Darwinian Theory Comes of Age

As professional science, Darwinian theory is now a fully functioning paradigm. Darwinism as religion continues and war continues as a good confirmatory case study. There is now, thanks both to fossil finds and to refined molecular techniques, a much better understanding of human evolution and its history. This is new; the interpretations are not. There is much talk about killer apes, owing as much to Augustine as to Darwin, with speculations by Konrad Lorenz backed by dramatic writings by the film-script-writer-turned-amateur-anthropologist Robert Ardrey. Starting to play a major role are sophisticated studies of the great apes, notably Jane Goodall on wild chimpanzees and Frans de Waal on caged chimpanzees, the former moving more toward the innate nature of ape violence and the latter rather the other way. Major clashes about nature versus nurture occurred with anthropologist Ashley Montagu on the one side and biologist Edward O. Wilson on the other. There are an increasing number of naysayers, especially the Quaker bird-song specialist, William Thorpe, but the traditional picture persists. War is part of our biological heritage; it had to be a good thing inasmuch as it led progressively upward to humans, but it is now outdated and dangerous, and we can and should eliminate it.