Chapter 6 Chapter 1 Between Instinct and Reason

Habit is second nature to man. What we call a conscience from nature is born from habit. There are two souls living in my breast, and they always want to be separated from each other. biological evolution and cultural evolution To early thinkers it seemed impossible that there be an order in human activity beyond the imagination of an organized mind.Even Aristotle, a relatively recent figure, believed that order among human beings extended only as far as the voice of the herald (Ethics, IX, x), so that a man with A country of 100,000 people is impossible.However, what Aristotle considered impossible had already happened when he wrote these words.Aristotle, for all his accomplishments as a scientist, relied on his instincts rather than his observations and reflections when he confined the human order to the voice of the herald.

This notion is understandable, since man's instincts, which were fully developed long before Aristotle's time, were not born of the circumstances or members in which he now lives.These instincts apply to life in the small itinerant tribes or groups in which humans and their predecessors evolved for hundreds of thousands of years, forming our basic biological makeup.These hereditary instincts govern the co-operation within a group, which is necessarily limited to the intercourse of fellow-citizens who know and trust each other.Governed by common goals at hand, these hominids shared similar feelings about the dangers and opportunities in their environment—mainly food sources and places to hide.Not only can they hear their herald, they usually know him as a person.

Although greater experience would have given some of the older members of these groups some authority, it is primarily common goals and feelings that govern the activities of their members.The instinct of solidarity and altruism plays a decisive role in these cooperative methods.These instincts apply to members of one's own group, but not to outsiders.Members of these small groups therefore survive only in this way: the isolated man is soon dead.It can be seen that the individualism of the primitive man mentioned by Hobbes is pure nonsense.The savage is not an isolated man, his instincts are collectivist.There is no such thing as a "war of all against all".

Of course, if our present order did not exist, we would probably find it hard to believe that any such thing was possible, and we would inadvertently dismiss any account of such an order as fantasy, as a tale of impossible Things that happened.The formation of this unusual order, and the existence of a human being of the present size and structure, is largely due to the gradual evolution of rules of human conduct, especially those concerning private property, good faith, contract, exchange, trade, competition. , harvest, and the rules of private life.They are passed on from generation to generation, not by instinct, but by tradition, education, and imitation, and consist mainly of prohibitions (“shall not be”) that delineate the adjustable limits of individual decision.Man has built civilization by developing and learning to obey rules (first in small tribes and then on larger scales) that often forbid him to act on instinct, so as not to depend on a common sense of things.These rules actually constitute another new morality, which I would like to use as the word "morality," which checks or limits "natural morality," the instinct that brings small groups together and guarantees cooperation within that group. , at the expense of blocking or blocking its expansion.

I would like to use the word "morality" to define those non-instinctive rules which enable human beings to extend a wide range of order, because the concept of moral rules can only be contrasted with impulsive and unthinking behavior on the one hand, and with It only makes sense when compared to rational thinking about specific outcomes."Sociobiologists" who describe visceral responses without moral attributes in terms of things like "altruism" (if they want to be consistent, should consider intercourse as the most altruistic behavior), Obviously wrong.Altruism becomes a moral concept only if we mean that we "should" abide by the altruistic sentiment.

It can be argued, of course, that this can hardly be said to be the only way to use these concepts.Mandeville outraged his contemporaries by arguing that "the great principle which makes us social animals, and which underpins all the businesses and trades of life, is without exception evil" (1715/1924). What that means precisely is that the rules of the extended order conflict with the instincts that hold small groups together. Once we see moral rules not as innate instincts but as learned traditions, their relation to what we generally call feelings, affections, or sensations raises all sorts of interesting questions.For example, while moral rules are learned, they don't always act like explicit rules; they can, like instincts, manifest as vague aversions or displeasure with certain behaviors.This feeling often informs how we make choices over our inner instinctive impulses.

How, it may be asked, can the restraint imposed on the demands of instinct coordinate the actions of a greater number of members?For example, the constant obedience to the requirement to treat all men as one's neighbours, hinders the development of an extended order.For those who now live in this extended order profit not because they treat each other as neighbors, but because they adopt in their intercourse the rules of the extended order, such as those concerning divided property and contracts, instead of Those rules of solidarity and altruism.An order in which everyone treats others as he treats himself will be an order in which relatively few people can gain and prosper.Put it this way, responding to every call for love that the media bombardment throws at us would take a heavy toll, keep us from doing the work we are best equipped to do, and quite possibly reduce us to A vehicle for certain special interest groups or special positions regarding the relative importance of particular needs.This will not provide the right path for improvement for those unfortunates we have legitimate concerns about.In the same way, if we want to make unified abstract rules applicable to all human relations, and make it transcend various boundaries, even the boundaries between countries, we must curb the instinctive aggressiveness of outsiders.

Thus, there is strong resistance to requiring each individual to alter their "natural" or "instinctive" responses to others in order to form cooperative patterns or systems that transcend the individual.This conflict with innate instincts, what Mandeville called "the evil of selfishness," can be turned into a "public good"; in order for the extended order to develop, people must limit certain "good" instincts, which is later In turn, it becomes the conclusion of the source of conflict.Rousseau, for example, was on the side of "nature," although his contemporary Hume clearly stated that "so noble sentiments (such as beneficence) are as unnatural as their almost exact opposite, a very narrow selfishness." did not adapt men to the larger society" (1739/1886: II, 270).

It must be emphasized again and again that people resent restrictions on customary practices in small groups.For we shall then see that the individual who observes the limitations, although his life depends on them, does not understand, and generally cannot understand, how they function or benefit him.He knows a great many things that he thinks he needs, but he is not allowed to get them, and he cannot understand why some other favorable feature of his environment depends on the discipline he must obey--forbidding him to arrogate himself. The discipline to fetch these equally attractive things.We don't like these restrictions very much, but it's hard to say that we can choose them, rather they choose us: they enable us to survive.

It is no accident that many abstract phenomena, such as the rules dealing with individual responsibility and divided property, are relevant to economics.Economics has come to study how a process of variation of discrimination and selection, far beyond our vision or capacity to design, produces an extended order of human interaction.Adam Smith was the first to grasp that we happen to have found some way of ordering human economic cooperation that lies outside the sphere of our knowledge and understanding.His "invisible hand" is probably best described as an invisible or incompletely graspable pattern.We are guided to do certain things by circumstances that we neither know well nor have consequences that we imagined—for example, through the price mechanism in market exchange.In our economic activity we know neither the wants we satisfy nor the sources of the goods we acquire.We serve people whom we hardly ever know, and we don't even care about their existence.At the same time our lives depend on the constant receipt of services from others whom we know nothing about.These things are only possible because we are part of a vast framework of institutions and traditions—economic, legal, and moral—that we create by submitting to something that was not made by us, but that we know we make ourselves. We also do not understand the rules of behavior in the sense of the utility of things that fit themselves into this framework.

Modern economics explains how this extended order can arise, and how it constitutes itself an information-gathering process that makes widely disseminated information public and available, not to mention individuals, even Nor can any central planning agency be fully known, possessed, or controlled.Smith understood that human knowledge is dispersed.He wrote, "What sort of domestic industry his capital may be employed in, and what products are likely to be of greatest value, is evidently a judgment of every man in his circumstances far superior to that of any statesman or legislator. judgments that the author can make for him" (1776/1976: II, 487).Or, as one shrewd nineteenth-century economic thinker put it, business required "thousands of trivial knowledge of a thousand specific things, which only those who can profit from it learn" (Bailey, 1840: 3 ).Information-gathering institutions such as markets allow us to draw on knowledge that is scattered and difficult to fully understand, thus forming a pattern that transcends the individual.After the creation of institutions and traditions based on this model, it is no longer necessary for people (like small groups) to seek unity in unified goals, because widely dispersed knowledge and skills can now be used at any time in different ways. The goal. This development is as evident in economics as it is in biology.Even in the field of biology, strictly speaking, "evolutionary changes generally tend to use resources most economically", so "evolution also 'blindly' follows the path of maximizing resource utilization" (Howard, 1982: 83) .Moreover, a modern biologist rightly states that "ethics is the study of the distribution of resources" (Hardin, 1980: 3).All of these remarks point to the close interrelationships among evolution, biology, and ethics. Order, like its synonyms "system," "structure," and "pattern," is a elusive concept.We need to distinguish between two distinct but related conceptions of order.As a verb or a noun, "order" can be used both to refer to the result of mental activity that arranges or divides objects or events in different aspects according to our senses, as science's rearrangement of the perceptual world shows us (Ha Yeke, 1952), it can also refer to certain physical arrangements (physical arrangements) that people imagine that objects or events have within a certain period of time, or that people give it. "Regularity" (law) comes from the Latin used to express rules The term "regula", which of course is nothing but the different spatio-temporal aspects of the relationship between the same factors. Keeping this distinction in mind, we can say that human beings acquire the ability to establish de facto patterns of order to serve their needs, because they learn to integrate the sensory stimuli they receive from their environment ( senory stimuli), superimposed over the order or classification created by sense and intuition.Ordering is the active rearrangement of objects and events in the sense of dividing them into desirable outcomes. We have learned to classify objects chiefly by means of language, which we use to designate not only the kinds of objects we already know, but also the kinds of objects or events we consider to be the same or different.We also learn from custom, morality, and law the expected consequences of different actions.For example, the values ​​or prices formed in market intercourse may further serve as a means of classifying actions according to their importance to an order in which the individual is only a factor in a whole which is in no way determined by him. Creative. The extended order certainly did not appear all at once; the process lasted much longer, and produced much greater morphological variation, than the world-wide civilization of its eventual development could suggest. (Probably took hundreds of thousands of years instead of five or six thousand years); the market order is a relatively recent product.The structures, traditions, institutions, and other elements of this order arose gradually through the selection of customary modes of conduct.The new rules spread not because they were perceived to be more efficient, or could be expected to expand, but because they enabled rule-abiding groups to thrive more successfully and to incorporate outsiders. . It can be seen that this kind of evolution is produced by the diffusion of new behaviors by means of the transmission process of habits. It is similar to biological evolution, but it is different from it in some important respects.I will discuss some of their similarities and differences below, but here it should be pointed out that biological evolution is a very slow process, so it is not enough to change or replace human beings in the 10,000 to 20,000 years that civilization develops. Innate ways of responding, still less affected by the slowness of the process in the case of a large number of members whose ancestors entered into the process only a few hundred years ago.But all newly civilized groups, so far as we know, show a capacity to acquire civilization by learning certain traditions.It can be seen that the transmission of civilization and culture is almost impossible to be determined by heredity.They must have been learned by tradition by all like. The first, so far as I know, to formulate these phenomena clearly was Carl Saunders, who wrote, "Men and groups are naturally selected according to the habits they observe, just as they are also selected according to their mental and physical characteristics." It is the same as being chosen. The group which follows the most favorable manner of habit will, in the constant struggle between adjacent groups, have the advantage over those which behave in an unfavorable manner” (1922: 223, 302).But Carl-Sanders emphasized the ability to limit the population rather than increase it.For more recent studies, see Allland (1967); Farb (1968: 13); Simpson, who rejects the biological view that culture is a "much more powerful means of adaptation" (see B. Campbell, 1972); Popper argues that , "Cultural evolution continues the process of genetic evolution in other ways" (Popper et al., 1977: 48).Durham emphasizes (see Chagonnon et al., 1979: 19) the role of specific habits and attributes in enhancing human reproductive capacity. This gradual elimination of instinctual responses through learned rules differentiates man more and more from animals, although a penchant for instinctive group behavior remains one of several animal traits that humans retain (Troter, 1916).Even the animal ancestors of human beings had some "cultural" traditions before they became modern humans through imitation.This cultural tradition also contributes to the formation of certain animal societies, such as among birds and apes, and probably even many other mammals (Bonner, 1980).The decisive change from animal to man, however, is due to culturally determined constraints on instinctive responses. Individuals are gradually accustomed to obey these learned rules, and even become an unconscious behavior like hereditary instincts. They increasingly replace those instincts. However, we cannot make a clear distinction between these two factors that determine behavior. Because they interact with each other in complex ways.Behavior patterns learned in early childhood have become part of our personality, dominating us from the very beginning of our learning.Even the human body undergoes certain structural changes, because they help man to take fuller advantage of the opportunities offered by cultural development.To what extent the abstract structure we call "intelligence" is inherited and built into our central nervous physiology, or is it merely a receptacle that enables us to assimilate cultural traditions, for our discussion here is not important.The results of both genetic transmission and cultural transmission can be called traditions.Importantly, they often conflict in the ways mentioned above. Even some almost universal cultural traits cannot be proved to be genetically determined.There may just be a way of meeting the requirements for forming an extended order, just as wings are the only means by which an organism can fly (the wings of insects, birds, and bats have very different genetic origins).It may also be that there is fundamentally only one way of developing vocal language, and therefore that there are certain properties common to all languages, which in itself does not prove that these properties are attributes attributed to instinct. The Two Morality of Cooperation and Conflict The evolution of culture, and the civilization it created, brought differentiation, individuation, increasing wealth, and great expansion to mankind, but the process of its gradual emergence was not smooth sailing.We have not shed our inheritance from the small group of acquaintances, nor have these instincts been "adjusted" to the full extent of, or made harmless by, the relatively new order of expansion. It cannot be overlooked, however, that some inherited instincts are advantageous, including the at least partial elimination of the special properties of other instinctive modes.For example, while culture began to eliminate some instinctive patterns of behavior, genetic evolution presumably also endowed the human individual with many different traits that were better adapted to the many different environments in which humans were more deeply involved than any other non-household animal— Presumably this was the case even before the growing division of labor in groups offered new opportunities for the survival of particular forms.Foremost among these innate qualities which help to eliminate other instincts is the great capacity to learn from one's fellow man, especially by imitation.The long periods of infancy and adolescence, which provide this ability, are probably crucial final steps dictated by biological evolution. However, the structure of the extended order consists not only of individuals but also of many often overlapping sub-orders in which ancient instinctive responses, such as solidarity and altruism, continue to have a certain degree of prominence in producing voluntary cooperation. importance, although they do not in themselves create the basis for a more extended order.Part of our difficulty now is that we have to constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts, and our emotions in order to be able to obey different rules and live in different types of order at the same time.If we apply the same immutable, unrestricted rules in micro-organizations (such as small tribes or groups or our families) to macro-organizations (such as our wider civilization) - our instincts and emotional desires Often make us want to do it - and we'll ruin it.But if we always apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groups, we also tear it apart.Therefore, we must learn to live in both worlds at the same time.It is most misleading to use the word "society" to refer to both organizations, or even to one of them, with little benefit (see Chapter 7). Our limited ability to live in both orders simultaneously and to differentiate them has certain advantages, but it is by no means an easy task.Our instincts do often threaten to topple the whole edifice.So in a sense the subject of this book is similar to Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930), although my conclusions are quite different from his.The conflict between people's instinctive preferences and the learned rules of behavior that enable them to expand, i.e. D. T．What Campbell calls conflict arising from precepts in "repressive or taboo moral traditions" is probably a major problem in the history of civilization.When Columbus encountered the savages, he seemed to recognize at once that their lives satisfied more of the inner instincts of human beings.As I shall argue below, I believe that the atavistic feeling for the noble primitive life is the main source of the collectivist tradition. natural person not adapted to the extended order Men cannot be expected to appreciate an extended order that is at odds with some of their strongest instincts, or to readily recognize that it provides them with the material comforts they crave.This order is always an "unnatural" order in the general sense that it does not correspond to the biological nature of man.Much of the good that humans do in the extended order, therefore, is not because they are inherently good; but it would be foolish to reduce civilization to an artificial creation for this reason.It only makes sense to say that civilizations are man-made products in the sense that most of our values, our language, our art, and our reason are man-made: they are not inherent in our biological structure .But in another sense, the extended order is entirely a product of nature: like analogous biological phenomena, it has formed itself by natural evolution in a process of natural selection (see Appendix A). Yes, most of our daily lives, and most of our professions, do not satisfy the deep-seated "altruistic" desire to do good directly.On the contrary, recognized behavior often asks us not to do what our instincts prompt us to do.The great conflict with each other is not, as is often supposed, between feeling and reason, but between inner instinct and learned rules.It should be understood, however, that compliance with these learned rules does have a general effect of greater good than most direct "altruistic" behaviors that specific individuals can undertake. The fundamentals of the market order are poorly understood, a clear sign of the widespread belief that "cooperation is better than competition."Cooperation, like solidarity, presupposes, to a large extent, agreement on ends and its means.It makes sense to say this in a small group whose members share specific habits, knowledge, and views of possibilities.It doesn't make much sense if the problem is adapting to unknown circumstances.But it is this adaptability to the unknown on which the coordination of efforts in the extended order depends.Competition is a process of discovery, the method that underlies all evolutionary processes, and makes humans react unconsciously to new situations; we gradually increase our efficiency through further competition, not through cooperation. In order for competition to produce favorable outcomes, participants are required to abide by the rules rather than resort to force.Only rules can form an extended order. (The same purpose can do this only in temporary emergencies that pose a common threat to all. "Wartime morality" can evoke feelings of solidarity, but it is also a regression to the more savage principles of cooperation .) In a spontaneous order, it is not necessary for anyone to have a clear understanding of all the ends to be pursued and all the means to be employed in order for men to get their places.This order forms itself.The rules that produce order in adjustment arise not because of a better understanding of their function, but because those groups that thrive happen to adjust the rules in a way that increases their resilience. improved.This evolutionary process is not linear, but the result of constant trial and error and constant "experimentation" in fields containing different orders.Of course, there is no intent to experiment—the changes in the rules, caused by historical chance, are analogous to genetic variation and work in much the same way. The evolution of rules is far from smooth, because the forces enforcing them generally resist rather than assist changes that contradict traditional notions of right and wrong.Conversely, newly learned rules, which are accepted after a struggle, sometimes impede further evolution, or limit the further expansion of the power to coordinate individual efforts.Although a regime with coercive power constantly spreads the moral values ​​approved by the ruling group, it rarely actively promotes the expansion of this coordinating power. It thus turns out that the sentiments opposed to the limits of civilization are anachronistic, applicable only to the size and circumstances of groups in the distant past.But if civilization is produced by some undesired gradual change in moral outlook, then it is impossible for us to know that there is any universally correct system of ethics, and we probably do not want to accept such a conclusion.It would be wrong to draw conclusions rigidly from the premise of this theory of evolution that no matter what rules are evolved, they will always or must be beneficial to the survival and growth of the population in the future.We need to use the means of economic analysis (see Chapter 5) to show how self-emergent rules promote human survival.Of course, recognizing that rules are generally competitively selected on the basis of their value to human existence does not exempt those rules from critical scrutiny.The same cannot be said of cultural processes which are frequently subject to some coercive intervention, regardless of other reasons. Understanding cultural evolution, however, of course removes the benefit of doubting established rules and places the burden of proof on those who wish to improve them.Even if the superiority of the market system cannot be demonstrated, a historical, evolutionary examination of the emergence of capitalism (as illustrated in Chapters 2 and 3) will help to explain this, although neither well-known and Unanticipated, but how more productive traditions emerged, and their profound implications for those within the extended order.But first I would like to clear an important roadblock that stands in the way of a widespread misconception about the nature of our ability to adopt beneficial practices. Intelligence is not a guide to cultural evolution but a product of it, based primarily on imitation rather than insight and reason We said that the ability to learn by imitation is one of the main benefits provided by our long course of instinctive development.Probably the most important ability of the human individual beyond the instinctive reaction endowed by heredity is that he can master various skills mainly through imitative learning.From this point of view, it is very important to avoid in the first place the notion that arises from what I have called a "fatal conceit": that the ability to master skills arises from reason.For it can be put another way: our rationality, like our morality, is the product of an evolutionary process of natural selection.But it did not arise from another separate development, and it should never be supposed that our reason is in the position of a higher tester, and that only those moral rules which reason approves are correct. I will comment on these questions in the next few chapters, but here it is probably necessary to state my conclusions in advance.The title of this chapter, "Between Instinct and Reason," is taken literally.What I would draw the reader's attention to is, of course, something that lies between instinct and reason, which is often neglected in related accounts, because it is assumed that both are formed by a process of cultural evolution, but they are not Formed by drawing a reasonable conclusion about certain facts or an understanding of the way things work in a particular way.Our behavior is governed by what we've learned, but we often don't know why we do what we do.Learned moral rules and customs are increasingly replacing instinctive responses, not because man uses reason to recognize their superiority, but because they make possible the development of an extended order beyond the horizon of the individual, in which In , more efficient mutual coordination enables its members, even if quite blind, to feed larger populations and displace other groups. The Mechanism of Cultural Evolution Is Not a Darwinian Mechanism Our arguments necessitate a more detailed discussion of the relationship between evolution and cultural development.This is a topic that raises many interesting questions, many of which economics offers answers in a way that few other disciplines have. But there is serious confusion on the subject, and some of it should be said, if only to remind the reader that we do not intend to repeat the same mistakes.Specifically, Social Darwinism arose from the assumption that anyone who studies the evolution of human culture must join Darwin's school.This assumption is wrong.Charles Darwin was the first to create a systematic (if not perfect) theory of evolution, and for that he has my greatest admiration.But his account of how the process of evolution works in living organisms, so painstakingly convincing the scientific community, has long since been a commonplace in the humanities—at least since 1787, the year William Jones saw some striking similarities between Latin and Greek and Sanskrit, and all branches of the "Indo-European" language family from Sanskrit.This example reminds us that Darwin's or biological theory of evolution, neither the earliest nor the only theory of its kind, is in fact not entirely self-contained and differs in some respects from other evolutionary explanations.The idea of ​​biological evolution arose from the study of processes of cultural development, processes such as those leading to the formation of institutions such as language, law, moral principles, and money, which have long been known (e.g. Jones's shown). Thus, the major error of contemporary "sociobiology" is that it assumes that phenomena such as language, morality, and law arise not through the evolution of natural selection through the transmission of imitative learning, but through the "hereditary "Procedure passed.This view, though at the other end of the spectrum, is just as false as the view that man consciously invents or devises institutions such as morality, law, language, or money, so that he too can do what he will with them. to improve.The idea that wherever we find order, there must be someone calling the shots is a superstition that biological evolution must refute.Here again we find that the correct interpretation lies somewhere between instinct and reason. Not only is the concept of evolution earlier in the humanities and social sciences than in the natural sciences, I even intend to prove that Darwin got the basic concept of evolution from economics.We know from his notes that Darwin was reading Adam Smith when he formulated his theory in 1838 (see Supplement A).In any case, the emergence of highly complex spontaneous orders through evolutionary processes was being studied decades or even a hundred years before Darwin's writings.While words like "heredity" and "genetics" are technical terms in biology today, even they weren't invented by biologists.The first person I know who talked about genetic development was the German philosopher and cultural historian Herder.We see it again in Wieland and Humboldt.Thus, modern biology has borrowed the concept of evolution from much older cultural studies.If in a sense it's a well-known thing, it's also almost always forgotten. 当然，文化进化（有时也被称为心理-社会进化、超有机体进化或体外进化）的学说和生物进化学说虽然在某些方面有相似之处，但它们并不完全一样。它们往往以十分不同的假设作为起点。文化进化正像朱利安·赫胥黎所言，是“一个和生物进化极为不同的过程，它有自己的规律、机制和模式，不能单纯从生物学基础上加以解释”（赫胥黎，1947）。不妨举出若干重要的差别：生物进化论现在已排除了后天获得特征的遗传，但是所有的文化发展都是建立在这种遗传上，即那些以指导个人之间相互关系的规则为表现形式的特征，它们并不是个人固有的，而是在学习中掌握的。按现在的生物学讨论所采用的说法，文化进化是在模拟拉马克主义（波普尔，1972）。进一步说，文化进化的产生，不仅通过生理上的双亲，而且通过无数个“祖先”，向个人传递各种习惯和信息。这个过程利用学习手段，加快了文化特性的传播速度。从而正如前面所说，文化进化较之生物进化要快得多。最后，文化进化主要是通过集体选择发挥作用；集体选择是否也在生物进化中发挥作用，仍然是个悬而未决的问题，不过我的论证也不依靠这方面的见解（艾德尔曼，1987；吉塞林，1969：57－9，132-3；哈代，1965：153以下各负，206；迈尔，1970：114；麦达瓦尔，1983：134-5；卢塞，1982：190－5，203－6，235－6）。 邦纳（1980：10）认为，文化“有着和有机体的任何其他功能——例如呼吸和运动——一样的生物学特性”的主张是错误的。把语言、道德、法律、货币甚至智力等传统的形成，一概归于“生物学”名下，是在滥用语言和曲解理论。我们的基因遗传，可以决定我们能够学会什么，但肯定不能决定存在着什么有待学习的传统。有待学习的东西甚至不是人类大脑的产物。不是由基因传递的东西，不属于生物学现象。 尽管有这些差别，一切进化，无论是文化的还是生物的，都是对不可预见的事情、无法预知的环境变化不断适应的过程。这是进化论无法使我们对未来的进化做出合理预测和控制的另一个原因。它所能够做到的，不过是揭示复杂的结构如何具有一种使进化进一步发展的调整方式，但是由其性质所定，这种发展本身难免是不可预测的。 在指出了文化进化和生物进化的一些差别之后，我要强调的是，它们在一个重要的方面完全相同：从规律支配着进化产物必然经历的各个阶段，因而能够据以预测未来的发展这个意义上说，无论是生物进化还是文化进化，都不承认有什么“进化规律”或“不可避免的历史发展规律”。不管是遗传还是别的什么因素，都不能决定文化的进化，它的结果是多变的，不是千篇一律的。有些哲学家，如马克思和奥古斯都·孔德之流，认为我们的研究能够找出进化规律，从而可以对不可避免的未来发展做出预测，他们是错误的。过去，进化论的伦理学观点失信于人，主要就是因为它错误地把进化和所谓的“进化规律”联系在了一起，其实进化论必须把这种规律视为不可能而断然予以否认。我曾经说过（1952），对于复杂现象，只能限于我所说的模式预测或原理预测。 这种具体的错误认识的主要来源之一，是混淆了两种全然不同的过程，生物学家分别称之为个体发生的过程和种系发生的过程。个体发生肯定只同事先决定的个体发展有关，它是由胚胎细胞中染色体固有的机制决定的。相反，与进化有关的种系发生，却是同种群或类型的进化史有关。生物学家因为受过训练，一般都会反对把这两者混为一谈，但是那些研究生物学家所不熟悉的事情的人，却经常成为自己无知的牺牲品，得出“历史决定论”的信念，即种系发生和个体发生的作用方式是一样的。卡尔·波普尔曾对这种历史决定论的观点做了有力的驳斥（1945，1957）。 生物进化和文化进化还有另一些共同特征。例如，它们都遵循着同样的自然选择原理：生存优势或繁殖优势。变异、适应和竞争，不管它们——尤其在繁殖方式上——有怎样的特殊机制，从本质上说都是同样的过程。不但所有的进化都取决于竞争，甚至仅仅为了维持现有的成就，竞争也是必要的。 虽然我希望人们从更为广阔的历史背景看待进化论，理解生物进化和文化进化的不同，以及承认社会科学对我们的进化知识做出的贡献，不过我并不想否定，达尔文生物进化论的创立，不管它造成了什么样的后果，都堪称一项现代伟大的知识成就——它使我们对自己的世界有了一种全新的眼光。作为一种解释工具，它的普适性也表现在一些各不相同的自然科学家的新著作之中，他们证明了不应把进化的观点局限于有机体，这个过程始于从更为基本的粒子中发展出来的原子，因此我们也能够解释分子这种最初级的复杂结构，甚至能够根据多种多样的进化过程，解释复杂的现代世界（见补论A）。 但是，凡是用进化论观点研究文化的人，都难免会经常感觉到对这种观点的敌视。它往往是针对那些“社会科学家”，他们在19世纪需要达尔文的帮助，以便认识他们本可能从自己的先辈那儿学到的东西，从而使文化进化论信誉扫地，给它的进步造成了持久的伤害。 社会达尔文主义从许多方面看都是错误的，但是今天对它的深恶痛绝，部分地也要归因于它同致命的自负相冲突，这种态度认为人能够按照自己的愿望改造他周围的环境。虽然这与理解正确的进化论了无干系，但是那些在研究人类事务上持建构主义态度的人，却经常以社会达尔文主义的不当之处（和如此明显的错误）为由，全盘否定进化理论。 伯特兰·罗素提供了一个很好的事例，他宣称，“假如进化论的伦理学能够成立，那么对于这个进化过程会发生什么事情，我们大可漠不关心。因为无论它是什么，都可以由此证明它是最好的”（1910/1966：24）。这种被A． G． N．弗莱称为“无可辩驳的”（1967：48）反对意见，是建立在一种简单化的错误认识上。我不想信奉那种经常被称为遗传主义或自然主义的谬论。我不认为集体选择的传统造成的结果肯定是“好的”——我丝毫不打算主张，在进化过程中长期生存下来的另一些东西，譬如蟑螂，也有道德价值。 我确实认为，不管我们喜欢与否，没有我所提到那些特殊传统，文明的扩展秩序就不可能继续存在（但是假如蟑螂绝迹，由此引起的生态“灾难”大概不会给人类造成永久性的重大破坏）；我也确实认为，假如我们因为观念有误（它当然有可能真诚信奉自然主义的谬误）而放弃这些传统，我们就会使大量的人陷入贫困和死亡。只有充分正视这些事实，我们才能着手——或我们可能具备了一定的能力——考虑一下，做什么样的事情才能算是正确而善良。 单靠事实绝不能定是非，但是如果在什么合理、什么正确和有益的问题上认识有误，却会改变事实和我们生存于其中的环境，甚至有可能不但毁灭已经得到发展的个人、建筑、艺术和城市（我们早就知道，在各种类型的道德观念和意识形态的破坏性力量面前，它们是十分脆弱的），并且会毁灭各种传统、制度和相互关系，而离了这些东西，几乎不可能出现以上成就，或使它们得到恢复。