Peering Up Above the Malthusian Abyss

Abstract

popularized by Dawkins, with its connotations (whether intended or not) of competition (‘‘struggle for life,’’ ‘‘nature red in tooth and claw,’’ ‘‘Red Queen,’’ etc.) This competitive view of life is very British indeed. As physical anthropologist Ken Weiss et al. (2011, p. 3) reminds us, ‘‘We have got our modern view of life from a railroad baron, a gentleman of the privileged gentry whose ancestors had helped launch the privately owned industrial revolution.’’ The gentleman’s name was Charles Darwin. In fact, as Marjorie Grene once keenly remarked, a good case can be made … for the existence of something about the Victorian state of mind that makes ‘‘utility,’’ whether in Bentham’s social thought or in the adaptationist bent of selection theory, seem self-explanatory. Adaptations, like utility generally, are means and explain what they explain not in themselves but in relation to ends. But is the end of survival really adequate for human as well as organic history? Whatever the answer, the point here is just: there is something teasing about the way in which both utilitarianism and selection theory