David Stove - Evolution

Evolution

In his final years Stove began to examine and criticize evolutionary biology. This surprised and dismayed many of his supporters. However, Stove's attack on biological evolution was not as radical as it appeared - he accepted evolution was true of all living things, and said he had no objection to natural selection being true of more primitive organisms. What he wanted to attack was the allegedly distorted view of human beings proposed by some "Ultra-Darwinists". For example, he misattributed J. B. S. Haldane's famous quip that he would "lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins" to the Oxford biologist W. D. Hamilton, who had recently developed ideas of kin selection, and suggested that such ideas are probably false, and certainly unverified. Stove argued that these sorts of strong claims are often made by hard-line sociobiologists, yet they are seldom pointed out even by many of their opponents.

Stove also argued that leading evolutionary biologists were confused about altruism, often talking as though altruism didn't really exist and was some sort of sham. What they should have said, Stove contended, was that they had explained the origins of altruism. But the damage has been done, according to Stove: many people now share this suspicion about altruism and this has, at least to some degree contributed to the growth of cynicism and selfishness.

Furthermore, Stove argued that evolutionary theorists have always had difficulties in trying to reconcile their theory with the fact that there appears to be no Darwinian fight for survival in modern times, and Stove harshly criticized what he saw as attempts to patch these perceived holes up by what he calls the 'Cave Men' theory - a view that T. H. Huxley often resorted to - which says that while the "Darwinian struggle" no longer occurs in existing human populations it did so amongst cave-men. The 'Hard Man' says that there is still an evolutionary struggle for survival going on all around us, only we are blind to it (Stove claimed that Herbert Spencer was a Hard Man). The 'Soft Man' however never notices the inconsistency.

Stove also claimed that the simple Malthusian view of population that many evolutionary scientists accept is not true of humans - humans do not continue expanding in population until they have eaten up all of their food supplies which then results in massive deaths from starvation. In fact, the population growth of richer nations is typically slower than that of poorer nations. (This sort of view has been defended in more recent years by population economists such as Julian Lincoln Simon.)

His essays on Darwinism were collected in the book Darwinian Fairytales.