Subject: 
        [evol-psych] Re: Richard Dawkins: Our big brains can overcome our selfish
        genes
   Date: 
        Tue, 12 Feb 2002 19:39:46 -0000
   From: 
        "Frans de Waal" 
     To: 
        [email protected]




Dawkins wrote:
If any species in the history of life has the possibility of breaking
away from short-term Darwinian selfishness and of planning for the
distant future, it is our species. We are earth's last best hope ...

-------------------

The irony of it all is that Darwin himself was no proponent of
"short-term Darwinian selfishness." It is Dawkins' (and T. H.
Huxley's) cardboard version of Darwinism that is the problem. 

Dawkins is going around saying that we can break with Darwin, that we
should get rid of (some of) our biological heritage, whereas Darwin
himself was adamant, in "The Descent of Man," that human kindness and
morality belonged within an evolutionary framework. Instead of
ascribing these and other enlightened capacities to exterior forces -
an inherently dualistic, religious view - Darwin saw them as products
of nature.

-- Frans de Waal