Living World / Evolution We All Live in Darwin's World
?Survival of the fittest? is helping us understand not only the origin of species but also love, politics, and even the cosmos.
by Karen Wright
From the March 2009 issue, published online February 11, 2009
Today the evolutionary worldview has expanded into analyses of economics and politics as well as of human mating behavior. It has enriched the ?rational choice? model long espoused by economists to explain human behavior in the marketplace.
Traditional economic models assume that people act exclusively in their self-interest, just as traditional evolutionary theory describes competition among individuals. But cooperation and altruistic tendencies also show up routinely in studies of economic behavior. People who stand to lose from progressive taxation, for example, may still vote for it. ?You can?t predict how people will vote on the issue of income redistribution based on their income,? says economist Herbert Gintis of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.
Gintis and other economists have noted [pdf] that the latest elaborations of Darwinian ideas can explain cooperation as well as competition in the economic arena, and they are modifying the rational-choice model accordingly. The template for cooperative behavior comes from so-called group selection, which holds that traits can persist or spread in a population even though they can be costly to the individual if they bestow an advantage on the group.
Behavior that is self-sacrificing might create such well-adapted societies that selfish individuals cannot compete with them. In the evolutionary view, group selection fostered pro-social tendencies such as honesty, trustworthiness, consideration, and loyalty?traits that were useful or necessary in the later development of civilization. ?Of course, these moral predispositions moderate rather than eliminate considerations of self-interest and loyalties to kith and kin,? Gintis wrote last March in the journal Science.
The selective tension between self-interest and collective welfare reflects a long-standing argument in political science. ?So much of the debate in the history of political theory ultimately comes down to a debate about human nature,? says Larry Arnhart, a political theorist at Northern Illinois University. In his blog Darwinian Conservatism, Arnhart uses evolutionary principles to critique political issues, such as the bailout packages approved last year by Congress. If humans are noble savages, given by nature to goodness, he argues, then government must take care not to corrupt our lofty intentions. If we are degenerate at heart, then government must act to rein in our base impulses. Because of the interplay of individual survival and group selection, evolutionary biology suggests we might be a little bit of both. ?A growing number of political scientists are looking to biological science for guidance on that,? Arnhart says.
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I have long noted that people who, in my opinion, know noting much at all about human nature base many of their political conclusions and ideas on just that feeble understanding. Even the scientists here are left guessing as to what is our real nature. The problem of course is that we do not know who we are because we do not know that we don't want to know who we are and we don't also want to know that. To know who you are you have to be able to feel what you feel.
At any rate, here is scientific proof of a kind as to why liberal thinking is superior to conservative thought because liberals emphasize cooperation and the welfare of the group, a superior evolutionary adaption over the cult of individualism gripping the United States.
?Survival of the fittest? is helping us understand not only the origin of species but also love, politics, and even the cosmos.
by Karen Wright
From the March 2009 issue, published online February 11, 2009
Today the evolutionary worldview has expanded into analyses of economics and politics as well as of human mating behavior. It has enriched the ?rational choice? model long espoused by economists to explain human behavior in the marketplace.
Traditional economic models assume that people act exclusively in their self-interest, just as traditional evolutionary theory describes competition among individuals. But cooperation and altruistic tendencies also show up routinely in studies of economic behavior. People who stand to lose from progressive taxation, for example, may still vote for it. ?You can?t predict how people will vote on the issue of income redistribution based on their income,? says economist Herbert Gintis of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.
Gintis and other economists have noted [pdf] that the latest elaborations of Darwinian ideas can explain cooperation as well as competition in the economic arena, and they are modifying the rational-choice model accordingly. The template for cooperative behavior comes from so-called group selection, which holds that traits can persist or spread in a population even though they can be costly to the individual if they bestow an advantage on the group.
Behavior that is self-sacrificing might create such well-adapted societies that selfish individuals cannot compete with them. In the evolutionary view, group selection fostered pro-social tendencies such as honesty, trustworthiness, consideration, and loyalty?traits that were useful or necessary in the later development of civilization. ?Of course, these moral predispositions moderate rather than eliminate considerations of self-interest and loyalties to kith and kin,? Gintis wrote last March in the journal Science.
The selective tension between self-interest and collective welfare reflects a long-standing argument in political science. ?So much of the debate in the history of political theory ultimately comes down to a debate about human nature,? says Larry Arnhart, a political theorist at Northern Illinois University. In his blog Darwinian Conservatism, Arnhart uses evolutionary principles to critique political issues, such as the bailout packages approved last year by Congress. If humans are noble savages, given by nature to goodness, he argues, then government must take care not to corrupt our lofty intentions. If we are degenerate at heart, then government must act to rein in our base impulses. Because of the interplay of individual survival and group selection, evolutionary biology suggests we might be a little bit of both. ?A growing number of political scientists are looking to biological science for guidance on that,? Arnhart says.
=====================
I have long noted that people who, in my opinion, know noting much at all about human nature base many of their political conclusions and ideas on just that feeble understanding. Even the scientists here are left guessing as to what is our real nature. The problem of course is that we do not know who we are because we do not know that we don't want to know who we are and we don't also want to know that. To know who you are you have to be able to feel what you feel.
At any rate, here is scientific proof of a kind as to why liberal thinking is superior to conservative thought because liberals emphasize cooperation and the welfare of the group, a superior evolutionary adaption over the cult of individualism gripping the United States.
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