Darwinism and Environmentalism

A number of authors have combined a commitment to Darwinian evolution as a major source of insight into human nature with a strong commitment to environmentalist concerns. The most notable of these is perhaps Edward O. Wilson, in a series of books.1 Yet it may appear that there is a tension between Darwinism as a world-view – or least some major aspects of it – and a concern for non-human entities as worthy of concern in their own right. In the present paper, I want to address some of the reasons for thinking there is such a tension. Firstly, it might be thought that Darwin has taught us that the relationship between different species is intrinsically antagonistic, and moreover that this antagonism is what drives evolutionary change itself. Thanks to the popular iconography associated with Darwinism, we tend to think of the process of evolution as being primarily natural selection, and of natural selection as a ‘struggle’ or ‘competition’ between creatures, where one creature’s gain is inevitably another’s loss. Moreover, we tend to think of different species, not just individuals of the same species, as in struggle or competition against each other. The popular iconography often portrays this struggle as incessant, so that the day-to-day life of creatures is seen as one of ‘kill or be killed’, ‘eat or be eaten’. This would not in itself show that we should not be concerned about non-human entities, at least not without committing the fallacy of ‘is’ implies ‘ought’. Nor would it even show that it is impossible for us to be so concerned. But it would suggest that, in being so concerned we would be somehow sailing against the wind of evolution, either against the process itself, or against inbuilt tendencies that it has produced in ourselves, or both. Consequently, if we wanted a basis for our environmentalist concerns, we would have to find it somewhere other than in evolution. In this paper, I will attempt to show that this view of evolution is highly misleading, and at best gives us only a very partial picture.