A Most Porous Barrier

Whenever there is a scientific—or even a quasi-scientific—theory invented, there are those who take an expansive view of the theory, broadly applying it to other areas of thought. This is perhaps inherent in the metaphorical nature of these kinds of thought patterns. Thus we see Darwinian theory influenced by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of economic optimization. Then we get Spencer’s Social Darwinism arising from Darwin. And E.O. Wilson’s sociobiology leads to evolutionary psychology, immediately following an activist’s  pitcher of ice water.

The is-ought barrier tends towards porousness, allowing the smuggling of insights and metaphors lifted from the natural world as explanatory footwork for our complex social and political interactions. After all, we are as natural as we are social. But at the same time, we know that science is best when it is tentative and subject to infernal levels of revision and reconsideration. Decisions about social policy derived from science, and especially those that have significant human impact, should be cushioned by a tentative level of trust as well.

E.O. Wilson’s most recent book, Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies, is a continuation of his late conversion to what is now referred to as “multi-level selection,” where natural selection is believed to operate at multiple levels, from genes to whole societies. It remains a controversial theory that has been under development and under siege since Darwin’s time, when the mechanism of inheritance was not understood.

The book is brief and does not provide much, if any, new material since his Social Conquest of Earth, which was significantly denser and contained notes derived from his controversial 2010 Nature paper that called into question whether kin selection was overstated as a gene-level explanation of altruism and sacrifice within eusocial species. There are, of course, many detractors who accuse Wilson of flawed reasoning, in at least the scale of effects of kin selection if not the more radical conclusion about selection at other levels in the hierarchy.

Yet the book also contains some rejoinders to common reasoning about the reproductive-centric nature of evolutionary reasoning. Take this passage:

Finally, a plausible case can be made for eusociality in human beings. The strongest evidence is the postmenopausal “caste” of grandmother helpers. In addition there is the readiness with which individuals join professions and callings useful to society but counter to their own reproduction. Given that homosexuality is uniquely valuable to so many societies, it is not unreasonable to view homosexuals as a eusocial caste, and in the highest possible sense. In further witness is the prevalence of monastic orders in organized religions around the world. In yet another venue must be included the formally established and respected berdache system of the early Plains Indians, in which males dressed and performed as females. It should be kept in mind that the propensity toward homosexuality has a partly genetic basis, and further appears to benefit relatives and larger groups, making its genes more likely to survive. The evidence is indirect but strong: the frequency of homosexual-propensity genes in human populations is above the level expected from mutation alone, a sign that the propensity has been favored by natural selection. The level, in other words, is too high to be explained solely by random changes in genes that affect sexual behavior.

Which continues Wilson’s analysis of counter-theoretical (and often counter-intuitive) moral positions he originally lays out in Social Conquest of Earth:

Consider, for example, the papal ban against artificial contraception. The decision was made—with good intentions—by one person, Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. The reason he gave seems at first entirely reasonable. God, he posited, intends for sexual intercourse to be limited to the purpose of conceiving children. But the logic of Humanae Vitae is wrong. It leaves out a vital fact. An abundance of evidence from psychology and reproductive biology, much of it obtained since the 1960s, has revealed that there is another, additional purpose to sexual intercourse. Human females have hidden external genitalia and do not advertise estrus, thus differing from females of other primate species. Both men and women, when bonded, invite continuous and frequent intercourse. The practice is genetically adaptive: it ensures that the woman and her child have help from the father. For the woman, the commitment secured by pleasurable nonreproductive intercourse is important, even vital in many circumstances. Human infants, to acquire large organized brains and high intelligence, must go through an unusually long period of helplessness during their development. The mother cannot count on the same level of support from the community, even in tightly knit hunter-gatherer societies, that she obtains from a sexually and emotionally bonded mate.

Hence we arrive at the doorstep of both hidden estrus and parental investment theory as central features of mate cooperation.

Big ideas inherently provide expansive and dangerous extensions, at least to arbitrary human customs, but they also run into shallows of ambiguity. For instance, if altruism and cooperation are inherently human undertakings, does that mean that economic systems should reflect those intrinsics?

For some such a plan falls into what might be criticized as a cruel determinism, like in the Marxist response to Jared Diamond’s approach to explaining the successes and failures of societies based on geography, or their resistance to failure in the face of change. The memorably titled article F**K Jared Diamond is notably clear in why we might be cautious about big ideas.

Still, we try. In a review of David Sloan Wilson’s (no relation to E.O.) 2012 book on multi-level selection, Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, the reviewer notes that:

In one of the book’s best chapters, we learn about what Wilson and his colleagues have done in Binghamton, New York, studying and promoting prosocial behavior (altruism without regard to motives) among disadvantaged students and improving lives and neighborhoods as a result. But we are told that a particular theory of evolution supported this work, even after a chapter showing that religions have done similar good work while in some cases denying evolution, and another showing that governments and philanthropists have done great good while ignoring evolution.

There might be a lesson in all of this to the effect that when science-derived virtues serve to deconstruct or undermine freedom-interfering institutions, those virtues are, well, virtuous. Otherwise, they are merely interesting or descend into cruelty.

But given that those institutions are, we suppose, products of multi-level selection using social organizations to achieve some tentative social good, we just arrive at a collective shrug; the specific virtues and vices can be argued for without any need to delve into some deep, natural well of inspiration.