Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution

The argument offered in this book is that the Darwinian theory of evolution does not apply to us --- that it does not apply to modern man, citizens of Cupertino, Manchester, and Kyoto. And I must admit that, when the question is put that way, it gives one pause. After all, Darwinian evolution is a nasty, fierce struggle for the survival of the fittest. Stove mentions, just for starters, the universal human institutions of soldiers, doctors, and priests. Every one of these special professions is altruistic, culminating perhaps in the Chief Matron of the Maternity Ward in any large hospital: she gets a huge amount of respect because she saves lives on a daily basis, altruistically helping unrelated women and children to get through the ordeal of birth --- and she does it every day. When you think about it, such phenomena contradict the Darwinian theory completely, as does another strange phenomenon: "baby-stealing." Some mothers lose their babies very early, and a few of THOSE will go and steal another woman's baby. As Stove points out, most of us can get to a point where we "understand" this crime, and the enormous pain which caused it. The reaction of Darwinians (such as Dawkins) is dumbfounding: they claim that the mother whose baby has been stolen should be GLAD, because her little DNA-package is going to be raised at no cost by someone else. And they completely fail to understand the thief ("Why would anyone devote her life to rearing someone not related to them?") Well, I imagine such titanic geniuses would also fail to understand adoption, huh. Stove pushes things a bit farther when he states that, since Darwinian evolution is false for US, it it therefore a false theory because it CLAIMS to be about all living things. At the same time, Stove has no real problem with accepting the vast explanatory scope of evolution, so he seems to be suggesting that we have not yet got the theory down. I have to mention the extraordinary writing skills of this man. Many of his essays are as tasty as mint fudge sundaes; they leave you wanting MORE. This review is of the Kindle edition, which is very easy to read.

David Stove is one of the great underappreciated writers of the late 20th century. He's also dead, which doesn't generally do much for one's ability to slay dragons. It is fortunate the good people at the New Criterion have more or less sponsored his revival; he deserves to be much more widely known. Stove was an Australian academic philosopher who became embroiled in a university in-fight against what I like to call, the "know nothing academics" who came to prominence in the 1960s. Know nothings essentially make their livings making raspberry sounds at Western civilization. Stove was outraged such people could be taken seriously by anyone, and so he devoted a large amount of his considerable remaining wit and energy making such people miserable. This book represents one of his efforts in that direction. Contrary to what many people are saying in the reviews, Stove explicitly believes in Darwinian evolution, "more or less." I.e. he states that he believes in the broad strokes of evolutionary theory. He is, as others have stated, an atheist (as am I, if that matters to anyone). He very specifically doesn't believe in nonsense views of evolution; in particular, the "hard man" view of Herbert Spencer or its intellectual descendant, the "selfish gene" view of Dawkins and company. Stove ruthlessly mocks the preposterous premises of these ideas (which even a 'good' Popperian would instantly recognize as non-falsifiable piffle), simply by examining them for what they really are. He also points out numerous giant conceptual lacunae, counterfactuals and the examples of flat out nonsense that make up the evidence for sociobiological "theory." Why does Stove do this? Apparently, he was ahead of his time. People like Dawkins have become pervasive pests; insisting that everyone think as he does, or risk being labeled, "unbright." Sociobiological 'theoretical' deconstructings of literature have become all the rage. Dawkins and his unseemly ilk need to be put in their place, along with other pseudo-scientific charlatans like Lysenko or the Phrenologists. Sociobiology is a shabby set of shaggy dog stories; Stove shows us how funny and absurd they really are. I rather wish Stove was a statistician as well; that would be the final cherry on top of the sociobiological humble pie, but I suppose one must leave work for future thinkers.

Modern "scientists" have elevated evolution to a cult. Enter intelligent design (ID) critics, whacked on by their roots with creationists (their own pre-Socratics), and you have one helluva fight. With these ideologues migrating to extremism and away from reason as understood by both scientific method and Aristotelian logic you are bound to have very murky waters indeed. The debate becomes unrecognizable to the classically educated. Enter the reasonable atheist apologist for no side with whom people of faith (like myself) and no faith (like my friends) can wholeheartedly cheer on by anchoring the conversation in reason once again. The late David Stove does just that, with precision, wit, logic, clarity, and joy. Reading this book is like a breath of fresh air, and restores faith in human reason and the ability of thinkers to expose unsupportable extremes cloaked in unearned authority, whether it is "science" or "religion." A marvellous book which will have ideologues steaming and truth lovers and sideline quarterbacks enjoying the game.

Stove begins his relentless critique of Darwinism by noting, "If Darwin's theory of evolution were true, there would be be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation could survive. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species. This inconsistency, between Darwin's theory and the facts of human life, is what I mean by Darwinism's dilemma." It is hard to think of a more obvious (once pointed to) yet devastating criticism of Darwin's theory, and there is nothing complex or esoteric in the observation. Stove's book is like this, and a reminder that the many complexities of evolutionary theory are also often dust thrown in the face of non-specialists. You can walk away from Darwinism after Stove's first paragraph. Stove's book is a strange balance of philosophic equipoise and near savagery, such is the scalding tone of this new epitaph for a theory. This penetrating study by David Stove is one of the most caustic, yet insightful, critiques of Darwinism. It's clarity springs in part from a philosopher's thumbing his nose at theoretical complications that ensare many critics and simply looking at the most obvious discrepancy between the theory and real life. This should not excuse refusal to look at details, but it is easily forgotten how many contradictions creep into what has always been a partly speculative extrapolation about unseen events in deep time. As this passage shows, Stove looks closely at the Malthusian confusions and ideological factors of the post-revolutionary era that haunt Darwinism, and proceeds to a general attack on sociobiology, and other aspects of the theory. It is unfortunate once again: a penetrating book on Darwinism is out of print without reaching paperback, and left to lurk in the stacks of (very) large libraries, where this reader found it, as usual by chance, and where a host of other anti-Darwin books are buried lest they disturb the brainwashed views of the general public.

Stove argues against the Darwinian theory of evolution, in both its original and sociobiological forms. His concern is not so much with traditional difficulties like gaps in the fossil record, as with larger logical questions about how evolutionary theory gives a false view of human life, especially altruism. Stove argues that the complexity of evolutionary theory hides its logical flabbiness.