The new relevance of David Stove's critique of Darwinism.

IN THE Victorian Readers Eighth Book, nestled between "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Passing of Arthur", is Charles Lamb's story "The Origin of Roast Pork". The "great, lubberly boy", Bo-bo, is playing with fire under the house and accidentally burns it down. In the process, several piglets are killed. He pokes at one of them, burning his finger in the process with an adhering piece of hot crackling. As any young boy might, he sucks the wounded finger. The rest, as they say, is history. Soon, houses were being burnt down everywhere and both they and pigs became exceedingly scarce in the empire. Eventually, of course, some great sage came up with the idea of the barbecue and the frequency of house fires diminished considerably.

Now, as an account of the origin of roast pork, this hypothesis, theory, conjecture--call it what you will-is possibly true, but probably not true. Parts of it are certainly believable, but other parts less so. The Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-94) thought of The Origin of Species much the same as we might think of "The Origin of Roast Pork". Had he kept such thoughts to himself, things might have been okay, but Stove actually published his thoughts in the book which is the subject of this article. Predictably enough, the result was that he was widely regarded, in certain circles, as being a raving loony or worse, an enemy of science. It was even worse than that. Had he been a bishop, a mufti, or a kadaicha man, certain excuses could have been made for this aberrant behaviour ("we can't expect this poor fool to think clearly on this matter because, after all, he's a Christian ..."). But the true horror was that he was an atheist and one who had published a couple of books against irrationalism in science and idealism in philosophy. It was all too much. There was only one course of action open to the Darwinian fundos--ignore the idiot.

This strategy, I am pleased to say, has not fully succeeded. The second edition of Darwinian Fairytales was recently published in America with a new foreword by Roger Kimball and there is every possibility that some scholars will actually read it for what it is--a serious work of criticism by a philosopher of the realist school. The first edition, published in 1995, did not really get into the mainstream of scientific or philosophical discussion on sociobiology. It is to be hoped that this edition will receive the airing, it deserves. There is, of course, one problem. Sociobiology is a moving target. What was gospel truth yesterday is rejected today, so that the familiar response from a cornered sociobiologist is, "But we've moved on from there so your argument is out of date".

And so when the suggestion was made to me recently that I might review the new American edition, I was initially doubtful of such an enterprise and decided to do some checking first. In the process of hunting down information I came across a scholarly paper, hot off the press, by D.S. Wilson and E.O. Wilson (the latter is the Grand Master of sociobiology). This I duly read and lo, all doubt about the current relevance of Stove's book disappeared. Here is the Abstract:

 
   Current sociobiology is in theoretical disarray, with 
   a diversity of frameworks that are poorly related to 
   each other. Part of the problem is a reluctance to 
   revisit the pivotal events that took place during the 
   1960s, including the rejection of group selection 
   and the development of alternative theoretical 
   frameworks to explain the evolution of cooperative 
   and altruistic behaviors. In this article, we take a 
   "back to basics" approach, explaining what group 
   selection is, why its rejection was regarded as so 
   important, and how it has been revived based on a 
   more careful formulation and subsequent research. 
   Multilevel selection theory (including group 
   selection) provides an elegant theoretical 
   foundation for sociobiology in the future, once its 
   turbulent past is appropriately understood. 

Stove's book, in short, is now more relevant than ever because the Wilsons have, yet again, thrown the whole debate open and revisited most of the classic problems highlighted by Stove.

THE FIRST IMPORTANT thing to say about Darwinian Fairytales is that it is not an attack on evolutionary theory. Stove is happy to accept the idea of biological evolution. What he objects to most strenuously is the supposition that a credible theory of biological evolution can be used to explain all human culture. In short, he objects to the claims of human sociobiology. For this reason, the title of his book is, I think, an unfortunate choice which should have been remedied in the second edition. Although he does indeed argue against certain ideas either explicit or implicit in Darwinism, his main targets are the sociobiologists. When many people see the title Darwinian Fairytales on the bookshelf they probably think, "Ah, another Bible-bashing Fundamentalist". Had the book been titled "The Biological Basis for Human Cultural Behaviour--a Critique" the long-hairs would have flocked to the counter to buy it.