Seeds of Hierarchy 233
as unfettered individual competition yields the best social order in Adam Smith's
world, so too will natural selection among organisms lead to maximization by
division of labor: "The advantage in each group becoming as different as possible,
may be compared to the fact that by division of labor most people can be supported
in each country.—Not only do the individuals in each group strive against the
others, but each group itself with all its members, some more numerous, some less,
are struggling against all other groups, as indeed follows from each individual
struggling" (Darwin, September 23, 1856, cited in Schweber, 1988). (This
consistent stress on the role of individuals as primary causal agents also
characterizes the writings in political economy that so influenced Darwin. For
example, I omitted by ellipsis an intermediary passage in the statement from Smith
quoted above on p. 124. It reads: "Although we speak of communities as sentient
beings; although we ascribe to them happiness and misery, desires, interests, and
passions; nothing really exists or feels but individuals. The happiness of a people is
made up of the happiness of single persons.")
This proper characterization of Darwin's argument also overturned the most
sensational charge ever based on the principle of divergence, and made with such
attention in the public arena by Brackman (1980)—the claim that Darwin received
Wallace's paper from Ternate earlier than the "official" date (June 18,1858), and
then proceeded to steal the principle of divergence from him, thus formulating his
complete theory by ripping off Wallace and covering up the evidence. This charge,
which can only be supported by ignorance of detail (see the analysis of Kohn,
1981), falls apart once we recognize Darwin's full principle of divergence as an
explanation of maximization by natural selection through division of labor. Darwin
clearly formulated this complete argument in 1856, and sent a lucid epitome to Asa
Gray in 1857. Thus, a possible receipt of Wallace's paper earlier in June, or even in
late May of 1858, cannot affect this chronology.
Brackman, of course, does not deny these facts. He must therefore claim that
Darwin had been spooked by Wallace for years, that he pinched the initial idea of
diversification from Wallace's 1855 paper, and that he then moved faster (and
stealthily) when the firmer statement arrived in 1858. But if we turn to Wallace's
1855 paper, we note that this article contains nothing relevant to a principle of
divergence properly defined as a set of complex arguments for linking natural
selection on organisms with the phenomenology of higher levels of biological
organization. At most, Wallace's 1855 paper includes a passing description of the
simple property of divergence itself—a fact well recognized by Darwin, who had
been noting the centrality of this theme since the transmutation notebooks of the
late 1830's (see quote on p. 229). (We shall also see, at the close of this section (p.
248), that even Wallace's 1858 paper contains only a cursory statement about
divergence with no hint of the central feature of bridging levels.) Brackman has
confused the noting of a fact with the development of an explanation. He has also
failed to recognize Darwin's long awareness of the fact and its importance.