Evolution: Education and Outreach

A familiar image is often used to represent human evolution. At the far left of the image, there is a small monkey-like creature, usually depicted walking on hands and knees. To the right of this creature, there is another, standing more upright, shorter than the next creature, to its right. At the far right of the picture, there is a human being, standing upright, with a familiar profile. Images of this kind have been copied into this posting. Note that the second comes from the Scientificblogging.com web site, where it is a permanent banner display marking out the section of the Life Sciences page about evolution.

It’s clear what this image is supposed to represent: the progressive evolution of the human species, starting with the monkey-like creature at the left, and ending on the right with the figure recognizable as a modern human being.

The problem with this image is that it doesn’t reflect current—and correct—thinking about how evolution works. The “ascending monkey” image suggests that the monkey is at the base of a linear progression from less advanced to more advanced. This seems to be the sense that the Smith-Cotton Marching Band wants to convey, as does the creator of the Burning Man festival poster. Evolution does not have a general direction and cannot properly be said to progress. Species or local populations adapt to the conditions of their environment. They become optimal with respect to their environment only insofar as they do the best that they can given chance events, the nature of their particular genetic endowment, and the constraints of their development. Long-term progress does not occur, even if one species evolved from another because of the former’s better adaptation to a shared environment. Should the environment change, the new species might find itself faced with extinction.

Besides being incorrect as a representation of biological evolution, this image is pernicious because it has racist undertones. Some Internet research reveals that slurs and jokes aimed at humiliating people with black skin frequently make reference to the notion that they are monkeys, for the reason that a monkey is “more primitive.” Many of these jokes and slurs clearly explicitly draw on the themes of having black skin, being primitive, and being a monkey.

Consider the following racist jokes from http://www.racist-jokes.com/ (pages 5, 6, 1 and 1, respectively):

What’s the difference between a naked white woman and a naked black woman? One’s on the cover of Playboy and the other’s on the cover of National Geographic.

What do you call a white man in a group of twenty black men? Tarzan of the apes.

What does NAACP stand for? Now Apes Are Called People.

What do you call the million man march in the rain? “Gorillas in the mist.”

While these jokes are repugnant in the extreme, it is important to point out that they exist, and that the connection between race, primitiveness, and monkeys has real social currency and is rooted deeply in the cultural context of the US.

A recent controversy over an 18 February 2009 cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as a monkey illustrates that this racist subtext need only be barely concealed. Of central importance is the outrage expressed by many upon seeing the cartoon. The cartoon, which first appeared in the New York Post, shows two police officers just having shot a chimpanzee, which is on its back, dead, on the sidewalk. One of the police officers says “They’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.” On the one hand, the cartoon is meant to reflect a news item current at the time it appeared—police shot a chimpanzee which was threatening a woman in Connecticut. On the other hand, it’s hard to see what the connection between a chimpanzee and the stimulus bill might be. Someone might point out that the stimulus bill was in fact introduced in in the US Congress, and so President Obama should not be identified with the chimpanzee in the cartoon. Though this is correct, most people probably associate the stimulus bill most closely with Obama himself. The identification of a black man and a monkey is what is intended to stimulate whatever humor there is supposed to be in this cartoon, and there is a clearly racist interpretation of the cartoon. Again, the point is that the connection between race, primitiveness, and monkeys is a meaningful one.

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In a provocative and informative paper entitled “Don’t Call it Darwinism” in Evolution: Education & Outreach (vol 2:90-4), Eugenie Scott and Glenn branch advocate abandonment of the term “Darwinism.” Though they stress that the term shouldn’t be used as a synonym for “evolutionary biology,” I think the clear implication is that the term ought to be abandoned wholesale. Olivia Judson makes a similar point in a blog posting back in July of last year. This is good advice. In the discussion of this paper on Genomicron, on which there appears a post about the paper, the suggestion is made that abandoning a term because it’s used by those one doesn’t agree with—in this case, creationists—is a mistake. The idea seems to be that we ought to hold our ground come what may. In this case, there isn’t much ground to hold concerning this particular term, or else we have permitted ourselves to accept terms of debate introduced by those we disagree with. Scott and Branch note that increasing the circulation of “Darwinism” is a part of a creationist strategy for discrediting evolutionary science by exploiting the ambiguity of the term. If there were some clear utility to “Darwinism” and its cognates, it might be worth defending. In point of fact, there are many other more precise terms and phrases that can, on any given use of “Darwinism” (except those intended to exploit its ambiguities) be used instead. These include “the theory that the main motive force behind evolution is natural selection;” “the claim that all life descends from a common ancestor;” “a naturalistic world-view;” or even “the survival of the fittest.” The latter is not recommended but is nonetheless clearer than “Darwinism.” Practitioners and teachers of a science as controversial as evolutionary biology owe it to themselves, their students, and the public to disambiguate, and, if possible, not to introduce ambiguities in the first place.

Paul Griffiths (”What is innateness” The Monist, 85(1): 70-85) makes a similar point concerning “innateness.” He identifies three senses of this term. First, calling a trait innate might be intended to point out that it’s inherited; second, it might be intended to point out that it is developmentally fixed, that is, its development is not easily altered or stopped; and third, it might be intended to point out that the trait is adaptive. Each of these senses differs from one another. If a trait is developmentall fixed, it need not have evolved by natural selection, nor be inherited; not all adaptive traits are developmentally fixed; and not all inherited traits are adaptive or developmentally fixed. Griffiths suggestion is that, rather than use “innate,” scientists and educators should indicate which of the three senses they intend. As in the case of evolution and “Darwinism,” “innate” can circulate in the public in undesirable ways. For instance, one might say that a certain trait is innate in certain human beings, when all that’s meant is that its inherited; this might cause some, unaware of the ambiguity, to conclude that the trait is developmentally fixed, that is, cannot be changed in adults.

An important differences between the ambiguity of “innateness” and “Darwinism” is that, in the latter case, ambiguity is promoted and exploited by those who wish to discredit evolutionary biology, while in the case of the former, the ambiguity results from the language itself, and is not promoted by anyone, because the community of its users are interested in promoting understanding, learning and accuracy. Fallacies of ambiguity are to be avoided—rather than used strategically in advocacy in a kind of linguistic and conceptual cynicism intended to play at once on the public’s lack of understanding about Darwin and evolution, and fears that science and religion are incompatible, or that science is a battleground for ideology, rather than a truth-directed form of inquiry driven by curiosity and intellectual integrity.