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Chapter 8. A Soul without Mystery: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin

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The Robot's Rebellion
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CHAPTER 88A Soul without Mystery: Finding Meaning in the Age of DarwinIt is becoming increasingly apparent that Darwin’s universal acid is begin-ning to seep into the general culture. Novelists, for example, have begun toassimilate the insights from cognitive science and evolutionary psychology,and are reflecting on them in their work. Booker Prize-winning novelist IanMcEwan, in the acknowledgements to his novel Enduring Love,mentionsdebts to E. O. Wilson’s On Human Nature,Steven Pinker’s The Language In-stinct,Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal,and Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’Error—and is reported chairing a session at a conference at the LondonSchool of Economics on “Darwinism Today” (Malik 2000, 150). In her re-cent novel The Peppered MothMargaret Drabble uses mitochondrial DNA as a plot device. The peppered moth of the title refers to Kettlewell’s (1973;Majerus 1998) famous confirmation of evolution through natural selectionby looking at adaptive coloring changes. In his memoir about moving to asmall farm in Sussex, journalist Adam Nicolson (2000) writes of his firstclose experiences at tending farm animals through a lens created by biolo-gist Richard Dawkins:A lamb is a survival machine: a big head, a big mouth and four stocky blacklegs way out of proportion to the sack of a body which joins these standingand eating parts together. The ewe had a full udder, and the lamb soon foundits way to suck, wriggling its tail, the instinctive drive at work, the vitalcolostrum running into the gut. Survival. . . . I found the mother standingalert, eyes big, defensive, stamping her front feet as I approached the pen orpicked up the lamb to look at the navel and the shriveling cord or to feel its,gratifyingly, filling belly. The ewe is tensed to protect her own. She is a servantof her genetic destiny. Her life can only be dedicated to these fragile, transi-tional moments on which so much hinges. So this instant, in the pen with207
© 2019 University of Chicago Press

CHAPTER 88A Soul without Mystery: Finding Meaning in the Age of DarwinIt is becoming increasingly apparent that Darwin’s universal acid is begin-ning to seep into the general culture. Novelists, for example, have begun toassimilate the insights from cognitive science and evolutionary psychology,and are reflecting on them in their work. Booker Prize-winning novelist IanMcEwan, in the acknowledgements to his novel Enduring Love,mentionsdebts to E. O. Wilson’s On Human Nature,Steven Pinker’s The Language In-stinct,Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal,and Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’Error—and is reported chairing a session at a conference at the LondonSchool of Economics on “Darwinism Today” (Malik 2000, 150). In her re-cent novel The Peppered MothMargaret Drabble uses mitochondrial DNA as a plot device. The peppered moth of the title refers to Kettlewell’s (1973;Majerus 1998) famous confirmation of evolution through natural selectionby looking at adaptive coloring changes. In his memoir about moving to asmall farm in Sussex, journalist Adam Nicolson (2000) writes of his firstclose experiences at tending farm animals through a lens created by biolo-gist Richard Dawkins:A lamb is a survival machine: a big head, a big mouth and four stocky blacklegs way out of proportion to the sack of a body which joins these standingand eating parts together. The ewe had a full udder, and the lamb soon foundits way to suck, wriggling its tail, the instinctive drive at work, the vitalcolostrum running into the gut. Survival. . . . I found the mother standingalert, eyes big, defensive, stamping her front feet as I approached the pen orpicked up the lamb to look at the navel and the shriveling cord or to feel its,gratifyingly, filling belly. The ewe is tensed to protect her own. She is a servantof her genetic destiny. Her life can only be dedicated to these fragile, transi-tional moments on which so much hinges. So this instant, in the pen with207
© 2019 University of Chicago Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS vii
  3. PREFACE xi
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
  5. Chapter 1. Staring into the Darwinian Abyss 1
  6. Chapter 2. A Brain at War with Itself 31
  7. Chapter 3. The Robot’s Secret Weapon 81
  8. Chapter 4. The Biases of the Autonomous Brain: Characteristics of the Short-Leash Mind that Sometimes Cause Us Grief 95
  9. Chapter 5. How Evolutionary Psychology Goes Wrong 131
  10. Chapter 6. Dysrationalia: Why So Many Smart People Do So Many Dumb Things 149
  11. Chapter 7. From the Clutches of the Genes into the Clutches of the Memes 173
  12. Chapter 8. A Soul without Mystery: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin 207
  13. Notes 277
  14. References 305
  15. Author Index 345
  16. Subject Index 355
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https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226771199-010

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS vii
  3. PREFACE xi
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
  5. Chapter 1. Staring into the Darwinian Abyss 1
  6. Chapter 2. A Brain at War with Itself 31
  7. Chapter 3. The Robot’s Secret Weapon 81
  8. Chapter 4. The Biases of the Autonomous Brain: Characteristics of the Short-Leash Mind that Sometimes Cause Us Grief 95
  9. Chapter 5. How Evolutionary Psychology Goes Wrong 131
  10. Chapter 6. Dysrationalia: Why So Many Smart People Do So Many Dumb Things 149
  11. Chapter 7. From the Clutches of the Genes into the Clutches of the Memes 173
  12. Chapter 8. A Soul without Mystery: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin 207
  13. Notes 277
  14. References 305
  15. Author Index 345
  16. Subject Index 355
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