Darwin's Greatest Contribution
Evolution and our treatment of other animals
It’s the 12th of February once again, and as science nerds everywhere know, that means it’s Darwin Day: the annual celebration of the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809.
Darwin Day is observed around the globe, and used to commemorate the great scientist, his Copernican Revolution in biology, and the value of science in general.
A few years ago, with Darwin Day looming, Cambridge University Press asked me and several other authors to write something for the occasion. (This was soon after I’d published my first book with them, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life.)
As an organizing theme, they asked us all the following question:
For over 150 years, Charles Darwin and his work have influenced the fields of science, religion, politics, gender, literature, philosophy, and medicine. With a view in 2013 of the innumerable changes he has sparked across a number of disciplines, what should be considered Darwin’s most important contribution?
An excellent question! Here’s my answer - which, incidentally, I wrote with a badly bruised arm in a hotel room in Amsterdam, having slipped on the ice and fallen down some steps…
Darwin showed us that we’re animals. He showed us that there’s no fundamental distinction between us and any other critter on the planet. The most important implication of this Gestalt shift may be ethical. As soon as we accept that the human-animal distinction is not fundamental in nature, it becomes difficult to accept a moral code that privileges the wellbeing of human beings but is indifferent to the wellbeing of any other animal. It becomes hard to resist extending our moral concern to any creature capable of suffering, human or not. If present trends continue, the main beneficiaries of Darwin’s great idea may not be human beings. Ultimately, the main beneficiaries may be the other animals we share the planet with.—Steve Stewart-Williams, author of Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life
What did I mean by saying that the human-animal distinction isn’t fundamental in nature? And how exactly might Darwin’s ideas push us to rethink our treatment of other animals? To expand on my Darwin Day offering, here are some lightly edited excerpts from DGML.