It has often been assumed that man has chosen for domestication animals and plants having an extraordinary inherent tendency to vary, and likewise to withstand diverse climates. I do not dispute that these capacities have added largely to the value of most of our domesticated productions; but how could a savage possibly know, when he first tamed an animal, whether it would vary in succeeding generations, and whether it would endure other climates? Has the little variability of the ass or guinea-fowl, or the small power of endurance of warmth by the reindeer, or of cold by the common camel, prevented their domestication? I cannot doubt that if other animals and plants, equal in number to our domesticated productions, and belonging to equally diverse classes and countries, were taken from a state of nature, and could be made to breed for an equal number of generations under domestication, they would vary on an average as largely as the parent species of our existing domesticated productions have varied.--Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (quoting from the first edition), chapter 1.
I start with a disclaimer. In this post, I ignore what Darwin's views of savages entail about his racial views (in part because I want to resist the temptation here to read his claims about civilizations (for example) in Descent back into The Origin of Species.) I do so primarily because here I want to focus on a methodological move in his argument, which I think is indebted to Hume and Adam Smith (both of whom he read).* To the best of my knowledge the point has not been noticed before, but as always I welcome readers' suggestions.
I don't mean to ignore political theory entirely. In the eighteenth century, and one finds this use, too, in Mill, it is common to use 'savages' as referring to folk who do not live under the rule of law (the contrast is with those that do--these are 'civilized'). Obviously the contrast between savage and civilized is normative (it's generally better to be civilized according to such theorists), but in some contexts 'savages' (and 'civilized') is used descriptively. Darwin kind of leaves ambiguous whether the savages he is discussing are themselves in the "state of nature" -- so that he is also claiming that domestication of animals and artificial selection temporally precedes the founding of political society (I think this is compatible with his views) -- or if he is only treating animal and plant domestication as a departure from the state of nature. But if he does claim this, it's natural to think (and may say that Nietzsche and Foucault explicitly think it) that on the Darwinian account the escape of the state of nature by humans is itself a form of domestication and artificial selection of humans.+
Okay, with that in place, let's turn to the methodological point lurking here. The quoted passage is from Darwin's treatment of artificial selection by humans. In the paragraph, Darwin main claim is that (i) one is not allowed to attribute knowledge of (to use eighteenth century terminology) remote consequences to the intentions of ancient savages. When animals are first domesticated they serve particular local ends for humans. It's possible that domestication precedes utility, that it happens quite accidentally at first (in the same chapter Darwin calls this "unconscious selection"), but the domesticated/ing animals and plans are kept around because they serve human ends.** I return to (i) below, but strikingly in Darwin's hands it follows from (i) that (ii) even in domestication and artificial selection there are unintended consequences. The explanation for (ii) is that such consequences are simply unforeseeable for folk without knowledge of the effects of selection.
Darwin thinks that in the course of time, breeders start developing know how about and even studying the effects of artificial selection and so develop quite a bit of knowledge about remote consequences of their efforts. This is clear because the whole point of chapter 1 is showcase (part of) Darwin's rhetorical (and perhaps epistemic) strategy is to build his own theory of natural selection on top of such knowledge of artificial selection. I don't mean to deny that Darwin's theory natural selection is all about outcomes intended by nobody (natural selection is blind), but it is the case that certain structural elements of such outcomes are foreseeable by theory (later in the book Darwin gives some striking examples of that, but that's for another time).
Hume (himself a theorist of unintended consequences) uses versions of (i) at a key point in his account of the origins of justice:
The idea of justice can never serve to this purpose, or be taken for a natural principle, capable of inspiring men with an equitable conduct towards each other. That virtue, as it is now understood, wou'd never have been dream'd of among rude and savage men. (Treatise 3.2.2.8) [I describe this in my book here.]
Hume's savages are in some sense slightly more hypothetical than Darwin's, but in other respects the strategy is the same. (Darwin also describes existing savages in the same chapter; in the Treatise, at least, but not elsewhere, Hume has little interest in really existing savages.) Part of the explanatory point is that there are forced moves, I call them social conceptual necessitation relations, that constrain any adequate genealogical explanation.
Darwin's debt to 18th century political economy (Malthus) is familiar enough, but I hope to have indicated here that there are further methodological roots of Darwinism to be explored in the writings of Hume and smith. Finally, I don't mean to suggest I have exhausted Darwin's views on savages in origins. At one point (in chapter 11), he writes, "The various beings thus left stranded may be compared with savage races of man, driven up and surviving in the mountain-fastnesses of almost every land, which serve as a record, full of interest to us, of the former inhabitants of the surrounding lowlands." This echoes Plato's Laws, but that's for another time.
*I warmly recommend this paper by HayleyClatterbuck on Hume and Darwin.
+One tentative reason to think this in Origins, is that at one point Darwin compares bees to savages (in chapter 6).
**This is not to deny that according to Darwin (see chapter 6) often animals kept by savages are still subject to "natural selection" to a "certain extent."
Hi Eric-- I think that this is a nice point, it fits with his broader fallibilism (Nature as full of contraptions as contrivance) and I do not know of anyone else who has made it. But I am not a Darwin scholar. Cheers! We are off to Pitt for the year this coming weekend. Warm regards, Bill
Posted by: William Wimsatt | 08/28/2018 at 12:48 AM