16 above).
33. Ibid., p. 32.
34. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Future of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1964),
pp. 261-62.
35. Ibid., p. 33.
36. Teilhard de Chardin (n. 2 above).

16