Charles Darwin 23read Plato as a student (he claimed also to have read Aristotle), as well as more
modern philosophers like Locke and Hume. He could talk and write knowledge-
ably about Kant, knowing the heart of the moral philosophy. (“Duty! Wondrous
thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but
merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always
reverence, if not always obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however
secretly they rebel; whence thy original?” [Darwin, 1871, 1, 70]). Darwin realized
that in writing about humans, he was going to steer close to philosophical issues,
and did not shirk the task. However, as a scientist, he was more interested in why
we think and act as we do — questions that today would occupy the “evolutionary
psychologist” – rather than in the foundations of why we think and act as we do
— questions of the philosopher.
As far as reason and knowledge is concerned, Darwin was straightforwardly
naturalistic. The reasoning ability is a good thing to have in the struggle for
existence, and this is shown by the fact that other animals have it also. There is
no reason to think it a special feature of humankind.
Of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, I presume, be admitted
thatReasonstands at the summit. Few persons any longer dispute that
animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be
seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the
more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist,
the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts. (1,
46)Reason and knowledge help animals to survive and reproduce. The same is true
of humans. No more discussion of the main point is needed, although Darwin did
offer detailed discussion of language, beauty appreciation, beliefs in divinities, to
show how these too can be explained in a naturalistic fashion.
If the philosopher persists in asking his or her questions, then he or she might
use Darwin’s empirical claims as grist for the mill. But there is not much more.
Today, one particularly favoured application of evolution to epistemology comes
by analogy from the processes of evolution to the processes of knowledge acquire-
ment and development [Ruse, 1986]. People like Stephen Toulmin [1972] and Karl
Popper [1974] have argued that just as we get a struggle for existence in the animal
world, so also we get a struggle for existence in the intellectual world — one theory
beating out another in the competition for acceptance. There are elements of this
line of thinking in Huxley, but little in Darwin. The other favoured application
of evolution to epistemology comes through taking things literally, arguing that
the truths of logic and methodology and so forth are no more (or less) than rules
that have proven their worth in the struggle. This approach welcomes Darwin’s
discussion. Somewhat tantalizingly, in his early notebooks, Darwin himself even
flies a kite for this kind of philosophy. “Plato... says in Phaedo that our ‘imagi-
nary ideas’ arise from preexistence of the soul, are not derivable from experience.
— read monkeys for preexistence” [Barrettet al., 1987, M. 128]. It is no more