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Spin Doctoring Darwin

Stephen J. Gould

Ousted from our cherished place in the center of the universe, we're still in denial

In a wonderfully wise and frequently cited statement, Sigmund Fraud identified the common
component of all major scientific revolutions: "Humanity has . . . had to endure . . . great outrages
upon its naive self-love." In other words, great revolutions smash pedestals--the previous props for
our cosmic arrogance. Freud then identified the two most significant fracturings. First, the
cosmological shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe: "when [humanity] realized that our
earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly
conceivable." Second, the Darwinian discovery of evolution, which "robbed man of his particular
privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to descent from the animal world."
Freud then hinted that the discovery and elucidation of the unconscious, in large pan his own work,
might smash a third pedestal in setting aside our convictions about mental rationality.

This statement suggests a criterion for judging the completion of scientific revolutions-namely,
pedestal smashing itself. Revolutions are not consummated when people accept the physical
reconstruction of the universe thus implied, but when they grasp the meaning of this reconstruction
for the demotion of human status in the cosmos. The two phenomena--re-alignment of the physical
universe and re-assessment of human status--are truly distinct, a separation best understood by
invoking an old mental strategy that has received a striking new name in contemporary culture:
spin doctoring.

In spin doctoring, an art practiced best by politicians from time immemorial, one accepts a sorry
fact, but provides an interpretation based entirely on the silver lining said to accompany all dark
clouds. For example, Dr. Pangloss of Voltaire's Candide, surely the greatest spin doctor in all
Western literature, stated that syphilis, inadvertently transmitted from the New World to Europe,
might be unpleasant but that, on balance, all must be for the best because the Americas had also
provided such wonderful products as chocolate.

We may say, I think, that Freud's first revolution is complete in his pedestal-smashing sense. All
thinking people accept that we live on a peripheral hunk of rock on the edge of one galaxy among
gezillions--and no one seems enveloped by cosmic angst, or despairing about the meaning of
human life, on these grounds. (Perhaps we have come to terms through the passage of centuries,
for the new cosmology did not always seem so unthreatening, and we have not forgotten Galileo's
torment. Many early versions of heliocentrism retained the pedestal by placing our own personal
star, the sun, in the center of a limited universe.)

But having spent a professional lifetime explicating and defending evolution in both public and
technical fora, I feel certain that Freud's second revolution has not been able to surmount a mental
roadblock. Evolution still floats in the limbo of our unwillingness to face the implications of
Darwinism for the cosmic estate of Homo sapiens. Physical reconstruction, the first step in a
Freudian revolution, has been accomplished: All thinking people accept the biological fact of our
"descent from the animal world." But the second stage, mental accommodation toward pedestal
smashing, has scarcely begun. Public perception of evolution has been so spin doctored that we
have managed to retain an interpretation of human importance scarcely different, in many crucial
ways, from the exalted state we occupied as the supposed products of direct creation in God's
image. (Note that I am not even discussing the sociologically significant fact that millions of
Americans, but no large numbers in any other Western nation, don't accept evolution at all, and
continue to espouse the literal reading of Genesis for a creation of all life in a few days of twenty-

four hours. That some people cannot even take the first Freudian step only emphasizes the
particular fear and reluctance that this revolution raises in us.)

It takes no great philosophical or cultural acumen to recognize why the Darwinian revolution has
been most difficult to accept, and therefore remains least complete in the Freudian sense. I don't
think that any other ideological revolution in the history of science has ever so strongly or directly
impacted our view of our own meaning and purpose. (Some scientific revolutions, though equally
portentous and revisionary in their physical reconstruction, just don't pack as much oomph for the
human soul. For example, plate tectonics has thoroughly changed our view of the earth's history
and dynamics, but few people have staked the meaning of their lives upon the issue of whether or
not Europe and America were once physically connected, and whether or not continents reside
within thin plates floating over the earth's surface as new sea floor arises at oceanic ridges.)

I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the
following statement, which might be chanted a few times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to
force penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress,
but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of
life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again or perhaps any twig
with any property that we would care to call consciousness.

All the classic forms of evolutionary spin doctoring are designed to avoid the radical and unwanted
consequences of this mantra. Spin doctoring centers on two different subjects: the process of
evolution as a theory and mechanism: and the pathway of evolution as a description of life's
history. Spin doctoring for the process tries to depict evolution as inherently progressive and as
working toward some "higher" good in acting "for" the benefit of such groups as species or
communities (not just for advantages of individual organisms), thereby producing such desired ends
as harmonious ecosystems and well-designed organisms. Spin doctoring for the pathway reads the
history of life as continuous flux with sensible directionality toward more complex and more brainy
beings, thereby allowing us to view the late evolution of Homo sapiens as the highest stage, so far
realized, of this predictable progress.

How best can we illustrate that spin doctoring has had its pervasive and baleful effect, and that
public understanding of evolution lies immured in biases that prevent the completion of Darwin's
revolution in Freud's crucial sense of pedestal smashing? Well, I grew up in New York City, and I
remain a quintessentially partisan New Yorker. I still root for the Yankees after twenty-five years in
Boston, and my mental map of the United States matches the celebrated Steinberg New Yorker
cover, with Fifth Avenue essentially dividing the nation and the Hudson River near the Nevada-
California border. The United States is too diverse to have a canonical media source for identifying
the pulse of an educated culture--as the BBC might do in Britain, or l'Osservatore Romano in the
Vatican. But grant to this parochial New Yorker that the New York Times comes as close to such
a status as any American publication.

I therefore suggest that a compendium of commentary from the Times might give us some insight
into the spin doctoring of Darwin's revolution. I have been struck by three items that appeared in
the New York Times during the past year, for they represent primary components of the spin-
doctored view, yet all are stated with such assurance that evolution must have this meaning. I
therefore found them, in their collectivity, particularly compelling as an illustration of our deep miring
in the spin-doctored view of evolution as sensible and predictable progress, continuously moving
toward desired ends by working for the good of groups and communities.

1. Evolution for the collective good. On June 6, 1944. the Allied armies launched a great attack
that, without cynicism, may be regarded as one of history's finest efforts for global human good.

On the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1994, the New York Times lauded the invasion in
many from-page articles, and reprinted both General Eisenhower's announcement of the landings,
and their own editorial of praise from June 7, 1944. On the same day, the letters column of the
Times printed this more general commentary on working for the collective good--in response to an
earlier article in the Tuesday Science Times section that asked how sexual reproduction might
benefit the evolutionary success of individuals.

EVOLUTION BENEFITS SPECIES AS A WHOLE
To the Editor:

The question why sexual reproduction has evolved, should be asked not from the standpoint of
individuals . . . but from the standpoint of the species itself. While sexual reproduction continually
introduces mutations that can damage individuals of the species, the advantages of this continual
introduction of new genetic material into the gene pool is an evolutionary plus for that species. . . .
You miss the point. Evolution is not about a good deal for individual females or individual males,
but about a good deal for the species.

I am sorry, but the writer has missed the point. Darwin's central theory of natural selection is about
advantages ("good deals" if you will) that accrue to individuals, explicitly not to species. In fact, this
counter intuitive proposal--that individual bodies, not "higher" groups like species, act as units and
targets of natural selection-lies at the heart of Darwin's radicalism, and explains a large part of our
difficulty in grasping and owning his powerful idea. Natural selection may lead to benefits for
species, but these "higher" advantages can only arise as sequelae, or side consequences, of
natural selection's causal mechanism: differential reproductive success of individuals.

Warm and fuzzy ideas about direct action for the good of species represent a classical form of spin
doctoring that has precluded proper understanding of natural selection for more than a century. If
evolution worked explicitly for species, then we could soften the blow of Darwin's radicalism. The
transition from God's overt beneficence toward species to evolution's direct operation on species
permits a soft landing in transferring allegiance from creationism to evolution--for the central focus
on "higher" good as raison d'etre remains unchanged.

But Darwin's real theory of natural selection is uncompromising in kicking this prop away. Natural
selection is a theory of ultimate individualism. Darwin's mechanism works through the differential
reproductive success of individuals who, by fortuitous possession of features rendering them more
successful in changing local environments, leave more surviving offspring. Benefits accrue thereby
to species in the same paradoxical and indirect sense that Adam Smith's economic theory of
laissez faire may lead to an ordered economy by freeing individuals to struggle for personal profit
alone--no accident in overlap, because Darwin partly derived his theory of natural selection as a
creative intellectual transfer from Smith's ideas.

If we free individual businesses to act for their own benefit, Smith argues, then the most efficient
firms both drive out incompetent competitors and balance each other to provide an orderly
economy. But such order only arises as a side consequence, through the action of an "invisible
hand" in Smith's unforgettable phrase; all direct causality resides in the struggle among individuals.
Similarly, in Darwin's world, natural selection acts only for the benefit of individuals in reproductive
success (firms in profit, by analogy to Smith); well-designed organisms and balanced ecosystems
are side consequences.

We can say all we want about the beauty and radicalism of Darwin's central notion, but how do we
know that it is true? How can we tell that nature is Darwinian, rather than shaped by some other
set of evolutionary forces?

A convincing set of proofs lies around us, although this simple and powerful point is rarely
articulated in popular writing and therefore remains largely unappreciated. We begin with something
of a paradox. The proof of Darwinian nature does not inside in the best and classic cases of
organic design for optimal biomechanical function: the aerodynamic perfection of the bird's wing or
the hydrodynamic shaping of a fish's body. Darwin's natural selection, working for the reproductive
success of individuals, might build such excellence in design, but another kind of evolutionary force
that worked for the good of species might yield the same re-suit. Excellent wings are both good for
species and good for individual birds. To show that nature is Darwinian we need a set of
phenomena that can only be built by forces working for the benefit of individuals, and not for
species.

Such phenomena exist in abundance: organs and devices that aid individuals in sexual combat for
mates and matings against other individuals of the same species. Such organs cannot be
beneficial for species, since they only aid individuals in struggle against others of the same species
and cannot aid the species in competition against other species. Moreover, these organs are often
elaborate and devilishly clever; they represent enormous "investments" of evolutionary energy, not
mere frills. Much of evolution's causal effort must therefore be devoted to building such organs for
individual benefit.

The peacock's tail represents a classic case. This gaudy and brilliant, but cumbersome, structure
does the bird no good in a biomechanical sense (and probably acts as a positive disadvantage in
this regard). But peacocks use their showy tail to compete with other peacocks for the attention of
the peahen in the essential Darwinian activity of passing more genes along to future generations.
Showier tails help individual males compete with other males; they do not benefit the species. In
fact, fancy tails probably injure the species' prospects for extended geological longevity--and can
therefore only arise if evolution works for advantages of individuals.

But even this classic case is indirect, for the tail doesn't raise reproductive success by itself, but
only by impressing females or intimidating other males. A host of more direct adaptations work
explicitly for individuals in the reproductive act itself. For example, males may hold on to females
for weeks or months, thus assuring that no other sperm but their own can fertilize the eggs. (This
odd phenomenon, called amplexus in frogs, does the species no good, but surely boosts the
reproductive success of amplexing males.)

The ever diverse world of insects yields thousands of stunning examples (see William G.
Eberhard's remarkable book Sexual Selection and Animal Genitalia, and his article "Runaway
Sexual Selection," Natural History, December 1987, for details). Males of many species, for
example, will reach into the female's vulva and pull out the sperm from any previous matings
before depositing their own. Others, after mating, secrete a rocky substance that plugs the female
genitalia, blocking copulation with any other male--nature's chastity belt after the fact. These
examples of "sperm competition" (as professionals label the subject) can only evolve if natural
selection works for advantages of individuals, not of species.

2. Sensible directionlity. Another letter to the Times (January 8, 1995), again commenting upon a
previous report from the Science Times section, subtly illustrates a major theme in spin doctoring
the pathway of evolution (rather than the process). The correspondent objects to a sentence from
an article upholding the theory that dinosaurs disappeared in a cosmic catastrophe triggered by the
impact of a large extraterrestrial body:

DINOSAURS AND DESTINY
To the Editor:

In a Jan. 3 Science Times article you report on a theory that dinosaurs died out after an asteroid
hit sulfur-rich rock in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, producing a haze of sulfuric
acid that blocked sunlight for decades. Had the rock not been rich in sulfur, you say, "the dinosaurs
might well have survived the impact, thereby changing the course of evolution."

Actually, it was the demise of the dinosaurs that changed the course of evolution. Had the
dinosaurs not been wiped out, evolution would have continued on the same path it had been
following for at least 150 million years.

While I will not defend the Times's fuzzy language about "the course of evolution," the writer of the
letter labors under the false impression that life's history follows a definite path, and that
catastrophic episodes can only be read as disrupters of sensible continuity. I see nothing amiss in
what the Times wrote on January 3. If the impact hadn't occurred, dinosaurs would probably have
survived and evolution would then have proceeded differently from the pathway actually followed
during the past 65 million years (an alternative route, I hasten to add, that would almost surely
have kept mammals as small creatures in the interstices of a dinosaurian world, thus preventing
the origin of a peculiar group of large mammals with consciousness and the eventual invention of
the New York Times).

The error lies in the assumption that evolution, if not disrupted somehow, follows a path that will
sensibly continue into an indefinite future. But no such pathway exists. The course of evolution is
only the summation of its fortuitous contingencies, not a pathway with predictable directions. What
is the supposed pathway that evolution had followed for 150 million years before the disruption at
the end of the Cretaceous? For starters, this 150-million-year interval included a mass extinction
just as intense (and perhaps just as catastrophically triggered) as the later event that wiped out the
dinosaurs--the mass dying at the end of the Triassic period. More basically, evolution's
unpredictability is fractal and present at all scales. We can trace, in retrospect, what happened
during those 150 million years, and we may be able to explain the results in evolutionary terms. But
we could not have predicted the outcome at the outset, any more than we could have looked out
from Concord Bridge on April 19, 1775, and known that Eisenhower's forces would invade
Normandy 169 years later. Evolution has no pathway that goes forward in sameness if not
disrupted by externalities.

3. Continuous flux. Since my first two examples involved letters mistakenly critical of articles in
the Science Times section, let me strive for journalistic balance by exposing a spin-doctored
fallacy in a Science Times article of March 14, 1995.

Judging from the dozen or so requests that I later received for interviews and comments based
upon this article, the piece obviously inspired a great deal of interest and struck most readers as
strange, fascinating, and unexpected. I declined all the interviews because, as I explained, the
article was correct and had expressed something important about evolution. But the phenomenon
described was entirely expected and orthodox, not at all surprising--that is, unless one has adopted
a spin-doctored view of evolution.

The article, by William K. Stevens, bore the title: "Evolution of Humans May at Last Be Faltering"
and opened with the following lead sentence: "Natural evolutionary forces are losing much of their
power to shape the human species, scientists say, and the realization is raising tantalizing
questions about where humanity will go from here. Is human evolution ending, ushering in a long
maturity in which Homo sapiens persists pretty much unchanged?" (Oh how I love that universal
and anonymous appeal to authority--"scientists say"!) The article then gave an accurate account of
the fact that human anatomy has not altered substantially for the past 100,000 years or so. The
Cro-Magnon people who painted the great caves of Europe some twenty to thirty thousand years

ago were indistinguishable from us.

Interesting fallacies are often subtle, often based upon hidden assumptions un-stated and probably
unconsciously held. As a professional evolutionist, I find nothing whatever surprising about human
stability over 100,000 years. This interval, while not quite so short as an evolutionary eyeblink,
represents a pretty damned small unit of geological time. Most species are stable during most of
their geological duration. Large, successful, well-adapted, mobile, geographically widespread
species are particularly prone to stability--because evolutionary events are concentrated in
episodes of branching speciation within small, isolated populations. Homo sapiens possesses all
these attributes for stability, so why should we be surprised at the reported results? And why
should Stevens's article have elicited such a strong response of virtual astonishment?

I can only conclude that the spin-doctored view of life's history conceives of evolution within
species as a continuous flux of improvement and adaptation. We are particularly prone to expect
such a result for our own species. After all, we evolved from small-brained ancestors, and we have
achieved our exalted status by cranial enlargement. Shouldn't this process, as intrinsic, be
continued during our period of maximal spread and success? Therefore, if we have truly stabilized,
isn't something funny going on, and mustn't that something be an imposition of our cultural
discoveries upon our biological estate? No, no, a thousand times, no. Our stability is orthodox--at
least within a fully revolutionary Darwinism with smashed pedestals.

Correct the three error, and we may grasp evolution as a process causally driven by struggle
among individuals for reproductive success, and not by any principle working bountifully for the
good of species or any other "higher" entity in nature. We may then view life's history as an
unpredictable set of largely fortuitous, and eminently interruptible, excursions down highly
contingent pathways. And we will understand successful species as islands of temporary stability,
not as striving packages in a flux of constant improvement.

Just as the first error appeared in the Times on the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, the last occurred
on March 14, 1995, the date of the Times's 50,000th issue. The editor marked the occasion with
the restrained fanfare typical of a newspaper that still refuses to publish the funnies. Arthur Ochs
Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times Company, sent a memorandum to his staff: "The
best way we can celebrate is by insuring that our 50,001st edition is the best newspaper we can
possibly produce." Rather like evolution devoid of the spin doctoring that has so sadly prevented
the completion of Freud's revolution! Not the saccharine motto of faith cures for the past hundred
years: "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." But the toughness and true heroism
of a player up against a house with infinite resources: hang in there, as best you can, for as long
as you can. No ignobility, but only enlightenment, attends our reduction to appropriate size. For
when we smash pedestals, we grant a ray of freedom to our very own defining evolutionary
peculiarity, the human mind. I don't know if the truth can make us free, but I do believe that our
unique mentality thrives on this form of soul food, whatever the pain of lost illusions.