Dame Gillian Beer, a Darwin scholar who spoke this morning at theTempleton-Cambridge Science & Religion conference, noted that Darwin had a certian “scorn” for those who were horrified by extinction.”He believes extinction is just what happens with living species,” he said. “It sounds like a gloomy message but he doesn’t feel it as such. He took a certain technical pleasure in the process.”
After all, it was this process that led to “new and improved” species.
The group then discussed why we care more about extinction now. Beer suggested part of it is modern media; talkies enable us to see these beautiful endangered creatures moving, screaming, crying — and we develop empathy that the Victorians wouldn’t have conjured looking at stuffed animals. Part of it, she suggested, is a certain “hubris” on the part of human, “The attitude that nothing else can care for itself. We have to care for it.”
We feel more morally cuplable if we — through pollution or development — are the ones causing the extinction (though from a strict Darwinian point of view that shouldn’t matter). One of the journalists suggesed that the difference is that we’re in danger of having a single species (humans) dominate, and that would have caused concern for Darwin who viewed extinction has a constant ebb and flow between different winners and losers.
But probably the biggest difference is the concept of “copiousness.” Darwin assumed a vast diversity of species, so the loss of one (soon replaced by another) was no big deal. But some scientists now say that half the current species could soon be extinct.
Perhaps Darwin would have been concerned about that — not so much the extinction of any particular gorgeous (or adorable) species but the speed and scale.
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posted April 18, 2009 at 1:10 am
Beer is correct in her analysis. I would take it a step further. Yes, Darwin held scorn for those who would mourn the extinction of a single species. If a species died out, there was room in the ecosystem for the unoccupied niche to be filled.
What’s different today is that the ecosystems themselves are disappearing through deforestation and pollution. We see in this newest mass extinction the potential for our own ending as a species. That’s really the subtext.
Life will go on without us.
posted April 18, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I don’t think that Darwin viewed species extinctions as essential to the core process of evolution (it probably isn’t). The core process occurs within populations. The importance of higher level selection is still a matter of debate but I don’t think that Darwin advocated strongly either way.
I think that it is important to get things in context. I think that Darwin acknowledged that extinction happens but I don’t think that it was considered from a conservation standpoint. He was opposing those who thought that extinction didn’t happen because God would not let it. If he was scornful of such a view it is merely because it is so obviously contradicted by the fossil record. I wouldn’t try to extrapolate his position in that context to an issue that didn’t enter the public consciousness until many decades later.
posted April 19, 2009 at 8:51 am
Hmm, isn’t this also a bit of looking at the thoughts and feelings of a 19th century scientist breaking new ground, through the eyes of 21st century scientists and teachers who are well aware that our own existence may well be dependent on the survival ( or not) of other species? Not to mention the context leading to the rapid demise of so many species?
I don’t think Darwin was aware of the tenuous hold our species has on life, did he know we have been through at least one and probably two bottlenecks in the modern era?
posted July 16, 2009 at 4:39 am
Probably not. But no one cares since it has no relevance
What is the number of children born without arms or legs that have been miraculously restored and verified by a before and after video by a prayer to Jesus?
1. Too many to count
2. Over 1,000
3. Several dozen
4. Zero, but only because their faith was not strong enough, and a video is testing God, and conveniently God should not be tested