The Concept of Evolution

• The word evolution can refer generally to any development or specifically to biological development as taught by Charles Darwin in Origin of Species (1859).

• The notion of development was familiar to philosophers and biologists from Aristotle, evident in the growth of an individual animal or plant from embryo or seed to fully grown form.

• Before Darwin, thinkers considered that similar development occurred in the history of species or even the universe.

• Darwin’s theory denied that animals and plants were due to special creative acts of God, instead proposing they developed from earlier, dissimilar kinds.

• The laws of development in Darwinian theory are natural selection and the survival of the fittest.

• Example: In snowy regions, rabbits with lighter coloration survive better due to camouflage, while darker rabbits are preyed upon. Over time, lighter rabbits become more numerous.

• Natural selection explains the disappearance of monsters found only as fossils and the replacement by familiar animals.

• Historical examples include brown rats replacing black rats in 18th-century Great Britain.

• Even in biology, natural selection is only one of many tendencies influencing development.

• Darwinian evolution was soon applied figuratively to societies, institutions, religion, art, morals, and conduct.

• Evolutionary application sometimes implies changes follow natural selection and survival of the fittest.

• In studying human conduct, there is recognition of development in behavior and standards of judgment, with surviving conduct often more fitted to circumstances.

• Purely evolutionary ethics would define better conduct as simply more developed conduct later in history, which few moralists accept.

• Evolutionists may note that later conduct is factually better than earlier conduct, but do not define good in terms of development.

• Defining ethical terms via historical or biological development risks Moore’s naturalistic fallacy; “good” in common speech does not mean later in evolution.

• Darwinian theory links good conduct with survival, suggesting conduct that survives in a struggle for existence is better.

• Some evolutionists claim conduct that ensures individual or racial survival is good, but this is teleological, not evolutionary, as it sets prolongation of life as the ultimate end.

• Most so-called evolutionary ethics introduce a standard beyond evolution, showing instability in purely evolutionary theories.

• This instability is evident in Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary ethics, a major 19th-century example.