1 - Light will be thrown

Summary

THE DARWIN INDUSTRY

Folk-Darwinism

“Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”, Charles Darwin wrote at the end of his On the Origin of Species (1859: 487). Indeed, the light has expanded since then and continues to do so. Today, 150 years after the first publication of the Origin in 1859, evolution is everywhere. It almost seems as if Theodosius Dobzhansky's (1973) famous statement that “[n]othing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” mutated to: nothing at all makes sense except in the light of evolution. Almost everything in the social and cultural sphere that is able to change and does not change in a sudden and abrupt manner is said to evolve: cultures, political agendas, partnerships, economies and firms – they evolve; stars, galaxies and the universe – they evolve. Artists and programmers produce mutants of artefacts or programmes. Markets are dominated by the survival of the fittest. Everyone has to adapt to this or that. As Chris Buskes (1998: 1) emphasizes, this “folk-Darwinism” is usually “crude and superficial”. It has nothing to do with Darwinism. It is a mere façon de parler, where every kind of gradual, cumulative change is referred to as evolution. In other words, the term “gradual change” is merely replaced by the term “evolution”. That is all.

Evolution in philosophy, science and politics

The term “evolution” entered our language not just as a vague idea for any kind of gradual change. Evolutionary thinking entered philosophy and scientific thinking in diverse and elaborated, oft en also harmful, ways, either as a way of describing and explaining our innate human nature, or as a way to export the Darwinian paradigm to other domains of research.