Darwin

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen. A required reading for one of my classes, but a decent read nonetheless. You learn all about Darwin and his personal life and his reactions to the scientific world around him, and dispels some of the myths about his beliefs and motives. We all agreed that after having read about him, we would not have wanted to be his friend. Even though he was chronically sick his whole life, he never went to visit anyone unless it was a tangible benefit to him, his friends were all people who could help him advance his career and he missed the funerals of his father, his favorite daughter and Lyell, the man who made Darwin's career. Not to mention the fact that his reason for marriage was that a wife would make better company than a dog. The man never committed to anything unless he absolutely had to, once he was put into a situation he performed admirably but he had absolutely no gumption. Had Wallace, who was a totally awesome, albeit chronically unlucky guy, not sent Darwin his ideas on evolution to be forwarded to Lyell, Darwin would never have gotten around to publishing his own theory of evolution. Another interesting tidbit, not in the book but provided as background by the professor, was that while Darwin would say he didn't subscribe to Social Darwinism, he never stopped or corrected people who twisted his theory. And since he came from money and from how he interacted with those of higher and lower classes, he kinda, sorta did believe in Social Darwinism. So the bottom line seems to be Darwin was a smart guy, but a total prick.

In one of my other classes, Sociobiology and Evolution of Cooperation, we're talking about the evolutionary benefits of altruism. Which leads to one of my least favorite debates of all time: is there really such a thing as altruism? I mean, if you derive any measure of satisfaction or reward for an (huge, pseudo-intellectual finger quote gesture) altruistic act then it really is a selfish act and that means there is no such thing as altruism. Basically, you would have to utterly hate doing something, but do it unhesitatingly and never derive any benefit from it, directly or indirectly no matter how distant in the future that possible reward might be. So in that case, yes altruism does not exist because it would be utterly counterintuitive and stupid. But for the rest of the world that doesn't subscribe to that stupid philosophy altruism does exist because it means giving without any outside reward expected in return. If you do a nice thing for the sake of it and you happen to be rewarded for it that doesn't make it any less altruistic. Nor does feeling good about it make the altruistic act selfish, any more than it's OK to steal from someone as long as you feel bad about it while you're doing it.