Nature and Man’s Fate

327 Pages·1959·47.372 MB·English

by  Garrett Hardin

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HEREDRAIcTYEA, N SDo cI(ErTeYvi sed)
by L. C.Du nn and Th. Dobzhansky
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NataunrMdea nF'ast e
by
GARRETHTA RDIN
A MENTORB OOK
PublisbhyTe HdEN EWAM ERICANL IBARRY
ToG .W .B eadle
1959
COPYRIGHT@ BY GARRETT HARDIN
All rigrhetsse Nrvoep da.or ftt hbioso k
mayb er eprowdiutchepodeu rtm iFsosri on.
informaatdidorHneo slRsti ,n eahnaWdri tn sItnocn.,,
38M3a diAsvoenn NueewY, o r1k7N ,e wY ork.
Published as a MENTOR BOOK
By Arrangement with Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
1961
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Prologue
THE lecture was over. I had tried to explain heredity to a
general audience in one hour's time, a task that requires
about forty hours in a college course. I asked for questions
-and got them.
"You say that X rays and atomic radiations cause muta­
tions, and that almost all mutations are bad?"
"Yes."
"But isn't it true that all evolutionary progress has been
made possible by new mutations?"
I could see it coming-but I answered simply, "Yes."
"Don't those two statements contradict each other?''
So: he had seen the binding point. Now what was I to do?
I knew there was no real contradiction-but could I con­
vince others with less than a twenty-hour lecture? That was
plainly out of the question, so I tried to resolve the apparent
paradox in a few words. But I don't think the questioner
was satisfied. I hope he wasn't.
His question had uncovered a point that has only recently
become clear: that the truth or falsity of the theory of
evolution is now seen to be a matter of the most practical
political importance. It doesn't much matter whether you
think man was created out of the dust six thousand years
ago or came from the apes a million years earlier; whether
the story of Noah's ark is true, or dinosaurs once lived.
Believe what you will of evolution in the past: but you had
jolly well better believe it will take place in the future if
you hope to make political decisions that will give your
descendants a reasonable chance to exist. The principles of
evolution are inescapably relevant to the analysis of man's
predicament.
The theory of evolution had its official birth in 1858-59.
Its essential truth is now universally accepted by scientists
competent to judge. Yet even today, a century after its birth,
the great majority of mankind either has not heard of the
theory or thinks it false. Why is this so? Is it because the
theory is intellectually difficult? Not at all. T. H. Huxley,
when he first learned of his friend Darwin's theory, said,
"How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" The
principles of the theory are really quite simple. Yet it was
vi NATURE AND MAN'SF ATE
only after more than a half century of unconscious avoidance
by society that they were first openly stated by Charles
Darwin. Even then be did not state all of the principles
explicitly. One of the principles-the Principle of Competitive
Exclusion-though basic to his entire theory, was not given
explicit formulation until our own time. Have we even now
uncovered all of the elements of the theory? Experience
makes us doubt that we have. Evolution has such intimate
significance for our daily life that it creates immensely gre�t
psychological resistances to seeing even the most "obvious"
truths.
When there is resistance to seeing truth, the man who is
in some sense outside of the group that maintains the re­
sistance has an advantage. It is the matter of the Emperor's
New Clothes. So it is that we find a most diverse collection
of thinkers have contributed to the development of the theory
of evolution. There was an engineer whose specialty was
transatlantic cables; a brilliantly successful speculator in
stocks who wanted to know what kept the economic wheels
turning; a very British explorer who thought nothing was
more important than children-of which he bad none; a
cloistered monk whose interest in gambling and probability
led him to discover that life begins with a lottery; and above
all others, of course, there was Charles Darwin, the idle rich
man's son, who forged the theory out of his own lonely
experience-and thereby insured that the next twenty years
of his life would be even more lonely as he struggled to gain
courage to say what the world dreaded to hear.
But, Ah, you may say, all that was a hundred years ago.
We have nothing to be afraid of now. We can speak freely.
Really? Have we forgotten so soon that it was only a decade
ago that many men lost their lives in Russia because of their
evolutionary beliefs? But that was in Russia! someone says.
Yes: but there were many in our part of the world who
defended the attitude of the Soviets. Science, real living
Science, is always under attack, and the attack does not
always come from the same quarter. In Darwin's day the
opposition to the theory of evolution came principally from
the right; in our own time, it is stronger on the left. Science
is a heresy so extreme that no merely political school of
thought can embrace it in all its aspects.
The primary aim of this book is to bring the reader abreast
of the latest thought in evolutionary theory, to show him
its implications for the future. But our present concepts have
grown by an organic process out of old ideas which have
left their traces even as the gill arches of ancestral fishes
are still to be found in parts of our hearing apparatus. To
Prologue vii
understand the present we must know the past. With John
Maynard Keynes I believe that "a study of the history of
opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the
mind." In sketching the history of evolutionary opinions I
have made no attempt at all-inclusiveness but have, at the
risk of error, selected those elements of the story that (I
think) still live in the conflicts of our own time. I have also
consciously avoided making the story seem too simple. His­
tory is not a chain but a tapestry. Even at the risk of con­
fusion, I have tried to preserve .something of the richness
of the intertwined threads that make up the pattern of
evolutionary thought. The tapestry is not yet finished, yet
I think we can already see the pattern clearly enough to
realize that curious and investigative man, while seemingly
concerned with the historical origin of ferns and bees, has
really been trying to ascertain the meaning of Nature in the
determination of his own fate.
Acknowledgments
The present work, which has been many years in the making,
was greatly forwarded by a productive sabbatical year spent
at the California Institute of Technology and the Huntington
Library. I am particularly grateful for the many courtesies
extended to me by the staffs of these institutions, and to the
Fund for the Advancement of Education for help in financing
my stay with a "Ford Fellowship." I am also indebted to my
own institution, the University of California, for granting
me the sabbatical leave.
My intellectual debts are too great for me even to appre­
ciate exactly. Many of these will be apparent from acknowl­
edgments given in the text. In addition, I realize that my
thoughts have been greatly advanced by many hours of con­
versation with George Beadle and A. H. Sturtevant ( who
may not, however, entirely agree with my conclusions). Bill
Freeman has played an essential role in the birth of this
work. The important part played by Evan Gillespie in illus­
trating this book, particularly in giving graphic form to the
subtle ideas of Chapter 12, will be apparent to all who read it.
ix
Contents
WhoW iBleltl hlCe a t?
1 13
BelltihCneag t
2 27
3 DarwiDneiisatmny,Pd r ocess 50
4 IsE voluPtrioogrne ss?
64
5 AttafcrkoAsml S li des
91
HeredFiattLyeo:'t st ery
6 112
7 GenaensPd e rsDoencails ions
133
8 Genaenstd eh A ccepotfOa tnhceer s
159
MutatainSoden xG ,e neroafVt aorrise ty
9 177
EugenIisMc asnP: a rotfN ature?
10 187
Liberaanltdih Ssepm e cotfCe orm petition
11 202
NewD imenosfiE ovnosl ution
12 224
InP raoifWs aes te
13 259
REFERENCES 298
301
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX 311